He Kept Postponing Our Marriage for Her Crises… So I Ended It Myself Chapter 10
Ms. Jenkins’s face went blank. “I… I don’t think so… they only checked the yard and the garage…”
A snake.
A python.
Audrey had screamed last night. She’d said there was a snake in the basement.
He’d told her to shut up.
Julian bolted from the kitchen.
He tore across the living room and lunged for the basement door, slamming it open.
Pale yellow light spilled down the stairwell, illuminating dark, smeared streaks of crimson on the
concrete steps.
“Audrey!”
Ms. Jenkins grabbed his arm, voice shaking.
“Sir, please, wait for the zoo people. If that snake is really down there…”
Julian threw her hand off and plunged down the stairs.
His eyes swept the room.
The mattress was soaked through, a wide, dark stain of blood spreading across it. Torn scraps of fabric lay scattered on the concrete.
No one.
Audrey was gone.
Julian didn’t move.
His gaze dropped to the floor, to the blood at his feet, half-dried and hours old.
“…Audrey?”
He lurched toward the dislodged ventilation grate at the base of the wall and dropped to his knees, pressing his face to the opening.
Pitch black. He couldn’t see a thing.
But the smell hit him. Blood and wet earth, thick enough to taste.
He scrambled back up the stairs, and the words ripped out of him.
“The ground vent! Where does it lead?!”
Ms. Jenkins looked terrified.
Her lips trembled. It took her three tries to force it out. “The… the back… the drainage ditch. Behind
the house.”
Julian was already gone, out the back door before she finished.
Weeds choked every inch of the narrow strip of land behind the villa. A deep drainage ditch ran along the perimeter wall.
He dropped into the waist-deep trench. The stagnant water soaked his ankles, cold enough to bite
into bone.
“Audrey!!!”
“Audrey, please, don’t do this…”
He tore through the ditch, ripping waist-high weeds aside, her name tearing out of him over and
over like he couldn’t stop.
Further down the ditch, something caught in the weeds. A scrap of fabric, dark with blood.
Part of her pajamas.
Everything inside him went hollow. His legs buckled, and he nearly went down into the water.
“No… no…”
Ms. Jenkins had followed him out but hung back at a distance, both hands over her mouth, sobbing.
Julian clutched the bloodstained fabric, his knuckles turning white.
He pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
When the operator answered, his voice fractured. “I need help. My wife is missing… she’s pregnant, and there’s blood everywhere. There was a python… Oh God, the address is…”
