Kill Game (The Devious Games Duet 1)

When I reacted by telling him he needed psychiatric help, he tackled me to the bed and held me for hours, pleading with me to love him, pleading with me to keep my promises, swearing he’d never ever hurt me.

I withdrew into myself and tried to figure out how to handle things. What to do next.

A week later, he went off on a random tangent while watching an old mobster movie about knowing people in the mafia from his old neighborhood who could kill someone without leaving a trace. Who could systematically destroy peoples’ livelihoods and lives.

The big fight a couple months ago when I snapped, telling him to go when he was screaming in my face, that was the last big one. He was losing it on me, in hysterics over the smell of our fabric softener giving him a headache, telling me that he told me a hundred times not to buy that one when he’d never complained about it even once, me crying out that enough was enough - I couldn’t take it anymore, telling him that he needed to go on medication for his mood swings, to leave me alone before he made me go crazy, too.

His reaction was to punch the wall beside my face and destroy something precious to me, the last gift I received from my deceased grandmother. When he destroyed that pretty antique china doll, it burnt what little feelings I had left for Ray to ash.

She gave me it for my twelfth birthday, the pretty doll in the purple dress. Purple for my name. I treasured it.

Seeing it broken on the floor, the doll’s face smashed, was a turning point, a twisting one. When he smashed it in a fit of rage and looked me right in the eye I demanded, “Go.”

He refused, so I tried to go. My world was rocked, and not in a good way, when my back was slammed into a wall, put there by his hand circling my throat. He told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t leaving.

“You made promises to me and you’re gonna keep ‘em. You leaving me, Vi? Only happens if I’m a rotting corpse. Or if you are.”

He then stared at me for ten seconds without blinking.

I didn’t look away. I didn’t cower. I looked at him with hate. I know I did.

His face changed. It crumbled.

“I’d never hit you, baby. Never. Never.” He cried into my hair.

I shriveled into myself.

“Vi, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such an asshole. I don’t deserve you. I’ll get help. I promise. I promise I’ll get help fighting my demons. I promise, promise, promise.”

I stared at the broken china doll on the floor and while my eyes were locked on it he begged me to mean more to him than an object. I said nothing. It was too late.

I don’t think I’ve come back out of the shrivel. It’s been a couple months.

Three days later, he was tired of my ‘attitude’; he was angry I hadn’t snapped out of it yet.

“It’s because you threatened me that I acted like that. Don’t ever threaten me, Violet. You know that whole thing is on you.”

I didn’t threaten to leave, I told him to go and then I headed for the door myself and was stopped.

I didn’t bother to correct him; I had nothing more to say.

A few days after that, he leaned over me late at night, reeking of beer while I pretended to sleep and said, “Should I have knocked some sense into you instead of the wall? You act like I did. Should I do it next time, since I’m being treated like I did, anyway? Should I try to hurt you the way you keep hurting me?”

I did not reply.

He hasn’t gotten help. Though, even if he did, I know I’m done.

Instead of making a run for it as soon as his back was turned, I retreated even farther into myself, because… because why? I’ve asked myself that question repeatedly.

Do I feel trapped? Am I embarrassed about what I’ve allowed to happen? Am I just afraid of how ugly it’ll get to split with him? Of the things he might do to get revenge?

Am I simply broken, like my little china doll?

I’ve become like an inmate, trying to keep my head down. Just doing my time. But the ‘just doing my time’ mindset really isn’t a well-thought-out plan because I have no inkling of what my release date is. I should tuck enough money away to make an escape but there’s never any extra. Not enough, anyway. He has taken control over my money and he overspends. I have a hundred dollars in the bottom of my tea canister that I saved four months ago; that’s it.

I don’t know how my life became this; I feel just… hopeless.