Nothingis on the tip of my tongue, when an incoming call comes through. Pulling it away from my ear, I get overjoyed when I see Theodore's name on the screen.
“Hey, girl, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”
I answer his call eagerly, but I don’t even get a word out before he orders me to his home.
“Is everything okay?”
“Just get here, my love.”
It clicks in my ear, leaving me with an ominous weight sitting at the bottom of my stomach. Quickly, I throw on a pair of jeans and an oversized Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and bound down the stairs.
“Hey, I have to go to Marie’s and help her fix her art final before she has a full-blown meltdown.” My mom is all too aware of who I become when my work goes wrong, so she lets me go without question, wishing me good luck on my way out the door.
I pedal like my life depends on it, running through the deserted red lights and the kids smoking crack on the train tracks. Eventually, when I see his home approaching, I cut through the woods, much sooner than needed.
I come around the back, just as he told me that first time. The door is left unlocked and open. I take it as permission to enter, calling out his name once I step into the dining room.
His heavy hand falls on my shoulder, forcing a scream to rip through my throat. It rattles the windows and shakes the walls, but he stays silent, unfazed by my terror.
“Shit, Theodore!” I scold, spinning on my heel. “You scared the-oh my God! What happened?! What’s wrong?!” I shout, holding my hands over my mouth while I take in the horror slashed along his face and neck.
I don’t even see the blood splatters at first. My stare goes straight to the deep gashes running from the bottom of his eye to his jaw. They’re crusted over with dried blood, but the welts are still angry. Gently, I drag my fingers along his wounds, wincing as they pulse and throb against my skin.
The lacerations aren’t the only injuries. His entire face is swollen and stiff, possibly on the verge of bruising, but I can’t tell under all the redness. It’s then that I notice the blood. I don’t know how I missed it. It’s dotted all across his face.
“Theodore…”
“It was an accident.”
“What was?” I whisper, feeling fear wrack through my body.
He doesn’t answer me. He simply walks away. Cemented to the kitchen floor, I watch his back retreat. Up the stairs he goes, silent as a mouse in a cold and empty house. Theodore doesn’t call for me to trail behind, doesn’t even turn my way. He just keeps walking, impassive if I follow or not.
Soon enough, I hear his footfalls stop. There’s no bed creak or chair scraping along the floor, just a foreboding stillness that gets my feet moving.
I’m halfway up the steps when I see her lying on the floor. Confusion is all I feel before clarity sets in. But, it isn’t confusion at all. It’s denial.This isn’t real, what I’m seeing.That’s not blood pooling underneath her or clumps of flesh splattered on the hardwood floors. Beth is just sleeping, a very,very, dead sleep.
“She just wouldn’t stop.”
Flicking my gaze up, I lock onto his dead, empty stare. There’s that word again, dead. Dead. Dead.Dead.
Beth is dead.
Beth is dead.
Beth. Is. Dead.
It’s completely inappropriate, but I laugh, a booming hysterical cackle that splits everything inside me open. It’s not funny, none of this is, but if I don’t laugh, I know I may cry, and I refuse to do that for a cunt like Beth.
There’s no doubt in my mind that she pushed him to the brink of sanity. You could only do that so many times before that person decides to fall over the edge.
Looking at her lifeless body, I don’t think Theodore fell. Instead, he flung himself over that cliff, and he took his abuser with him.
But this changes nothing, I know that. The police won’t care what kind of person Beth was, or that she tormented and abused him daily for multiple years. They’ll look at her and then at him and decide who the monster is. Who Theodore is as a man won’t matter. His trauma? Inconsequential.
A man could never be a victim in the eyes of the law, and in the court of public opinion? He’ll never be anything but a murderer.
I won’t let that happen to him. I won’t let him suffer any more because of this woman. She’s dead and gone, and everyone’s life is fucking better because of it. Beth Ellis was a snake in the fucking grass, a poisonous leech that was stripping his life away from him day by day. I saved him from that, and I’ll save him from this too.
