So, sorry if I’m a little rambly. I don’t know where to begin. Hope I can get some advice here because I don’t know where else to go. I don’t have any siblings, my parents are out of town, and the cops aren’t helping. Any advice would be appreciated.
I guess I’ll start with the cops. Darren is one of them. He was my husband. Well, still is, technically. I met him about eight years ago at a park. He was tall, had a gentle voice, and well, short story shorter, we were married six months later. Everyone told me it was a terrible idea but at the time it made sense. We were in love, and things would work themselves out.
For a while they did! Things were great. He graduated from police academy, paid my way through veterinary school, and did his part to keep our relationship rock-solid. We had our ups and downs of course, but we were a happy family of three–me (Amanda), Darren, and our dog Theo. A few years ago, though, he stumbled through the door from a late-night shift and collapsed into a kitchen chair, head buried in his arms.
I was awake, of course. He hated that I stayed awake for him when I had work in the morning, but I could never sleep soundly knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t come back that night. I walked to his side, placed a hand on his shoulder, and asked cautiously, “Babe? You doing ok?”
He sighed and after a moment raised his head. I saw that his face was pale. His hands trembled, drumming erratic patterns into our table. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah, it’s nothing.” He sat there for a while, staring into space and drumming his fingers into the counter, then fetched a beer from the fridge and mechanically made his way to our couch. My prodding didn’t elicit any answers from him, or even much in the way of responses, so finally with no better options I went to bed alone. The next morning as I rushed out the door to work, he was still sitting at that couch, staring with a dead expression at an old football rerun.
Answers to what had happened that night came slowly, and never from him. I gathered what details I could from his coworkers, and later, from his emails. Yes, probably a breach of privacy to read a cop’s professional correspondence, and definitely illegal, but I was desperate. There was little good info there anyways. He had been put on indefinite paid leave following an “incident.” The answer finally came in a newspaper article a few days later. It depicted a grizzled man named Morgan, covered with scars, with a fierce expression on his face. He was one of the most wanted people in America, and had finally been put away recently after a short firefight. The guy was apparently responsible for quite a few murders and, reading between the lines, the murders were merciful compared to what he inflicted on people for weeks beforehand.
My heart went out to my husband. I knew he did his best to keep me in the dark about what he dealt with, feeling like I shouldn’t be burdened with it, but he shouldn’t have had to deal with these things all on his own. For the next few months I took care of him. We went on dates together, stayed in to watch movies, and ate lots of good food. I took plenty of time off of work to try and help. Over time I learned a little more about that night. He had arrested Morgan, of course, but that wasn’t what troubled him. What kept him awake at night was the subsequent investigation into the man’s house, the grisly remnants of his past victims, and above all, the ghoulish cries of still-living captives begging for death.
I did what I could to help. Thing is, he never got better. The trash, and then floor, began to overflow with a growing assortment of beer bottles. His mood worsened. He snapped at me at random, a dark expression on his face. After a few months I started spending more time at the clinic to stay out of his way. He lost contact with what few friends he had and gained new ones, parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers who supplied him with an endless stream of political, hate-filled programming.
Our relationship had never been perfect, but it had been good. I had never expected him to be capable of changing so much so quickly. When I did reach out to friends, they seemed incapable of helping. Occasionally one would give him a call. He’d grunt a few one- and two-word responses to their questions, then hang up quickly and return to wallowing in his misery. Eventually, his paid leave ran out, but he didn’t go back to work. He refused any therapy or medication, stating that he was perfectly mentally healthy. “There are some things,” he would say, “that I shouldn’t move past. Somebody needs to remember what happened to those people and what the world is really like.”
It was a miserable time, but I could have dealt with it, and did for months. What really tipped me over the edge was the gaslighting. It started small, as these things tend to–I noticed our shared computer never seemed to have any browsing history, and there were little charges to our bank account that I couldn’t identify, with generic names like “BREAD” and “WITHDRAWAL”. That wouldn’t have upset me too much–I didn’t exactly have high expectations for him at this point–but he denied all of it when I brought it up. One day I confronted him about it, he denied spending any of our money (as usual), and I tried to drag him upstairs to force him to confront our online credit card statement. He refused, so I rushed upstairs alone to take a picture of it, and by the time I had re-opened the webpage there was a new charge! My jaw dropped when I saw it. He had to be doing it intentionally, to get a rise out of me.
Well, I wouldn’t let him. I was already practically his maid; I wouldn’t offer him my sanity too. I walked back downstairs after composing myself. He was back to playing his video games, acting like nothing had happened. I followed his lead and said nothing of the matter.
From there, things escalated. The charges got bigger, at least until I started putting most of my money into a personal account. My toothbrush would go missing regularly. That was one of his favorites. Theo’s food would vanish from the garage and I’d have to hunt around our backyard to find it. Every time it would be in a different place, and each time just a bit farther. I hope at least one of us enjoyed these games he was playing.
Occasionally I’d ask him about these things. “Babe, have you seen my toothbrush?” I’d smile innocently, as if we didn’t both know what was going on. He would feign stupid ignorance as always. Occasionally he’d even have the gall to get mad at me for continuing to lose these things. I’d never pegged him as a good actor, but, well, he’d changed quite a lot since his incident in other ways too.
I never once caught him hiding things, but that was no surprise. He usually stayed up, face bathed in blue light, until the early morning hours, then slept in until one or two in the afternoon. I wasn’t crazy enough to wreck my whole sleep schedule just to catch him in the act. Well, okay, so maybe I was.
I stormed through the front door one day, frazzled after a long surgery. My husband met me at the door.
“Hey, did you say you picked up dog food yesterday? I can’t find it anywhere.” he said.
“Yeah, I did, it should be in the garage,” I told him, brushing past him on my way into the house.
“Well, it’s not there,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets, looking a bit concerned. “Uh, you seem to be forgetting a lot. Are you feeling okay?”
I couldn’t deal with this right now. I turned around, passing him again to get back to the car. “Sure, I guess I forgot again,” I snapped, some venom in my words. “I’ll go get some. My mistake.”
That night, I told him I’d need to stay up late to finish some taxes. I stayed at the computer in our study until he pretended to go to bed, then found a recording of keyboard clacking, put it on repeat, and locked the study door from outside. Blue light filtered under the doorframe, and keyboard clicking sounds emanated from within. That done, I stepped quietly downstairs and into our garage, leaving the lights off. He always liked to play games with me after our arguments, making me doubt my sanity, and now I waited for him to try again.
My hand rested on the light switch, ready to expose him in his next attempt to disappear the dog food. The hours dragged on, and even my burning rage was no match for the exhaustion I felt sitting still in the pitch darkness.
I woke to a shuffling sound and flipped the switch in a rush. The light blinded me, but I heard a clatter of footsteps retreating into our house. I rushed after them, still sleep-addled and disoriented, and stumbled up the stairs, but besides some banging sounds from our water heater in the attic, I heard nothing.
“Darren!” I hissed angrily, and stormed into our bedroom, already knowing what I would find there.
“What’s going on, honey?” Darren asked, the picture of innocence. His voice was laden with sleep, and his groggy blinking artfully realistic. My blood boiled–that he’d have the gall to maintain the act even now!
“You know what!” I shouted, tears coming to my eyes. “Don’t deny it! Don’t be like this now!” He sat up quickly, a perfect expression of hurt and confusion in his eyes. To this day I don’t know how or why he kept the act up.
I didn’t calm down, but my anger turned colder. “You need to get out,” I told him, voice trembling. “I can’t keep doing this. I don’t know who you are anymore.”
“Amanda…” he began, but I wasn’t having it. Things had gone on for far too long. He and his Cheeto-riddled shirt and his well-worn gaming console moved out that night.
All went well for a few weeks. He moved in with his aging parents a couple states over, and even picked up a minimum-wage job. Or so I heard from his voicemails, anyways, as if I could trust anything he said at this point. Just as I was beginning to get my feet back under me, things started to go missing again. Same as last time, at first I thought I was going crazy. It was little things–leftovers in the fridge, or Theo whining at me for food when I thought for sure I’d just filled his bowl–but I’d seen this before and knew what was happening. Somehow he was sneaking into the house to continue gaslighting me. I still had a job to maintain, leaving him ample time to pick the new locks and sneak in while I was gone. It crushed me that even moving out hadn’t been enough of a wake-up call for my husband, but I had to worry about myself at that point. I don’t feel safe in my own house anymore.
I filed a police report, but when they called back a few days later they were less than helpful. “Ma’am,” Darren’s friend Henry said in an overly professional tone, “his parents report he’s been with them this whole time. He even has a receipt at a local restaurant he visited the night you claimed he was in your home.” They covered for him, of course. Things got worse–my car’s gas was siphoned, my internet went out, I started hearing breathing on our home phone line, and Darren caused a hundred other inconveniences to make my life hell. Yesterday Theo went missing. I hope he’s alright, but I doubt it.
A few hours ago Darren left me another voicemail trying to scare me. I don’t know why I even listen to them at this point. It was some wild tale about that murderer he put behind bars having escaped months ago. Then he said he was driving over immediately.
He’s supposedly a day away, but I hear footsteps downstairs. I’ve locked myself in the study while I write this post.
So, that’s the context! If you’re still with me, I’d love some advice on how to tell him that I seriously do want him to stay away. He needs to get used to the idea of life without me.