A minute later, I catch his lips moving, and then he nods twice, as if he’s decided something from whatever conversation he’s been having in his twisted head. He turns toward me, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. When he pushes with one hand against the ground, I flinch, thinking he’s coming for me, but he doesn’t. He just stands and brushes off crumbs from the sandwiches he’s eaten.
Daniel looks down, smiling softly as he offers his hand. “Come with me, Jasmine.”
I shudder as I obey, letting his hand engulf mine as we walk up the small rise that leads away from where we ate. I can see another small group of trees at the top and we’re almost to the crest when I first see them.
Gravestones.
Those are headstones ahead of us and I stop abruptly, stumbling as he pulls me along. I dig my heels in and he pauses, turning to look back at me with a slight frown.
“Come, Jasmine,” he urges, tugging at me. I resist for a second, but he’s already moving. He drags me forward, and it’s either fall to the ground or follow, and I choose the latter.
Under the shade of the trees at the top of the hill, all I can do is stare. I wasn’t seeing things. There are two headstones here, and slightly to one side a simple, rough-hewn wooden cross. I’m tense as fuck right now, trembling, because if I thought this day was already completely off the weirdness scale, it just ratcheted up another hundred ticks.
A graveyard. He’s brought me to a goddamn graveyard.
He stands there silently, looking down at the two markers, and against my better judgment I stare at them too.
Harold S. Christiansen
Maureen R. Christiansen
Oh, fuck. His parents. These are his parents’ graves.
There are dates, and then scripture chiseled in tight script at the bottom of each one. The granite shows little signs of weathering, but the earth beneath them is hard packed, a small mound curving gently above the natural plane of the ground, the ubiquitous grass having grown in patches over each. My throat is dry, and though the day is pleasantly warm, I feel cold as I stand in front of the graves.
“Daddy and I buried Momma here after the sickness took her.” His voice startles me, and I jump at the sound of it. He hasn’t let go of my hand, and my movement causes him to turn slightly and stare at me, face impassive.
“And then when Daddy passed,” he continues, turning back to the headstones. “I did just like he said, took him here and buried him next to Momma.” He pauses, and the next words are almost a whisper. “Just like you said, sir. Always just as you told me.”
Silence returns, and I am rigid with… something. Fear. Uncertainty. Rattled more than I have been at any point today, because this is not what I expected. By any stretch. I’m having a hard time processing what’s going on, why he’s brought me here, and my thoughts are scattered like a million motes of dust on the breeze.
But there’s another marker, a wooden cross made in the typical fashion of these things in a thousand movies. Two boards, one upright, the other nailed asymmetrical crosswise to it, and I swallow as thoughts race through me. Who? When? Why? And then a singular thought coalesces, and I can’t stop the words that come out of me next, even though a part of my brain screams at me to stay silent.
“Whose grave is that?” I ask, pointing at the small mound in the earth, the grass thicker only where it is bunched up against the base of the unfinished cross.
He doesn’t follow my finger, but looks away, his eyes flicking back and forth, fixing on nothing. I see something else too. He’s nervous. No, more than nervous. He’s unsure. He looks almost lost. Normally his face might as well be carved from the same stone as those two gray markers, but he doesn’t look that way now. His eyes aren’t focused on any one thing, bouncing across the landscape, avoiding me — avoiding the cross.
“Whose grave is this one?” I ask again, pulling my hand from his. I take a step toward it, finger pointing.
His head snaps towards me, and then just as quickly turns away again. “Hers.”
“Hers?” My whisper matches his.
He won’t look at me. He’s staring off beyond the trees, and he’s struggling, and it’s all a guess on my part, but I know I’m right and I will not let him run away from this.
“Who?” This time, even though my voice is soft, I put pressure into the word.
“She ran.”
That is not his voice. For the first time since I’ve been trapped in his hell, this is not Daniel. At least not the Daniel I know. The monster who brought me here. This is… someone else. I don’t know who, but the voice is quiet, unsure.
Scared.
“She ran, and then she fell. It was so dark, and she shouldn’t have run.” His voice is cracking, choking on syllables, and I can’t move.
I’m frozen in place because I know who he’s talking about. Who this is.
“I kept yelling. I couldn’t see her… but then I heard her. I heard her running. And then I heard her fall. I ran. I ran fast that way, and I came up on the edge because I knew it was there, and I found her, but she wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t get up, and I tried to help her, I tried to help, but she wouldn’t move.”
“Who, Daniel?”
I think this is the first time I’ve spoken his name. I don’t know exactly why I say it now. I don’t know what I expect. That asking him to say her name will change something? Anything? I know it won’t. He’s insane, he’s a monster, he’s fucking evil, and admitting that Jasmine is dead and that I’m not her is not going to suddenly make him let me go. But something inside needs to hear him say her name and not have it directed at me.
Because I’m not Jasmine. Jasmine is dead.
And he killed her.
“Daniel.” His head comes around, staring at me, through me. There’s a wounded look in those eyes that should make me feel for him. But I don’t. He fucked that out of me.
“Who? Who’s buried there?” I keep my voice as gentle as I can make it. I’m not a goddamn psychiatrist, but I think of every movie or show I’ve ever seen and mimic what I hope will get me the answer I’m looking for.
“She is.” It’s the answer of a child.
I wait for the word to cross his lips. The name. Just a single name I need to hear him say. The breeze caresses us both, a sigh that can — should, must — carry her name from his lips to my ears. I watch his pupils dilate as he watches a movie I can’t see, and I can see his lips move, see them form the word I need, hovering on the very edge of my vindication.
And then it’s gone.
Clarity returns to his gaze, and I can’t suppress the cry that chokes up from my chest. “No!”
I’ve lost him, whoever he was there for those moments. Daniel — the Daniel I know — is back. I shake my head, slowly at first and then faster as I see it all falling away because the monster has returned.
“It’s okay, Jasmine.” He steps toward me and I match him in retreat, but then I freeze. I stop because I’m walking onto the grave.
My grave.
That thought scythes through my head before I can prevent it, and I snarl, “No!”
He takes another step toward me and I bolt. I dart to the left, away from the graves and down the rise, back in the direction of the blanket on the ground. Away from Jasmine’s grave and I’m right at the edge of the first copse of trees when it all collapses.
It’s a weird feeling to watch the dying ember of hope flicker away. To watch like an observer as your own body, your own mind give up. I can’t move anymore, my feet refuse to lift again even as a caged part of me screams for them to do so. My body shakes as he comes up behind me, wrapping those huge arms around me to pull me tightly against him. I rail at myself, cries of frustration, anger, and despair escaping in sobs that I don’t hold back.
“It’s okay, Jasmine. It’s okay.”
He believes those words, but it’s not okay. For one brief, fleeting second up on that hill I thought I’d broken through. Made him see the lie behind it all. Bu
t I was wrong. He hadn’t. He never will. I am Jasmine. I will always be Jasmine. Whoever she is to him now, I don’t know, but it’s not the real Jasmine anymore. It’s a nameless, formless thing that causes him discomfort… just not enough to break through the walls of insanity he’s built in this world, this hell I’m trapped in.
I’m losing myself, bit by bit, and those little white pills are all that’s protecting me against his madness, but it’s not enough. Every day, every hour that goes by with him, I lose a little more.
“It’s okay, Jasmine,” he repeats as if it’s a mantra that will somehow make me stop crying, accept what is happening to me. He believes that he can help. Believes that what he’s doing will comfort me, provide me with reassurance instead of turning my soul gray with misery. We’re at the edge of the blanket, and before I register it, he’s lowered me down, curling me into him as he spreads his legs out and pulls me tight against his chest.
“I will protect you, Jasmine. Always,” he whispers into my hair as my chest shudders, breath trying to catch up with the anguish that has torn it from my lungs.
He killed a man. And he killed her.
I cry for a while, and he holds me patiently, whispering his falsely soothing words, but eventually I run out of steam. I sniffle one last time, calming down, though it has nothing to do with anything he’s doing. It’s because I’m giving up. Again. There is a voice in the chaos of my mind, a soft, beguiling warning that beckons me to do it. Give in. Accept this as my life… if I want to continue to have one.
“I will never let what happened to her happen to you. I swear it, Jasmine. Never.”
He killed them. He killed them.
“Jasmine.” He huffs out my name in an exhalation of passion against the skin of my neck, and I feel his hands pulling at the fabric over my hips, tugging the dress upward. Cloth rustles against cloth, the snicking sound of a zipper coming down, and I realize with dull numbness what he’s doing.
It was always going to end like this at some point. It always does. There is no ‘day of rest’ for me. And there never will be.
“Jasmine.” The name is a sigh of fervor as he lifts me and surges up, inside. He hasn’t even bothered to pull my underwear off. His fingers simply drag them aside, his thickness ensuring that they stay out of the way as he thrusts.
Just let it happen.
I do. I let it happen, because I have nothing left inside me right now. Yesterday, the day before that, and the day before that, and every fucking day since I became trapped in this horror show, have piled up one on the other, and it’s too much. It’s simply too much and I’m done, done with it all.
So I let Daniel fuck me. Fuck Jasmine. Fuck his dutiful wife who will bear however many children his fucked-up world requires. Because maybe he’s right. Maybe this is God’s plan. God’s will. And as he thrusts, I feel my body react, creating wetness to ease his way inside, and it’s then that I feel the panic.
Was there any blood at all this morning? Did I wait too long for another pill? My throat constricts, and all I can think of is that final pink container, the number of little white bubbles left to me, and if they will be enough to stop God’s will.
This is Jasmine’s fault.
Why did the stupid bitch have to let herself get killed? She ran. She fell. Where, how, when, why… none of it matters. She fucking died, and now I’m here, when it should be her letting a monster try and fuck a child into her — but it isn’t. It’s me. And I shouldn’t be here, I should be a million miles away.
This should be her hell. Not mine.
“Jasmine!” He finishes with a cry, his seed flooding me in jets, and I go rigid on a wave of anger that grows in strength to the fading twitch of his cock inside me.
When he finally stills, holding fast to me, I’ve become a coiled spring. A frisson of rage that I hold in check only by a renewed determination to never give him what he wants.
“I love you, Jasmine,” he says, voice full of his ‘love’ for me… and I almost gave in. Almost gave up, accepted it, became exactly what he wants me to be.
Jasmine. His Jasmine.
Fuck that. She fucked up, but I won’t.
His hand moves, cupping over my belly as he murmurs into my ear, “Soon, Jasmine. Soon. Our life, our family, all of it will begin. As God wills it.”
Yeah, I don’t fucking think so. Too late, asshole. You almost had me. But not now.
Those pills are running out. Those little, white walls that make up my fortress are being chipped away, but I still have time. Time to fight. To plan. To make an escape. I will not give up. Not yet. Twisting my head, I look up the rise toward her grave and grit my teeth.
Even if I can’t get away before those pills are gone, I will never give him me.
No. I’ve got one final option.
If it comes down to it, I’ll make Daniel dig another grave on that hill.
Fourteen
Him
“Is it done?” I ask, even though I know her answer.
“Yes,” she replies quietly, tugging on her shorts with her back to me. She always dresses facing away from me because she is chaste. Jasmine guards her body like a good woman should, and in time she will recognize that God allows her husband to look upon her flesh without sin. I don’t tell her to turn around, because it’s not something I need to push her on, not yet, especially when there is such good news today. I was correct that her womanly time is over, which means we can once again try to start our family.
The thought brings a smile to my face as I rub the towel over my hair once more before hanging it to dry beside hers. “Good, Jasmine. I know God will bless us this time.”
She pulls her shirt on in silence, still facing the wall as I gather my clothes and begin to dress. Jasmine has already shown Him she is worthy these past days. She has been the wife I always knew she would be. I have not had to punish her since the night I put her over my knee on the couch, since the night I showed her love and mercy as Jesus Christ has called on each of us to do. That was when I finally stepped between the Devil and Jasmine, when I finally pulled her out of his grasp so she could stand in the light of God’s path.
Since then, every day with her has been bliss, and that blessing assures me a child will follow soon. Perhaps it will even happen today.
“Put on your shoes, Jasmine.”
The command makes her turn around, and she looks confused as she passes me to get them. I am overjoyed that she did not question me. She has not spoken against me in days, and the few outbursts of feminine emotion she’s had have been because of the man that threatened her, and then the stress of visiting my parents’ graves. That was my fault, I should not have surprised her with the trip to their place of rest. I have to remember she is delicate, gentle, and her emotions need a careful hand.
As long as I keep these things in mind, I will be a good husband to her. We will both be worthy.
* * *
It doesn’t take us long to eat breakfast, and I even let her help cook the eggs. She actually smiles when I hand her the spatula, and we work side by side in the kitchen until the meal is ready. Eggs, toast, sliced fruit. Simple, but perfect with my Jasmine beside me at the table, and now she’s cleaning up without my direction. She is my blessing, my gift from God for the pious life I’ve lived, and I will be forever grateful to the Lord for her.
“You are beautiful,” I say aloud, a little surprised that my thoughts have escaped so easily, but I’m glad they have when she turns from the sink to look at me over her shoulder.
“Thank you.” Two simple words, but my Jasmine doesn’t speak often, and each word is cherished. When we were younger, she used to fill my silence with stories from school, about the animals she cared for in 4H, and maybe that is why she is so quiet. She has no stories to tell me, because we are always together now, and the stories are both of ours. The thought brings another smile to my lips. I’ve always been comfortable with silence, and I know that what we have together is more important than idle cha
tter as Momma used to say.
When she dries her hands on the towel and turns to face me, I hold out my hand to beckon her forward, and she obeys. Jasmine comes to me so easily now, and it brings more lightness to my spirit to watch her walk and take my hand. I still scan the drying rack to ensure both forks are in their place, but soon there will be a day I do not feel the need to do that anymore.
And it’s coming, I know that. A day when the punishments of the barn will be a distant memory, and we can care for the ranch together. Perhaps then she will have stories for me again.
Her hand is damp and cool from washing the dishes, and I squeeze gently to give her the warmth of my body as I lead her outside. There are many things I need to do, but since I repaired the damage I found in the fence yesterday, I know that what I have planned is more important than the rest of my to-do list.
Jasmine jerks to a stop, tugging backward, and her hand almost slips from mine before I tighten my grip and turn to look at her.
“I-I didn’t do anything,” she whispers, shaking her head with wide eyes, and for a moment I’m confused… but I follow her gaze, and I understand.
“It’s okay.” I offer a smile as I tug her forward. “You have not earned a punishment, Jasmine. I told you, the barn is for more than penance. Come, let me show you.”
Her feet scrape on the ground, still tugging against me for a moment, but eventually she starts moving again. I hear her stumble and I tighten my grip to offer her my strength as we reach the smaller door of the barn. I let go of her to open it, and she stares into the dim light inside with a strange look on her face.
“It’s okay, Jasmine. Moses wants to see you again,” I say, encouraging her as I step inside. I hold out my hand for her, but she turns to look out at the drive and my heartbeat picks up pace. “Jasmine.”
The sound of her name brings her head back around, and although she makes a quiet sound, she still takes my hand and lets me lead her inside. Turning the lights on so I can see clearly, I release her and immediately head over to Moses’s stall. He starts shuffling around as soon as I approach, eager to be let out, and I almost laugh as he stomps. Patience has never been his to claim, but he is still a good horse.
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