I rest my hand on my chin. He has a valid point. I would know since I just used it and all.
“It was a good speech, though.”
“Thanks,” I mumble. “This is all very stressful. There’s a big old tub upstairs that takes forever to fill. Want to take a bath with me?”
“I would love to take a bath with you.”
Come morning, there was no more police car. Ryan had been sighted seven hours away outside of Toronto. I can’t remember him ever saying he had any connection to the city. The urge to get as far away as possible might solely be what’s dictating his movements. Who knows?
He didn’t care about me after all. What a fucking relief. Noah went to work, and things went back to normal. Or my personal version of the everyday mundane. One where a cop car cruises past a couple of times a day and my neighbors wonder if I’m ahomicidal axe murderer or something. But every neighborhood has that one person they all talk about.
I make myself an extra strong cup of coffee after a crappy night’s sleep. Tree limbs brushing against the side of the house was him climbing up the stairs. The wind rattling a window was him picking the lock. And on and on it went all night long.
I thought of going out and spending some quality time with my punching bag. Though the idea of Noah waking to find me missing put a stop to that. And I wasn’t going to wake him to tell him when it’d taken him so long to settle. At around four in the morning, I finally fell asleep. Then being roused by the alarm just a few hours later well and truly sucked.
Me: I am texting you from the great beyond.
Hana: Dammit. He got you, huh?
Me: Got me good. I am so dead.
Hana: Bummer.
Muriel: I don’t know how you two can joke about it.
Me: It’s either that or scream and cry.
Hana: Muriel has been stress baking.
Muriel: I have rhubarb pie, maple cinnamon rolls, and some fudge that’s setting.
Me: We need to get together and fall into a sugar coma. This is of the utmost importance.
Hana: Wonder what he was doing in Toronto.
Muriel: Putting as much distance between here and himself as possible.
Me: Yeah. That’s my guess too.
Hana: Has anyone heard anything about the corrections officer?
Muriel: Nothing yet.
Me: I have a bad feeling.
Hana: I feel for her husband.
Muriel: Yes.
Me: Guess we just wait and see.
Normal life is sitting on my ass and doing hours of data entry. I delete any and all emails requesting a comment or asking for an interview. Including the one from a publisher asking me to write a book about my experiences. I don’t know how to write a book. What a joke. Though I guess they would pair me with a ghostwriter or something.
There are already books out there by people like me. I’m not sure I have anything interesting to add to the conversation. And surviving my ex seems too raw right now. What with the threat of him hanging over my head so recently. However, the presence of people like him is not necessarily something that will be absent from society anytime soon.
There were almost three hundred known serial killers active in the country during the seventies. Those figures dropped significantly in the new century for a wide array of reasons. Such as advances in forensic science, incarceration rates, surveillance cameras, digital tracking, and so on. But there are still some out there.
I want to be more than a survivor or a victim. Though I do kind of wonder what it would be like to meet people like me. Ones who have gone through some wild shit and come out the other side. But that idea leads to leaving the house and meetingpeople and trying to make friends, which I am awful at. Just awful.
