𝐂𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌

𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄

Maybe if you stop fighting, they'll win.

It's a little frustrating. No, it's very frustrating. The monster will get her, have her cornered and three seconds from a permanent K.O., and something in her brain just turns on and she wins.

She fucking wins.

She's low on pills.

Katherine taps the bottle on the countertop, staring at the little white pill just beside it. Sleep sounds nice...but they don't work anymore...maybe this one will win.

Katherine crushes the pill underneath her bottle, sweeps it up onto her wet finger, and sticks it under her tongue. Washes it down with tap water, falls into bed.

And waits.

When she opens her eyes again, it's dark in the room. Totally. Her back aches...she hasn't moved.

Katherine sits up on her elbows, nice and slow. Her head throbs. Her hands are still.

She closes her eyes, sighing. Her mind is fuzzy.

This is peaceful.

She turns over onto her stomach, curls over her knees, and stretches her back. The sheets don't smell, she doesn't think.

Sunglasses stay on in the diner. She almost falls asleep waiting for her food.

"Are you all right?"

Katherine opens her eyes, sitting in the corner of the booth with her arms crossed. Her waitress, Marion, hovers at the edge of the table with a frown everywhere on her face. She's around Katherine's age, with big brown eyes and glossy brown hair. Katherine's plate of breakfast is gripped tight between her fingers.

Marion must be asking because of the bruising on Katherine's body.

"Fell down some stairs," Katherine gruffly answers. Marion doesn't look convinced. She really did fall down some stairs last night. She won again.

Her ribs, still aggravated from the night of Charlie's murder, just keep...taking it. Her pills take the bite out of breathing, though...it seems to be wearing off now. "Really. I'm okay."

Marion sets Katherine's plate down, lingers for a moment, and moves back behind the counter. Katherine feels her watchdog eyes on her the whole time she eats. Waiting to see who will come through the door to sit with her.

Marion must be a really good friend.

Pictures were taken before they cut Katherine out of the chair. Their plastic-covered shoes went as far away from the blood as they could to get to her. Swabs and swabs and swabs of blood. Can we get a saliva swab? Open your mouth. And there was nothing to hide, so she did.

Her house was destroyed...something she couldn't see from the floor. Her old records were dumped onto the floor, and her wedding album was still on the turntable. When the police showed up, Right Here Waiting for You was playing. An officer who didn't realize what the situation was made a comment about how sick the spouse was and how easy it was going to be to send her to prison for the rest of her life.

Katherine got wind that officer had been placed on indefinite leave.

Before they put her in the ambulance, they took pictures of her again. Of the rope fibers embedded into her flesh—because her wrists weren't just raw, they had been cut by her thrashing—of the wounds on her face, of her hands, which were relatively unharmed.

They steri-stripped the wounds closed. Katherine watched the whole time, because the alternative is looking in the face of her guarding officer. Ribs 7-9 were broken, 10-12 were bruised, lining up with her bat. There was even an imprint on her skin where he struck.

She wasn't handcuffed as she was escorted to the squad car. She was photographed again at the station, sat in an interview room for a little while. She stared at her bottle of water and peanut butter crackers for a long time before she took a drink.

What happened?

They let a woman talk to Katherine. It didn't matter who she talked to, though, because she had nothing to lie about. There were no monsters she had to explain away.

She was brushing her teeth and asked Charlie to put on a movie. When she came out of her bedroom, she was attacked. When she woke up, they were in chairs. They kept asking about a book. They killed Charlie.

No one from the station has called her since before the wake. Maybe they decided the wife being found tied up and beaten herself kind of eliminated her from the short list of suspects...and now they had none. But Haley is a small town...no one had anything against Charlie. He was their golden boy, especially after his car accident. Who would do this to him if not his wife? His troubled, tormented, young wife who found out marriage isn't what she thought it would be, and instead of divorce, murder was the only way out. A way to garner sympathy, to avoid the whispers that turned in the mill on Main.

Katherine runs her fingers over the pink flesh on her left wrist. What's left of her rope burn...maybe it'll stay there forever.