(Domestic abuse TW)
My birthday is on New Year’s Eve. As the date started to creep ever closer, in December I started to take a good look at my life. I worked insane hours at a job I didn’t like and had no chance of promotion at. I lived in the same run-down country house I grew up in instead of moving to the city like I had planned. And I had a boyfriend I had long since fallen out of love with.
I decided to start fresh in the new year. I was going to leave everything in 2023. I started this year with no boyfriend and all his stuff gone. I deep cleaned the house and took fewer shifts at work. For the first time in a while, I felt free.
That feeling only lasted for three weeks. The house I inherited was near the woods. When I was younger, I often played in them but now they had a menacing air. A week after my birthday I started hearing strange sounds echoing through the trees in the dead of night. I knew what kind of wildlife called the forest home. And I also knew none of them would make such odd groaning noises. I foolishly chalked it up to stress. That I hadn’t been hearing what I thought I did. I just went through a huge shift in my life. It was understandable that my mind may be playing tricks on me.
Even if I did take the noises seriously, I don’t know if I could have prevented what happened. I found out the hard way that some men are persistent as hell.
A week ago, I was getting ready for bed. I thought I heard some sort of animal near the shed. Since it was where I kept the trash, I assumed it was a raccoon in the cans again. I went outside to check only to find nothing. I must have left the door unlocked when I went back inside. I didn’t fully check the entire backyard because my hair was wet from a shower, and it was incredibly cold outside.
I walked through the kitchen and heard the sound just before I reached the stairs. Someone had opened the back door. My heart jumped into my throat. My phone was upstairs beside my bed. The idea of running to it came to mind.
I just so happen to have a trusted baseball bat near the stairs. Break-ins by the local teens were common. They stole what they could and didn’t cause too much trouble beyond that. Again, I let myself assume I knew what was going on. I picked up the bat ready to scare off whoever just came inside then call the police with the landline phone in the kitchen.
I carefully tip-toed down the hallway, my grip tight on the bat. I smelled something awful before I reached the kitchen. My hand went to the light switch ready to surprise whoever was standing in the dark.
“Now listen you-” I started but the words died in my throat.
When I turned on the light, I saw something impossible. My now ex-boyfriend stood in the middle of the room. He shouldn’t be here. Not because I dumped him, but because he should have been still buried somewhere deep in the woods.
His body had barely started to rot. I suppose it was because he had been buried in cold dirt that took me forever to dig up. His skin was grey and filthy. His clothing was ripped and covered with dirt. Once brown eyes had turned milky. I wanted to be brave, but I couldn’t.
I screamed, dropping my only weapon. I felt so stupid letting my body react the way it did. I turned to run for the front door but somehow, he caught up to me. His dead limbs moved in a stiff and jerky manner. A set of cold hands grabbed my wrists from behind. The tight grip nearly broke bones.
I screamed again knowing it was useless. I lived too far in the country for neighbors to hear. Tears came to my eyes because of fear and pain. I fought hard against him. The smell of death almost overpowering.
We thrashed about getting further away from the front door. My mind worked overtime trying to figure out how the hell he came back. Did I somehow make a mistake and bury him alive? No. He was clearly dead. Then how? Would having an answer to that question really matter? I doubted he crawled out of his grave for a nice chat.
We stumbled close to the top of the basement stairs. I scratched his face with my one free hand. Dead flesh peeled away and yet he didn’t release his grip. I felt him push me closer to the stairs and my stomach dropped.
Everything came rushing back. The memory of our worst argument. I was tired of pulling so many hours at work so he could stay home and do nothing. I rarely stood up for myself. But that day I did. He shouted back saying he had been applying for jobs. And he didn’t know why I cared so much about money when I never seemed to before. I let it slip that we would be a family soon and his face turned white. I knew he wasn’t ready to calmly talk about our future. I left the room to head down to the basement to do laundry. The plan was to go over how our lives would be different in eight months.
The feeling of his hand on my back is still fresh in my mind. I remembered every painful second of rolling down those stairs. The impact of the fall, and the trip to the hospital afterward.
I weakly tried to accuse him of pushing me down the stairs. He said I fell. He refused to let me believe what really happened. I almost let him get away with what he did.
Then, after I had come home from the hospital, he said the words that decided his fate. He joked that I was going to save so much money by not sending a child to college.
A deep fire started in my stomach. He laughed over what he had done. I could never forgive him.
Turns out it was easy to find something to slip into his food. He was dying for two days. And finally, he was gone on my birthday.
He should have been gone. And now he came back to ruin my life. I heard a dry laugh come out of his dead lips. He was going to finish what he started. He wanted to kill me that day, but I lived then got to him first. It wasn’t fair. How was he able to come back to hurt me again?
And why was I letting him?
A rage replaced my fear. I had let him walk all over me while he was still alive. Like hell, he was going to do it again. I put all my strength into trying to push him off. But his dead weight was stronger. He pushed me forward, but since I was expecting it this time, I caught myself. My ankle painfully twisted on the wooden step as I turned to grab a new weapon that had been gathering dust for years.
I wanted us to go skating, but he never got off his ass to go with me. His pair of skates were hanging on the wall at the top of the basement steps. Thank God, I bought them second-hand without any blade guards.
I grabbed one and brought it down on his face. The blade wasn’t as sharp as I had hoped. It still did some damage. To be honest, I don’t remember much of the frenzy that happened afterward.
I knocked him to the floor, repeatedly smashing the blade into his face. He tried fighting back. My arms were cut and bruised for two weeks after that night. I beat on his lifeless body until my own gave out.
Finally, I got up, my lungs burning from effort. I considered what to do now. I needed to deal with the body. I was too exhausted to cut him into pieces to ensure he never came back.
I had a different idea. It took a while, but I dragged him into the backyard. I then grabbed the firewood I had saved for the rest of the winter. Despite how out of season a large bonfire was, none of my neighbors noticed the smoke pouring into the sky for the entire night. Or they did and didn’t care.
When dawn came, I gathered the ashes and fragments that hadn’t been burned to scatter deep in the forest. I felt a little bad about spreading a mess around, but it needed to be done. This man killed my child. Not his. Mine. He must have known if I kept the baby, I wouldn’t be able to take care of both of them. He made his choice before I could make mine.
After the dust settled, I washed up and fell asleep for nearly an entire day.
That should have been how things ended. A few days after that night, I started to hear things inside the house in the middle of the night. The fear returned. I killed him. I burned him. There shouldn’t be any way that man could come back.
And yet I found myself peeking through my half-opened bedroom door at a dark figure coming up the stairs. I was scared to death. What if this was a real break-in and I was in danger?
Then I heard his raspy voice say my name. I turned on the light to see his transparent shape slowly get closer. He had nearly reached the door by the time I reacted.
“Fuck off.” I sternly said and slammed the door in his face.
I planned to leave him and all the negative aspects of my life in last year. Despite my best efforts, one thing was still holding on. I don’t know how long it would take him to finally go away. I gotta say, it’s not pleasant trying to sleep with a ghost of your dead ex standing in the corner breathing heavily and staring at you with unblinking eyes. I still nearly get the piss scared out of me when I see him in the hallway while going to the bathroom. I’ve gotten in the habit of flipping him off and going about my task.
I’m stuck with him for now. But at least things are getting better. I’ve left a lot of bad habits in the past. I’ve started to take better care of myself. If I could just get more sleep, then things would be perfect.
I regret waiting this long. Instead of planning to start fresh at a certain date, I should have just acted sooner. Maybe if I broke up with him before I became pregnant, he would still be alive. But he made his choices, and I made mine. I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I want to move forward.
So, please don’t wait to make your life better. It doesn’t need to be a big change or everything all at once. Try and do something as soon as you can, or else you might be haunted by an ex that just won’t leave you alone like me.