My mother always told me not to feed wild animals. They could be rabid. And they’ll always want more.
I no longer remember the bar in which we met. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I later would realize we met in every bar and every place else I had been in the past month. I would later find out that our “one in a million chance” meeting was anything but. That this bar was the seventeenth place you followed me to. That was just the night you finally introduced yourself.
“Brett Harris,” you stuck out your hand.
Your smile was charming and I could tell you though I felt the same sparks you did.
But this was the seventeenth place you “happened upon” me at. Which means you knew that the woman beside me was my fiancé. And yet, you assumed you had my heart. You would tell me that you did over and over as I rotted in your dugout that you made specifically for me. You would tell me I should be grateful you didn’t leave me tied up to that tree. Lucky you were scared the neighbors five miles away would hear me screaming and crying for help.
But I knew none of this yet. You had told me nothing except your name. So, like a fool, I fed you.
“Genevieve Rodvold.” Just a bite. Nothing wrong with a bite. Right?
You were nervous. I knew nothing because you knew nothing. You were not planning on hitting me over the head when I found you next to me in a bed I did not recognize. But you were nervous. So, scared I’d recognize you from the shadows. I didn’t. That was your luck and my downfall.
You seemed nice. I played into your hand. Why not, I had nothing better to do. Madison eventually grew tired of you droning on about being the country’s greatest politician’s son. That you could get away with anything and you were going to prove it. You said it jokingly, so I laughed.
Now, sitting on trial for your murder, I am not laughing. You are going to get away with it. Just like you promised.
I don’t remember anything past leaving the bar and you saying those famous words to me.
“He can get me out of any paying any consequences. Just you watch, I’ll prove it to you.”
Then nothing. Three weeks later I found out it had been because you slipped something in my drink while I turned my head for just a moment. You wrote it down on a molding memo pad. You lived in a sparkling house. A dugout basement I was forced to call home. And a molding memo pad with details of tabs on me. You claim to be my soulmate. Funny. I don’t think this is how you’re supposed to show love.
Though, you were a political byproduct. I doubt you’d ever been shown love. I pretended to show you. Pretended to give you what you wanted. And you believed me. That was my luck and your downfall.
You got scared. Crows are supposed to fly away when scared. Only cowards attack.
Even today, as the verdict will ring in my ears any second now, I know nothing of those first few days.
I do not know who’s bed I found myself in that morning. I do not know where you first brought me to. It wasn’t your house. Maybe it was. It wasn’t the house you kept me at for five hundred and twenty-seven days. For four days, you left me chained to a tree while you “tidied up” your house. Making everything perfect for me. Turns out perfect means laying down a moth-eaten comforter and grabbing a first edition Norton Anthology that I’m sure you found lying around your father’s house. You left me for four days. No food. No water. Nothing but a chain around my neck and a promise that you’d be back “real soon”.
Whatever you gave me mixed with being assaulted took days to wear off. I wish they never had. I wish I was still in the dark, vaguely realizing I was being shoved into the trunk of a car that your daddy bought you not two weeks before.
According to you, it was my fault.
I shouldn’t have been friends with someone you had gone to college with.
I shouldn’t have been so openly friendly, shouldn’t have been so nice.
You asked me every day for the first few weeks if I thought I had asked for this.
If I said no, you would shut the door and leave me in complete darkness for exactly twenty-four hours. I only made that mistake twice. The first out of ignorance. The second out of spite. Then never again. You felt that I truly believed I deserved this, so you stopped asking.
If I agreed you were my soulmate, I was allowed to eat.
If I told you I loved you and you believed me, I was allowed to bathe. If you didn’t believe me, (INSERT SOMETHING)
Didn’t I ask for this?
Didn’t I ask for this?
Didn’t I ask for this?
You made me ask for it.
And now I pay for your sins.
Five hundred and twenty-seven days, I played into your hands. Told you everything you wanted to hear. Played the dutiful housewife. Made you fall even more in love with me.
I did not run for five hundred and twenty days. How could I when I had no idea what part of the country I was even in?
There were some days I would snap. Tell you exactly what I really thought of you. That you were a psychopath. That you were abusive. Obsessive. A stalker. A coward. A failure.
And you’d throw me down the steel stairs to my “home” after you were done crying and rocking back and forth in the corner.
You’d forgive me shortly after though. I always blamed hormones. And you’d always return with something that was way too expensive for me to afford to even look at. New shoes. A sheer dress. Diamond earrings. Gold necklaces silk lingerie. Anything you thought a girl could dream of. I’m sure you always just gave your credit card to the store clerk and told her to live out her wildest dreams.
Snapping at you made you feel guilty. You knew I didn’t want to be there with you. You thought you could buy my love. So, I made you think you could.
Once a month, I’d scream. Only once a month.
You had an alarm system that would tell you if I tried to open a door or window to the outside. So, I never tried. I made you think you could trust me.
At one point you considered taking me to the park with you. You dressed me up and everything. Even made a picnic. As soon as we pulled up to the clearing, I ran.
I was a fool. I was in heels. I had no idea where I was going.
You caught me in thirty seconds flat.
There was no apologizing. No explaining it away. You knew then I had been lying all this time.
You locked me in that basement for five days.
Five days of complete darkness. No food. No water. Nothing but a tank top and shorts you forced me to change into.
When you finally came to bring me something to eat, there was pity in your eyes. You ate with me. I got up to stretch.
Then stuck my fork in your neck.
I could hear you scream as I ran up the stairs. The front doors were locked. Typical. There were glass double doors in the kitchen. Your hand wrapped around my wrist the second my feet touched cool slate. I grabbed the first thing I could grab and swung at you. The steel knife caught you in the abdomen.
There was still fury in your eyes.
I got scared. I attacked.
Cold air stabbed my lungs as I ran as fast as could into the direction, I hoped the road was in.
I was right.
I just wish I knew that before the headlights were too close.
I wonder what’s going through that poor couple’s minds right now. They had just gone out for an early morning hike. They didn’t even make it to the park before my practically naked and blood-covered body appeared out of nowhere and bounced off the hood of their brand-new car. Now that same girl is in the middle of “The Trial of the Millennium”.
It took two days for the police to find your body. Two days of your thirty-four stab wounds bleeding out. Two days of vultures finding their way through the broken kitchen doors. I was told the initial officer on the scene threw up as soon as he got a glance at you.
In those two days, I found out I was, in fact, perfect for you. I had been reported missing six days after I had gone missing by Madison. She assumed I found out about her affair and left. But she reported me missing after she realized I hadn’t taken any of my belongs. The police found my phone at the bar. No one could remember who I was with or when I left. Madison couldn’t even remember what you looked like, let alone your name. There was no manhunt, barely even an investigation.
When Madison visited me for the only time at the hospital, she was accompanied by her not-so-new husband and not-so-new- baby bump.
I had no family, and you knew that. You knew about her affair. Knew no one was going to look for me. I really was perfect.
According to the defense team, I was the perfect killer as well. You would have been filled with glee from the way they painted me. Daddy really did pull through for you one more time. Made sure that you really could get away with absolutely anything.
I wasn’t even out of the hospital before I was served with murder charges.
I knew about my fiancé's affair. So, did you. I was betrayed that you didn’t tell me. I held you captive in your own home for over a year and a half. Abused you. Made you buy me fancy things. Destroyed your property. And then brutally stabbed you more than any human being could ever deserve.
You had surveillance in the house. They only showed me shouting at you and then your inevitable demise.
They turned me into a worse kind of monster I ever thought you could be.
Right before the verdict was read, I looked right into your father’s eyes and knew he knew what the real truth was. He did not show an ounce of remorse.
“Has the jury reached their verdicts?”
“Yes, they have.”
“How does the jury find Genevieve Rodvold on the charges of first-degree kidnapping and murder?”
“Guilty.”
Never feed a wild animal.
Do not even give them your name.
They are rabid.
They will take more.
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from Short Stories
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