“I want a divorce,” I blurt, the edge in my tone offering more confidence than I feel.
“You’re in shock. It will pass,” he replies almost too fast. Rehearsed.
Leaning forward, he tilts his head, studying me, daring me to defy him.
“No, Willis. This isn’t a fleeting feeling of regret. This is a train hitting me full force. Everything I thought we were, our life, was a lie. You were a lie. I want a divorce, and you will never see me again once I leave here.” I will my voice to stay steady.
He jerks forward, hands reaching but grasping air, the chains preventing him from getting anywhere near his target. I retreat all the same, jumping up, almost tripping over my own feet. Bastard.
The room is suffocating with his demons stuffed inside, trying to leak from his pores, to get loose, to torment, threaten, hunt.
“You love me,” he fumes. The calm from before has vacated the body hosting it. Liquid fury is the only thing left, burning bright in his penetrating eyes. But he can’t move any further toward me—can’t prevent me from speaking my truth, from leaving this place, with him and his sins forever locked inside.
“Loved,” I choke out. “You put a fever inside my bloodstream, I won’t lie, and I couldn’t fight it. The burn was too strong. You overwhelmed me, siphoned every ounce of my energy and replaced it until all that was left was you. But no more.”
“Don’t do this. You’re carrying my baby,” he bellows, trying to stand, but hunching over the table, his bound wrists not giving him enough leverage.
“No!” I bark, finding the courage to pour all my anger into my reply. He can’t hurt me—can’t touch us. He’s reduced to a caged animal because that’s what he is.
“I’m carrying my baby, and they will never know you.” I reach inside my pocket and pull out a photo he took of me with a hand on the growing baby bump we created in the lie that was our marriage. With a shake of my head and a tear slipping loose from my eye, I flick my wrist forward, throwing the image onto the table.
“That will be the only thing you will have of us.”
Scrambling for the picture, he bores his gaze into it before lifting his head to meet mine. The dark pits of his stare send a quake through my body.
“At least tell me what it’s going to be?” he implores.
I study him, his question screaming inside my head.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
“A boy.”
August 9th, 2003
8 years later
I always thought I’d be a good mother. That nothing that had happened in the past would matter the first time I held my child. But Willis set my world on fire, and the flames consumed me from within. I was buried deep in the ashes of my broken dreams and couldn’t find my way out.
Every time I look into my child’s eyes, Willis looks back at me.
Reminding me. Punishing me. Hurting me.
Eight years have passed, and the pain is just as raw now as it was the day I learned who Willis truly was. I’m frozen in time.
No matter how much I wish my baby could save me, mend me, they only hardened me.
The life given to me by a monster was innocent, but also a constant reminder of all I lost. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Willis had taken all my love and discarded it in blood and violence, leaving me in ruins with a life inside me that fed from the rotten core that was now my soul.
I tried so hard to be a good mom, did everything I was supposed to. I fled, I kept us safe, but deep down, I knew this day would come.
I would never escape him.
You can’t outrun fate.
Willis was always going to be my undoing. My end. My fate.
I squeeze the telephone receiver to my ear, my body numb, frozen to the spot.
“Mrs. Langford, did you hear what I said?” Detective Hernandez asks.
I haven’t heard his voice in such a long time, but recognize it immediately. My blood chills at his use of my former name. I thought he was going to tell me Willis was dead. You hear about prison riots and killings all the time. Mixed emotions collide inside me. Did I wish him dead? I want to tell him Mrs. Langford isn’t my name anymore, but it’s irrelevant. To him, I will always be the wife of the Hollywell Slayer.
“Have you been watching the news?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. I don’t watch the news. I have enough horror stories in my head.
“A prison bus transferring thirteen convicts to the new prison in Ironport was hit by a truck yesterday. Three inmates escaped.”
Thud.
“And?”
Silence…
“Willis was among them.”
Thud.
“He doesn’t know where I am,” I say the words, assuring myself more than for his benefit.
“All the same, a patrol car is going to be stopping by over the next few days until we apprehend him.”
“How could this happen?” I whisper. My fingers squeeze the receiver, a knot twisting my stomach.
“It shouldn’t have, I’m sorry, and I assure you we’re doing everything we can to find him.”
Will you find him before he finds another victim?
“Mrs. Langford?”
That’s not my name.
“I have to go, bye, Detective.”
“Viv, who was that?” Kathy asks, following me over to the window where I watch our children racing around the yard.
Kathy is my best friend and neighbor. She lost her husband in a friendly fire training exercise eight months into her pregnancy. We bonded over being single parents, our children only months apart in age. Kathy is a doting parent. It comes naturally to her. She’s warm, attentive, not hardened by evil.
“Viv? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She turns me to face her, her pale green eyes searching.
“Willis is out there,” I tell her, picking up the laundry basket and carrying it outside.
“Your ex-husband? Out where!” she exclaims, following my hurried pace.
“Help me with this?” I ask, handing
