The Rabbit
I hear William coming down the stairs like FEE FI FO FUM and realize I’ve played this all wrong. I wanted to give Sam Vetiver
a chance to look at the manuscripts and connect the dots and then text her: I’m here, I’m on your side, pretend you don’t know and after the storm we’ll go to the police. Because I didn’t want her to scream and alert William. Because if I snuck up behind her without warning, she would. And because
if she didn’t see the evidence first with her own eyes, she wouldn’t believe me. That was the mistake I made before. With
all the other women. I provided no proof.
I did try to warn them. I tried so many times. As soon as I figured out what William had done to Becky, I went to the police.
I took You Never Said Goodbye to my local precinct and slapped it down on a detective’s desk and said, Hey, this guy put the woo on my friend and stole her book and killed her and wrote it himself.
And they said, Do you have evidence? and I said, Maybe?
I’ll try to get more, but meanwhile she told me the story and now here it is and she’s dead, you should at least look
into it, and they said, Okay, we’ll check it out, and anyone who’s ever watched TV knew this was a kiss-off and sure enough, as I left, I heard one detective say, That one’s been bingeing too much CSI.
I went back to the Harrington group on social and asked if anyone else had known about Becky’s book, but of course nobody had, since they hadn’t been friends with her until after she was dead.
She was distant from her family and had no sibs, which I later figured out was a qualifier for William’s women.
And she’d been single until William put a ring on it.
I had no idea where she might have written down any of her ideas, if she did.
There was no proof. I’d hit a dead end, and now I knew why they called it that.
So I started following William and his darlings. I had to quit my job to do it and find another one closer to his house, and
all my disposable income, such as it was, went to keeping on his tail. But I couldn’t stand the thought he’d treat other women
the way he’d treated me, except so, so much worse. Plus I had a debt to pay, to Becky. I’d had such a narrow escape. The only
reason I was alive was that I’d said, in William’s bedroom, that I was writing a thriller when he wanted a romance. Like Becky
was writing. Otherwise I’d be dead too.
If the cops wouldn’t listen to me, I figured, maybe William’s targets would.
Nope. So much for the literary sisterhood. Not one of these chicks had heard of hos before bros. It was partly because William
was culling the most isolated women from the herd so there’d be fewer family members or friends to get suspicious, and that
meant they clung to him all the harder. I got it, of course. If I hadn’t known better, if I hadn’t known William Corwyn and
he’d descended the mountain into my loneliness and said You don’t have to be alone anymore, my darling, I’m here! I’d have done anything to stay in the dream too.
Plus nobody believes a woman who looks like me.
Get away from me, you crazy bitch, was what the Medusa woman said. And Get your own man and Fuck off, and Stop bothering me, I called the cops—that was the sad droopy one, Kaelynn, who then surprised me by flipping me the bird before she scurried away. The Irish woman
had some fire, she tried to run me over with her car. Medusa also threw a drink on me and the pirate woman kickboxed me in
the stomach. And I didn’t even get a chance to warn this last one with all the cats because I was too distracted by Sam Vetiver.
Fail fail fail fail fail, and every time I failed another woman died, and if I had broken the promise to myself, which was I’LL NEVER LET HIM HURT ANOTHER WOMAN THE WAY HE HURT ME, I’d also made a vow after finding out about poor dead Becky that I’d never let William hurt anyone even worse, steal their stories and take their lives.
The ultimate appropriation.
And I’ve already broken that promise four f*cking times.
Not this time. Sam Vetiver is in the study and William’s coming and he won’t even have to use his gun, which is empty because
like so much else about William it’s just for show, but none of the women ever suspected that. Why would you? Somebody holds
a gun on you, you don’t say Hey, sir, would you mind proving that’s loaded? They just did what he told them to, each woman wrote her suicide note before he fed her pills, like Marta and Becky, or locked
her in a running car, like Eleni, or pushed her off a roof, like Kaelynn, or gave her pills and slit her wrists, like Cyndi. But it’ll be much easier with Sam Vetiver because all he’ll have to do is knock her out and
haul her out into the snow, and her death will look natural. Like, maybe, Pen’s.
I’m so scared. I’m shaking all over. My muscles have completely vapor-locked. I can’t move. But if I don’t stop him, he’ll
kill Sam just like he did the rest. I can’t let that happen. I’ve worked all these years for this moment. I made a vow. So
I count myself down: “Three . . . two . . .” and on one! I launch myself across the basement floor.