My Husband Doesn’t Exist Chapter 08

My Husband Doesn’t Exist Chapter 08

“No… that’s not how it happened…” 

I went limp in the interrogation chair. 

The images began flickering behind my eyes. 

Vivid. Bloody. 

Six months ago. That night. 

I bought groceries. Told Jenna I wanted to cook 

for her. 

One last dinner together before she moved on. A 

birthday celebration. 

She teared up, laughing. 

She came into the kitchen to help me. 

She stood at the cutting board, chopping ribs. 

The heavy thud of the blade against the board. 

I stood behind her. 

Watching her unguarded back. 

My hand reached for the marble bookend on the 

counter beside me. 

I raised it with everything I had and brought it. 

down on the back of Jenna’s skull. 

A thick, muffled crack. 

Jenna collapsed forward onto the cutting board. 

Blood erupted instantly. 

She turned her head to look at me. 

Her eyes were filled with shock. Disbelief. 

Absolute terror. 

“Mara… why…” 

She coughed blood and tried to drag herself 

toward the front door. 

A long smear of red trailed behind her across the 

floor. 

She reached for the fingerprint lock with a hand 

drenched in blood. 

“Mara… we’re best friends…” 

I watched the tears and blood run together down 

her face. 

For one second, one fleeting second, I wanted to 

take it back. 

But there was no way back anymore. 

I was sobbing as I screamed. 

“I’m sorry, Jenna! I have no choice!” 

“I can’t leave this place!” 

“You have three apartments! Why couldn’t you let 

me keep just this one?” 

I closed my eyes, picked up the kitchen knife, and 

swung it down. 

Again. And again. 

Until she stopped moving. 

After I killed her, I hid her body in the chest freezer 

I’d just bought. 

To cover the blood on the floor, I scrubbed all 

night. Three full bottles of bleach. 

I bought two pairs of size–eleven sneakers from a 

street vendor and put them by the door. 

I started playing both parts. Texting myself from 

Jenna’s phone. 

Because that was the only way I could pretend she 

was still alive. 

The bed–rocking sound in the middle of the night. 

It was never the bed. 

It was me, consumed by guilt and terror in the dark, desperately trying to drag that chest freezer from the living room into the bedroom to hide it. 

The casters grinding across rough flooring. 

The compressor unit slamming against the old 

walls. 

Producing that rhythmic creaking sound. Like a 

bed rocking. 

Loud enough to wake Derek Hollins downstairs. 

And the blue shirt that vanished. 

It belonged to Garrett Farrow. Something he’d left 

at his sister’s apartment months ago. 

I hung it on the balcony every day to make it look 

like a man lived here. 

This afternoon, Garrett came to the building and 

spotted that familiar shirt on the balcony. 

He pulled it down from the ground–floor landscaping below. 

On the collar, there were still faint reddish–brown. 

stains. 

Splatter from the night I killed Jenna. Three 

months of sun hadn’t faded it enough. 

The evidence that sealed everything. 

“Mara Lynn. You thought pretending to be married 

would keep you safe.” 

The older officer stood and walked toward me. 

“But every shirt you hung out there was a piece of 

evidence.” 

I slowly bowed my head. 

The last bullet of truth shattered every wall I had 

left. 

I looked down at the oversized hoodie I was 

wearing. 

It wasn’t mine. 

It was Jenna’s. 

In that moment, I understood everything. 

I never escaped the fear. 

I moved out of that walk–up in the rough part of 

town and locked myself in a deeper hell. 

With my own hands, in the shadow of the person 

who loved me most, I dug myself a bottomless 

grave. 

“Take her.” 

The older officer waved his hand. 

Two officers stepped forward, expressionless, and 

pulled me up from the metal chair. 

The handcuffs and leg shackles dragged across 

the cold corridor floor. 

Heavy. Distinct. Rhythmic. 

Thud… thud… thud… 

Exactly like the sound from that night three 

months ago. 

The sound of me bringing the bookend down on 

Jenna. 

The interrogation room door swung open. 

The sunlight outside stung my eyes. 

But I knew. 

My fortress. 

That reinforced door with its two locks. 

It would never open for me again.