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Rebecca

Marsden doesn’t like my jeans and dirty blouse streaked in blood.

He wants me to look a certain way. We’re in my bedroom now.

My feet are free, but my hands are still bound, my mouth gagged so I can’t speak and I can hardly breathe.

He nudges me where he wants me to go with the sharp tip of the bowie knife that Gray always kept in the barn.

He’s drawn blood with every single poke.

He opens the door to my closet and begins rummaging through my long flowery dresses.

I watch as he slides his hand down the front of his jeans and gently strokes himself.

Whatever he’s going to do to me will bring him an intense amount of pleasure and I wonder how he’ll violate me before he finishes this.

Unfortunately, I want to draw it out as long as possible in the hopes that my call to Kiki went through.

I’ll need to take whatever he doles out in case it keeps me alive even a moment longer.

He finally selects what he wants me to wear.

It’s one of my least favorite dresses because it’s one of the least practical.

It’s so long that I trip on it every time I wear it.

The lace at the neck and the wrists is scratchy and gives me a rash.

But my audience loves it. Every time I wear it while I’m milking the cows or gathering the eggs they tell me I’m elegant and beautiful, a model of femininity.

There’s no way to get the dress on me without unbinding my hands. He does it, but pins my arms behind my back as he drops it over my head.

“Be a good girl now.”

He lowers his head and kisses each of my breasts before the material flutters down over them.

He bites down softly on one nipple, like a child searching for milk.

I stare daggers down at the growing bald spot on the back of his head and picture myself clawing the skin of his skull with my fingernails.

When he’s done taunting me, he marches me into the bathroom.

“Put on your face,” Mars sneers. His beady eyes flick up and down me hungrily. “I want you perfect.”

I’m shaking as I use a washcloth to remove the splatters of blood and then swipe on foundation, lipstick, mascara. Through it all I’m plotting how I can possibly use anything in here as a weapon. Organic hairspray in his pupils? Mascara wand up the nose?

It takes about ten minutes for me to get enough makeup on that he gives me a satisfied grunt.

He reaches down and places his meaty fingers beneath my dress, runs his hands up the sides of my thighs.

I prepare myself for the worst, but instead he just holds my legs in his viselike grip and stares at our two faces side by side in the mirror.

“I see both of us every time I look at them,” he says, and I know he means our children.

If I survive this, will I ever be able to stop seeing him in their eyes and their smiles?

I hope so. I’ll do everything in my power to forget.

But first I have to escape. We stand like that for another thirty seconds, my breath hitching with his every movement, certain he is about to have his way with me against the marble countertop, but he eventually grabs another washcloth off the hook next to the sink, wets it, and then runs it up the sides of my legs and then down my arms, erasing all his fingerprints.

He dons a pair of leather work gloves and pushes me out of the bathroom, then out of the bedroom and down the stairs, wiping his prints away as he goes.

Outside the full moon is so bright it might as well be morning. Marsden wants us to walk side by side and he loops his arm through mine as if we’re on an after-dinner stroll on our first date. The intimacy is almost worse than the violence.

He isn’t going to rape me. I realize that now. He wants to. He wants to so badly. I can feel his desire pulsing through him. But that would leave too much evidence and that’s not part of his plan.

“What are you going to do?” I finally ask. He’ll want to tell me. It will make him feel powerful and smart to outline his plan.

“You’re not well, Rebecca. You haven’t been for a long time.

You’ve been able to hide it from your audience, but not from your husband.

Gray has been confiding in me. Told me you’ve been so depressed you’ve taken to your bed for weeks at a time, while he had to care for the children.

He told me you even threatened to hurt them.

He told me over and over again that he might need them to come live with Veronica and me while you went away for help.

I felt so bad for him. But I was also worried for him and for you.

He says you’ve lashed out at him, that you’ve been violent and psychotic, that he was afraid of you.

I told Veronica I didn’t believe it until that night.

That terrible night when you murdered your husband right in his own barn. ”

He says these lies calmly and evenly, as if they are facts. And maybe in his brain they are. The same way he convinced himself of an all-powerful god who will grant his every wish, he has convinced himself that I killed Gray.

“You can’t take it anymore,” he continues explaining as he pushes open the massive barn door. “You have to repent. You’ll take your own life here in the same barn where you attacked Gray. You called me to confess everything earlier today.”

Now I finally pivot and stare directly into his eyes. He’s smirking as he pulls out his phone and opens a recording. Only then do I actually want to die. It’s my voice, there’s no mistaking it. I’d thought it would be harder to doctor a spoken confession than written words. I’d been so wrong.

“I killed Grayson. The voices told me I had to do it. I couldn’t get them to stop screaming at me. But I can’t handle the shame and the guilt. My children will be better off without me. If I end my life here then maybe Gray and I can be together forever in the afterlife. Please forgive me, Lord.”

It’s me. But it’s not me. I’ve never said those words.

“You don’t talk that much in your videos, but you talk enough. Veronica and her sisters didn’t learn how to use AI all on their own. I’ve picked up some things here and there. Digital voice creation is almost too easy these days.”

I follow Marsden’s gaze as he looks up at the rafters in the barn. A shaft of moonlight comes through the door illuminating a noose resting on the edge of the ledge where we keep the hay.

He prods me up the ladder.

“Don’t make this hurt more than it has to. I don’t want there to be any marks on your body, but if there are, the police won’t investigate them. They won’t question much here. I’ve made sure of that. So climb on up, darling. Be a good girl. Do as Daddy says.”

I climb and I curse myself for letting this beast get the best of me.

I curse the god I don’t believe in for trapping my children in this impossible situation.

I also know that I will not go down without a fight.

He’s climbing right behind me, but I reach the ledge first, and when I look out from that vantage point I can see something in the moonlight, a figure just outside the door.

Is it possible? Is someone truly coming to save me?

I stand up and allow Marsden to place the heavy rope around my neck.

“It will be easier if you take the first step,” he growls. “But I’ll push you if I have to.”

“You’ll burn in hell for this.” I want to believe in a fiery inferno in a way that I’ve never wanted to before.

“I’ve been chosen by God, Rebecca. Never forget that.” He leans over and I think he wants to kiss me on the mouth.

“You’re right, Marsden,” I spit, trying to buy some time.

“You’ve been chosen.” I’m hoping whoever is out there beyond the barn door isn’t alone.

I’m hoping they brought backup with them.

I’m hoping they have a plan because I’m out of options.

I take a step closer to the edge. Marsden is right there with me, watching me teeter.

“You’ve been chosen to die tonight.”

I pull in a deep breath, and as I step away from the edge I muster all the strength I have, all my rage, all the burning love for my kids, and I kick Marsden right in the gut and send him over the edge as I go flying through the air, the noose tightening around my neck.