I’m writing this because I don’t have much time left, and I want people to know the truth, while I still have the chance to tell it.
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Right now, I’m locked in the attic in an old farmhouse.
I’ve been stuck here in this house for hours, and now the laptop is slowly dying.
I want to go and get the charger, but I know I can’t risk it.
People, an angry, raging mob, surround the place, screaming threats and demands to me, ordering me to come out.
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They tell me to come out or they’ll shoot. They tell me to come out and they’ll shoot.
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They think I’m a killer. They think I’m evil.
They hate me, for what they think I’ve done.
They want me dead, no matter what.
And no matter what, the only thing I know with certainty, I won’t be leaving this property unless it’s in a body bag.
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I am crying so hard my eyes are blurry and it’s really hard to see what I’m typing, but I’ll try my best to get it all down.
I want others to know, that what’s about to become some poorly written news..
It’s not what it looks like. I’m not killer, no matter what they try and say.
Once upon a time, really not that long ago, I was just a normal person.
I was just like you. And then I made a mistake.
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When I finally got home I was frozen and damp, chilled to the bone from the winter storm outside.
I went to have a shower, turning the water on while I gathered my towel, but as soon as I stepped into the shower, I discovered my room mate had used all the hot water.
Grumpily, even more cold and now dripping wet, I wrapped the towel around myself and sat infront of the oil heater, while it took another half an hour for the feeling to come back in my fingers and toes, and my hair dropped dry all over the floor.
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Maryann, my room mate, came in a little while later, the banging and repeated dropping of her keys while she attempted to unlock the front door, told me she was drunk, before I had even laid eyes on her.
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I braced myself for impact, wondering just what version of Maryann I would get tonight.
The crying drunk, depressed about the failed acting career and the fact she was now a check out chick at the age of 35.
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Or the happy, excited Maryann, who would keep me up all night discussing unachievable dreams, making plans that would be soon forgotten, never to come to fruition.
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Both were equally exhausting, turned me into a babysitter comforting her for the rest of the night until she eventually fell into a restless sleep.
I never really minded that much, but I was just so tired.
All I wanted was an early night.
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Maryann stumbled in, bright red hair flashing in the florescent kitchen light.
Her sequined mini dress shimmered, creating an eriee shadow that danced around her.
She braced her self against the wall, eyes tightly closed, looking as if she would either cry, or vomit.
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It took her a moment to register me, sat infront of the heater on our rug less hardwood floor.
She peered at me through bloodshot eyes, looking at me as if I was a stranger in my our own home.
“What the hell are you doing?.” she slurred, her voice full of rage. “You shouldn’t be here.”
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I was dumbfounded, confused.
Had I mentioned that I was going out? I tried to recall, but it was doubtful I had.
My social life was severely lacking, and while I had been looking for a job, my searching had never turned into anything. So, I was home the majority of the time.
I’d seen many versions of drunk Maryann over the last few months, but I’d never seen an upset, accusory one.
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“You shouldn’t be here.” she repeated, angrier, more frustrated.
Her eyes flashed with rage as she leered towards me, pointing her finger hard aginst my chest as she got close enough for me to smell the sourness of her breath.
Her breath stank, like the vile, potent air of poison and I needed to get away from it so I could breath.
I backed away instinctively, and she followed, her hand not quite quick enough to hold on to my chest as I ducked out of her reach.
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It was as if time was in slow motion when I watched her fall.
I saw her eyes, as the recognition of the situation happened, the way her outstretched arm tried to get a grip of the coffee table she was headed towards.
I saw her hand miss, flying through the air just centimeters away from the table, and then watched as her wrist crumpled up against the floor, as she landed.
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The sounded she made when her forehead connected with the corner of the glass coffee table, brought bile to my mouth. I rectched, emptying my stomach where I stood.
I had never known that a sound could be physically sickening, or that the simple sound of a crunch, would forever bring goosebumps to my skin.
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I stood, frozen, and watched as the blood pooled around Maryann’s head in a gooey red halo.
I whimpered to her, asked if she was okay.
I don’t know why, it was stupid in hindsight.
I hadn’t really thought she would reply in the first place, given the sound, the amount of blood. I just didn’t know what else to do.
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The shrill sound of a phone ringing brought me back to my grim reality.
I knew instantly it was her phone, and I wondered what the hell to do. Obviously, I couldn’t answer. But I didn’t want her silence to cause concern for worry, either. Didn’t want it to mean someone may come over and knock, looking for Maryann, wondering why she hadn’t replied or answered her phone.
I needed time, to think.
To work out what the fuck I was going to do.
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I didn’t want to touch Maryann, but I had no choice. Unfortunately, the ringing phone was coming from the back pocket of her jeans, and I needed more than anything in that moment to silence it.
I was surprised she was still warm, but then again, I had no idea how long it would take a body to go cold.
I had only watched snippets of CSI here and there, and for the first time ever wishing I had been a bit more of a true crime fan.
I wondered briefly if I was leaving DNA, but I couldn’t get my thoughts coherent enough to process that question while that shrill ringing was still sounding.
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I looked at the missed calls list, my hands trembling so much I was worried I might drop the phone.
Rici.
I had no idea who that was, I strained my memory for Maryann mentioning them in any of our previous conversations, but I drew a blank.
While I was holding the phone, lost in thought, a text message chimed through.
It was from the same number who had been calling, this Rici.
“Enough, stop ignoring me. I’m sorry, k? Call me back please. Love you, Mare.”
I knew first hand that Maryann could be pretty stubborn.
I’d seen the way she held grudges, even over the most trivial of things.
I turned her phone off, placing it into my own pocket. I didn’t think it would be too unlike the real Maryann, to not reply until she was good and ready.
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The night passed in a blur.
I spent the most time not looking at Maryann, at the tuft of red hair that was poking out of the plastic shower curtain I had ripped off.
I had managed to drag into the shower curtain I had ripped down.
After practically exerting all of my physical energy moving and wrapping her up, I was spent.
I cleaned as best I could, scrubbing and wiping, replacing dirty water with clean.
At that particular moment, I was grateful for our lack of proper furniture, no rugs to have to attempt to rid of unwanted stains.
Blood was easier to mop on hard floors.
It was there one minute, a big, sticky mess of red. And the next moment, it was gone, wiped clean, like it had never even been there at all.
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I slept fitfully, dreaming of Maryann waking up, wriggling her way out of the curtain she was wrapped in, coming to find me and seek revenge.
“I’m sorry!” dream me screamed loudly, but it didn’t matter one bit.
Dream Maryann ignored my cries and advanced towards me, her body rotting and the white of her skull visible, peeking through her face.
I was terrified, rooted to the spot in a primal fear, unable to move, though I wanted nothing more than to escape.
Luckily, I woke up in a cold sweat, right before she got the chance to get to me.
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When I woke up properly, it was mid day.
I’d never been much of a sleeper, so I was shocked I had managed to stay asleep so long.
Memories of the night before came back in a hot, uncomfortable rush, and without another moment, I tiptoed to the bathroom with bated breath.
I had to know.. And know, I did.
It was real, what had happened.
Maryann lay in the tub, wrapped in the shower curtain, the tuft of her red hair still visible from the top.
“I’m sorry.” I say softly, and she doesn’t reply, of course.
I look at her for a few more minutes then I leave the bathroom and go outside.
I breathe in the fresh air, and in the early afternoon sunlight, I step onto the grass and I make my way to the small garden shed outside.
I wonder if she has any power tools laying around.
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It wasn’t nice, what had to happen next, so I won’t go into details.
Suffice to say that after a few YouTube videos of butchers hard at work, I was pretty prepared with what I’d need to do, and how it needed to be done.
I certainly wasn’t prepared for the nausea that came.
I spent more time vomiting, than I did actually.. working.
I wasn’t really prepared for quite how long it was going to take, or the mess that would occur, either.
And another thing I want to make clear.. I didn’t enjoy it. It was awful, horrendous.
It was just something that had to be done.
I spent the rest of my evening cleaning, the smell of bleech gave me an absolute pounding headache, so when my work was done, I found a black pair of leggings and a black parka, ready to change into later.
I had a long nap, setting my alarm for 10pm.
It was going to be easier to go out unnoticed later at night.
When it was dark people seemed to keep to themselves more, plus it would be harder to make out the black garbage bags I would be carrying.
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After saying goodbye to Maryann, and reading her a little poem I’d written as I dropped her off, I headed home and tried to go back to sleep.
It was impossible, I was agitated, full of nervous energy. I paced until I heard the truck breaks, the electric roar of their claw moving.
I watched out the window, steaming coffee in hand, as the industrial bins in the furniture warehouse a few blocks away were emptied.
I wished Maryann a final goodbye, and closed the blinds.
It was a new day, and I had a lot of work to do.
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Maryann’s room was messy.
Plates with old food and cigarette butts were scattered around on most surface I could see.
The room stunk like stale beer, off food.
Clothes covered the floor, while there were discarded bras hung over lamp shades and lacy undies - which I highly doubted were clean - were piled up high in the corner.
Maryann didn’t have much in the way of personal effects.
It was my first time being inside her bedroom, and I was surprised by the lack of anything personal that wasn’t clothing.
There were no posters or artwork, no photos with family, or friends.
I knew for a fact that Maryann had an array of friendships, she was always going out, always busy with being social.
I srounged through her chest of draws, more clothing, and I felt almost ready to give up.
And then I got lucky.
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Most of us have that place where we keep all our most important documents.
Birth certificate, health insurance, tax details, house contents policy. You get the picture.
Sometimes, depending on what kind of person you are, it was kept together, in a shoebox in the cupboard maybe, or a suit case under the bed.
In Maryann’s, in my case, it was in a chest or draws, in a large white envelope.
I wasnt expecting much, if I’m going to be honest.
So when I pulled out a house deed from the envelope, I was shocked.
There’s no way that I would have ever thought that Maryann could have owned a house, let alone a home on a large property, but here it was, written in black and white.
It didn’t make sense.
She was living in this shitty, 2 bedroom unit with me, when she could be in her own place?
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The next interesting thing I found, was the car insurance.
I’d never known Maryann had a car.
She walked everywhere, catching taxis at night if she was too drunk to stumble home. I didn’t even know she could drive.
A grey toyota sedan.
There was one parked in the share parking lot, and I should know. It had been there since I’d moved in, I saw it, walked past it, every day when I left or came back home.
I’d always assumed it belonged to one of the other unit blocks on the surrounding streets.
Maryann had dropped her keyring on the table she had gotten home drunk, and they were still there when I went looking.
I noticed the other keys then.
Four keys in total.
3 keys that did not belong to our house.
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Maryann was a bottle redhead, and she was nothing if not loyal to her hair.
She maintained it to a point of obsession, and I was grateful for that when I saw the box of dye in the bathroom cupboard.
Once i had a few outfits picked out (and washed clean!) from her bedroom floor, I set to work on dying my hair.
It had been an age since I’d changed my appearance and it felt liberating in a way, seeing the difference in how I looked.
I pulled out Maryann’s drivers license, held it up to the bathroom mirror, to compare our faces.
With my new hair colour, it was pretty uncanny. I never realised how similar we had looked, before all this.
I just needed to add a bit of make up, some bright red lippy, and we could basically pass as the same person.
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The silver sedan in the lot was her car, of course. It started on the first go.
One of the mystery keys was then accounted for.
I put the address that was on the house deed into my phone maps, and I drove off.
I didn’t have a plan, per se. I just needed to get out of that house.
After the last few days, it would be good to clear my head a bit.
As I sped down the highway, I practiced introducing myself, saying my new name.
I knew it would take a while to get used to, I wanted to get it perfect before I needed to put it into use.
“Oh hello there, I’m Maryann.”
“I’m Maryann, it sure is nice to meet you. “
It took the whole drive, but by the time my directions announced my arrival at my destination, the words flew off my tounge fluently, as if that’s how I had always, and only ever, introduced myself.
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The property, and the house was stunning. Green paddocks. A long, luxurious tree lined driveway.
The house wasn’t huge, it was a 2 story cottage style ranch, but while it wasn’t overly big in size, even from the outside looking in, it seemed big on character.
I knocked, and no one answered which I kind of expected, and definitely hoped for.
I’d had no idea what I would have said, of course, had someone answered. But I was lucky, I guess.
Or so I thought at the time. As I said before, hindsight.. It’s a funny thing.
Perhaps, looking back.. If there had been someone else here.. Someone else to verify my true identity, well I probably wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.
But I can’t dwell on that stuff.
I can hear wood splintering. It sounds as if they’re breaking down the door.
I’m scared.
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When I first got here, I checked the place out. It was pretty empty. Old furniture, a handful of ancient boardgames.
I looked around for anything that the keys would fit into, but found nothing.
Not until I stumbled across the basement door.
It unlocked easily, the sqeak of the door opening echoing down the stairs, through a hollow room.
I listened,.waited. I half expected to hear mice scurrying around, but I heard nothing.
I tried the light switch at the top of the staircase, but nothing happened.
It wasn’t until later I noticed the bulb had been removed.
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I didn’t have a torch, so I just used my phone light.
The basement was just as boring as the rest of the house. Old. Dingy.
I was making my way back to staircase when my light flashed over something shiny.
Thinking it could be something useful, or if I’m totally honest, something expensive, I slowly guided my light to find it again.
My light came to rest on the shiny again, and I will say it took me longer than I care to admit, to work out what exactly I was staring at.
It was like something out of a horror movie, melted skin dropping over skeletal remains.
It’s a Halloween decoration, I told myself, breaking out into a nervous laugh.
But then I saw the hand cuffs, the metal chain that held them to the wall.
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“What the fucking fuck?” I was looking at a dead body.
I was looking at a dead body, that was.. Or had been, at least, tied and chained to the basement wall.
They had obviously been here for sometime, they were quite decomposed.
From looking at its face, I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, it’s age, nothing important at all.
The clothes they wore were barely still intact, navy pants thick with grime, and what I’m assuming had once been a blue button up shirt, was nothing more than a dirty, worn out rag now.
I stumbled back upstairs, slamming and locking the basement door behind me.
I had left one house of horrors, and unknowingly, unwillingly, walked right into another one.
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In Maryann’s bedroom, things made more sense.
She may have not added her personal touch to her room in the home we shared together, but here, in this farmhouse.. She was everywhere.
A marriage certificate was framed, hanging nestled amongst the tonne of photos on the bedroom wall.
Most of the photos were framed as well, and hung proudly on display, others, seemingly just as loved, stuck to the wall papered walls with Blu tac.
Smiling faces, twinkling eyes.
In one photo I saw it, I saw them.
I saw the same navy pants and blue button up shirt, they were being worn by a man with a thin brown mustache and black framed glasses.
He had his arm around Maryann, and they were both smiling broadly for the camera.
They looked happy.
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I’m eating a tin of cold beans when I heard the car pull up.
I guess someone must of called the cops. Probably a nosy neighbor, who saw me drive in earlier.
Country people were like that. Always sticking their noses into other people’s business.
I finished my spoonful of the cold beans and slinked over to the window, where I was able to get a view of the front yard, without being seen.
Indeed the police were here. I watched a middle age man get out of his car.
He gave the house a once over, a solemn expression on his face as his did so.
And then his expression turned sinister.
His eyes lit up, but it wasn’t with excitement.
“Oh Maryann,” his voice boomed in sing song, and I felt my blood run cold. Something was not right.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are. Let’s have a chat, just you and I. Before the others get here. I think you owe me that at least.”
If I glanced out the drive, I could see at least another 4 cars coming down the road.
They weren’t patrol cars, though.
The cars are instead a mixture of pick up trucks, utes and sedans.
Not for the first time tonight, I start to wonder just what the hell Maryann had been up to.
First the man, I was assuming her husband, laying dead and restrained in the basement, the key miraculously on her keyring.
I couldn’t work out what to make of that.
Maybe it was better I didn’t.
And it seemed as if she had a personal vendetta with some towns folk, including a cop, as well.
I started to think i had made a mistake.
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Soon there was more people milling around outside than I could count on two hands.
They had been banging on the door, on the windows. Rocks being thrown, glass smashing.
They screamed at me, telling me, in vivid detail, what would happen to me once I ended up in jail, if I even made it past them in the first place.
I sat in horrified silence, listening as they described how I, but actually Maryann, had killed two of their beloved children in a hit and run.
“Drunk and dumb, fucking slut!” one woman’s voice roared, earning a cheer from the rest of the crowd.
They’re getting closer, so I take the laptop and I run.
The basement feels safe, safer, for now.
I can hear wood splintering, heavy footsteps coming closer and closer.
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I know I don’t have much time left, I just hope this uploads before the laptop goes flat.
I can’t stand people to not know the truth.
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I guess you might be wondering, why I didn’t call the police straight up when Maryann fell and banged her head?
It was all an accident, after all.
It would have been the easy thing to do, right?
Of course.
The thing was, Maryann had kicked me out 2 weeks earlier.
She was hot headed, and she held grudges, I knew this firsthand because I had been on the receiving end of it.
We got into a fight over something small, and it esculated into something huge.
I wondered if that’s what happened to her husband, if they’d had a fight and that’s why he was decomposing downstairs in the basement as I typed.
I wasn’t exactly breaking and entering, when she came home that evening and caught me drying off by the oil heater.
I mean, I still had a key.
She had asked for it back a few times, but I’d never gotten round to it.
And really, it was so cold, so wet out.
I hadn’t any luck finding a new place to stay. No chance of scoring a rental on my own, either, not in this market.
Maryann usually went out most nights, coming home late and drunk out of her mind.
I thought it would’ve all been okay.
I wasn’t expecting her to come home.. And she wasn’t expecting me to be there, either.
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As for me.. I guess I just wanted to start a fresh.
I saw an opportunity present itself, an opportunity to start over and be someone else, and I took it.
Becoming Maryann, meant I was free.
Even if it was just for a moment, one little, wild ride.
Posting with 8% batter life left, it’s time for me to go.
No point waiting, I’m going to talk to them, explain I’m not who they think I am.
They either believe me, believe my story, this story, or they don’t.
Thanks for listening to what may very well be my last words, Reddit.
If I make it out of here, I’ll be sure to update.
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