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I stayed still. A broken doll just praying for the suffering to be over with.
A loud knock at the door stopped him as his manhood poised at my entrance. The banging sounded again, louder and more urgent. Mr. Jenkins huffed and gritted his teeth. He pushed my head harder against the wooden floor as he used it to get up.
“Don’t move. I’ll be back,” he snapped as he left the room.
I didn’t move. I listened.
I heard raised voices, and then he was storming up the stairs again.
Just stay still. It will be over soon.
The door swung open, but he didn’t touch me. He collected his shoes, coat, and belt, then said, “I’ll be back later, and we’ll continue where we left off.”
There was a click after the door closed. He’d locked me in.
I dozed for a while, face down on the floor, my back exposed, bleeding, and raw. The pain and the stress of it all required my body to have more sleep, but I couldn’t completely let my guard down knowing I wasn’t safe. Any moment, that monster, my husband, would come back and ruin me.
As the sun set outside and cast long shadows in the bedroom, I decided it was time to move. If I were going to suffer, I would rather suffer comfortably, or as comfortably as one can suffer, in bed.
I got up on my hands and knees, my back throbbing and my arms shaking with the effort, and something caught my eye. The crack I’d been staring at was twice as big as the other gaps in the wooden floor, and through it, I could see something glinting as the setting sun hit it.
A hidden compartment in the floor?
Adrenaline numbed me as I reached under the bed, pulling myself toward the square cut in the wood. It jigged like a poorly fitting lid on a box, and I lifted it up to find a book, an envelope, and a small bottle.
Shuffling back out from under the bed, I pulled myself and my treasures up to sit gingerly on the bedspread.
I opened the envelope to find four pieces of paper inside. They read:
“If you are reading this, I’m dead, and you are next. Darren Jenkins is a monster. My diary will document all the ways I know this, and I will leave it for you. Save yourself if you can. If you can’t, add something so the next wife can remember you. And maybe she can be the one to escape. - Jennifer Jenkins.”
“You have something he wants, and so he steals it. But you are not nothing without it. You can still be strong. There was no escape for me, but I pray there is for you. - Violet Jenkins.”
“It may not be now, but soon he will kill me. His frustrations grow. My punishments are daily, and my power diminishes too quickly. I’m going to be expendable, and he probably already has his eye on his next victim. You. - Lucia Jenkins.”
“Break the cycle. Stop your suffering. Drink the bottle and die.”
My shaking hand dropped the note, and I stared at the bottle sitting innocently on the bedside table. The handwriting was a messy scrawl, unlike the other notes with differing ladylike penmanship. I was also the fourth wife.
Who was telling me to take my life? Was this him trying to trick me? Test me? Punish me somehow?
For the next hour, I flicked through the diary of his past three wives until tears saturated the tattered remains of my bloodied dress.
He was evil. Truly evil. They suffered horrors and were only concerned that when they passed, someone else would take their place and suffer, too.
I pulled the pen from the diary’s ribbon and wrote on the back of the fourth note:
I don’t want to suffer as they have. I want to choose my ending, and this is it. I’m a coward, but I leave half for you. Take it. Unless you can make him take it.
Sinking back down to the floor, I placed the envelope full of notes and the diary back in the compartment.
I stared at the bottle in my hand. The liquid looked clear and unassuming. I lifted the small glass stopper and smelled it, but I couldn’t recognize it.
Running a dry tongue over parched lips, I lifted the cool glass to sit poised while my mind went to war.
Am I really going to do this? Take my own life? It’s a sin.
But why should I live only to suffer? God has abandoned me.
