"The Storm" is a short creepypasta written by Arav Dagli, posted in 2021.
A woman has been long worn down by an abusive relationship, as she can't help but love her husband despite his mistreatment of her. One day, when signs of a huge storm approach, she formulates and executes a plan to get her life back.
The story can be read here
. As the story is a quick read, all spoilers are unmarked.
"The Storm" provides examples of:
- Blood Is the New Black: After she stabs her abusive husband, the wife rubs her bloodied hands on her face to set in the weight of the deed and begins to grin and laugh dementedly. As the moonlight reflects the blood on her face, she's barely human anymore.
- Broken Bird: It is implied that the wife was much happier before the years of abuse from her husband. She once didn't have a care in the world, but as of the present, she forgot what true happiness felt like.
- Domestic Abuse: The husband has beaten his wife, as well as neglected her and given her gifts to "make up for his mistakes" many times. She's sick of it, but she's more sick of herself for continuing to love him regardless.
- Driven to Suicide: The wife has held the kitchen knife to her neck many times before in the ideation of escaping her husband's abuse that way. She considers it beautifully befitting that the knife she attempted to take her own life with would be used to take her life back (by killing her husband).
- Empathic Environment: Dark clouds are present as the wife gloomily looks out the window, the electricity in the air accompanies her newfound energy of the plan to kill her husband, and the storm crashes through the sky as she devolves into madness after committing the deed.
- Kill the Ones You Love: It is because the wife can't help but love her husband despite his abuse that she thinks the only way to end her suffering from his hands is to kill him.
- Laughing Mad: As her husband bleeds out, the realisation that she truly did the deed setting in, the wife smiles and laughs uncontrollably, the moonlight reflecting the blood on her face.
- Love Martyr: The wife admits that her husband's love is barely present, but her feelings keep her stuck to him. She decides to kill him because she couldn't live her life loving him more than she loved herself.
- No Name Given: Neither the wife nor her abusive husband are named in this short story.
- Sanity Slippage: A miserable marriage has led the wife to attempt her own life many times, and the decision to kill her husband to end her love for him despite his abuse gives her a newfound resolve. Once she's done the deed and watches him bleed out, she barely realises the blood she rubs on her face as she begins to smile and laugh. As the moonlight shines on her, she's described to deteriorate into something less than human.
- Slashed Throat: The husband receives a slice across the neck as he eats his favourite dinner, cooked by the wife who planned this murder to end his abuse of her.
- Slasher Smile: As the wife watches her abusive husband bleed out from her attack, a demented smile begins to crack on her face, followed by mad laughter.
- A Storm Is Coming: The titular storm approaches the characters more and more as the story goes on, the intensity of the environment reflecting the wife's emotional state and how close the storm is. The wife senses that it will be a huge storm as she's plotting to kill her abusive husband. The story ends just as the storm arrives, thunder and lightning enveloping the skies as the wife falls to madness and laughs into the night.
- Stepford Smiler: Throughout the years she's been married to him, the wife puts on a facade of happiness and lies to herself that she's content with her distant husband. As a result, her smile feels fake; she plasters it on herself every morning and never finds it to look quite right.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: Because her love for her husband remains despite his love for her being next to non-existent, the wife kills him to ultimately end her misery of serving him.
