A Person Could Disappear Here

by Terri George

  If something had gone wrong and I was found out I knew what the consequences could be. A lethal cocktail flowing through my veins, first stopping my heart, then muscles paralysed before death claims me up to thirty minutes later.

  The Americans would hate to see a Brit escape what they perceive as just punishment for killing one of their own, but maybe the British authorities would argue for me to serve my time in an English prison. A barrister could then argue mitigating circumstances (evident to anyone who read my journal) along with diminished responsibility and get a murder conviction commuted to one of voluntary manslaughter.

  If the truth did come out and my journal was revealed to be the lie it mostly is, all wouldn’t be lost. With a respected therapist citing the ramblings in the journal as evidence of my fragile mental state, and GP attesting to my continued reliance on anti-depressants and sleeping tablets, a plea of diminished responsibility would probably still hold water. So, rather than years in a prison cell, I’d be detained in a secure mental health facility for as long as deemed necessary for my rehabilitation. I reckoned three or four years ought to be long enough.

  Even if the murder conviction stuck, not only would I evade death, I could be out on parole within twenty years and free in my forties.

  Although prepared to die if things did go horribly wrong, that was always a worst-case scenario. Be it on death row in an American jail or British mental facility, my intention was to avoid being locked up anywhere. So, my plan had to be perfect, every eventuality accounted for, and one that left me looking like the victim.

  Don’t think I’ve been consumed with my plan of revenge from the moment of my parents’ death, because I haven’t. Yes, I always felt somehow incomplete; as if my life were a jigsaw missing a piece, but I’ve continued to function.

  Eight months shy of legally being an adult when it happened, Cristina’s parents opened their hearts and home, taking me in and becoming my legal guardians until my eighteenth birthday the following February. It was Enzo Caputo who suggested I keep ownership of the house and rent it out to pay the inheritance tax and my student fees. I’m so glad I listened to him because, not only did I leave university debt-free, now I get to stay in the only house I’ve ever called home. The only way I can think how to show my gratitude for all they did for me is to let Cristina live there with me rent-free.

  My time at university wasn’t spent in solitude. I shared a room with Cristina. She made sure I joined in. I even had a couple of boyfriends, although neither lasted long. Sometimes I struggle to connect with people on a social level, never mind romantic. So, I threw myself into my studies, graduating with a first with honours because, although they would never know, I wanted to make my parents proud.

  I was in my final year when the idea of revenge really solidified.

  Once it had, I scoured the internet for information on the Sharrow family, such as it was. Searched the websites of local papers in Denver and the small Nebraskan town where his grandfather had his ministry. From what I read, it was clear the driver of the car, who didn’t even bother to check if my parents were alive or dead or call the emergency services before fleeing the scene and then the country, learned nothing from that night. While I was busy getting an education, he was getting drunk and shagging anything with a pulse.

  So, I had the information, but the real problem was how to meet him. It wasn’t as if I could just go to Denver and hang around the bars and nightclubs I knew he went to in the hopes of bumping into him. People back home had to know I’d gone there specifically to meet him. We needed to already have a connection.

  Then I found him on Facebook. And sent him a friend request.

  I’ve never said anything specific about my job on Facebook. Any fool knows you have to be careful what you say on social media, but the main reason I only post personal stuff isn’t just because I don’t want to risk a job I love. If people knew I’m an editor, even for a lesser-known publishing house, I’d have readers asking for free copies of books and indie authors sending me unsolicited copies of their novels, begging me to read it or pass it on to my boss in the hopes of getting a publishing deal.

  And when I say I post personal stuff, I mean the superficial. No one on Facebook knows about my parents. They don’t even know my last name. I only share funny stuff that makes me laugh and posts about movies and TV shows I love. I mostly keep it light, and fun.

  He may go by his middle rather than real first name of Jeremiah that the UK newspapers always used, (and who can blame him) but I knew it was him. And knew what he liked. I’m a girl, I’m the right age (none of his female Facebook friends are over thirty) and I’m pretty. So, unsurprisingly, Jensen accepted my friend request.

  I started off slow, liking and commenting on some of his posts in the usual dumb way his barbie-doll posse would: in abbreviations.

  At first I kept contact to harmless comments on his posts he thought were so funny, things like: LMAO, UCMU and PMSL.

  Then I got a little more personal with things like: HF (have fun) with a wink emoji when he posted he was going somewhere; SD (sweet dreams) with a blow-a-kiss emoji when he posted he was going to bed, which with the seven-hour time difference was anywhere between when I was on my way to work or having my usual mid-morning coffee break. And I’d tag him on the occasional post I knew he’d go for.

  It was after I commented, IWSN (I want sex now) with a licking lips emoji in response to a shirtless selfie he posted that he first sent me a private message.

  After that it was easy to reel him in, but then most people are so easily manipulated, I find. You just need to know which button to press. And, like most men, with Jensen it was sex.

  We quickly switched from FB private messages to Facetime, and a few increasingly suggestive calls, cleavage shots and the mention that I was going to be in Chicago on business, and he was keen to meet me in Denver. Men are so predictable. Always being led by their dicks.

  My flight from Heathrow that landed in Denver shortly after lunch at two-fifteen wasn’t picked by chance. As luck would have it, a domestic flight from O’Hare landed a minute later, which tied in nicely with my cover story.

  He really did meet me at the airport, and he really did kiss me. It was hard and possessive with too much tongue but was evidence of his eagerness to have me. We really did take the train to downtown Denver. My love of trains is genuine, and I was pretty sure we’d be captured on CCTV, me looking all lovey-dovey at him like the beguiled silly girlie I was supposed to be. I really did stay at the Renaissance and it really was lovely, if a little pricy. Of course, I made sure Jensen left me at the entrance and never came up to my room. If he wanted sex (which he obviously did and to be fair was the reason I was there – or so he thought) it wasn’t going to happen in Denver, and he’d have to do something first.

  Being on the pill, pregnancy was never an issue, but a man who’s capable of the kind of sexual abuse I’d describe in my journal wouldn’t wear a condom. I may have been prepared to die in an American prison if it all went horribly wrong, but I’m not stupid enough to risk my health.

  It wasn’t difficult to get him to agree to be tested. All it took was red lipstick and the generous swell of my tits exposed almost to the areola, nipples poking against the thin fabric of a skimpy black dress that clung to every curve, to get his engine revving even before we got to the restaurant that night and sat side by side in a booth.

  By the time I palmed his dick under cover of the tablecloth, rubbing and gently squeezing it as I whispered breathily in his ear how the thought of him fucking me made me wet, how I wanted him bareback, to come inside me not a condom, he was rock hard and panting for it. He would have agreed to anything.

  Even after he’d got the all-clear from a walk-in clinic the next day it wasn’t hard to persuade him that we should hold off having sex at his downtown apartment. I’d got him to open up about his loathing of his grandfather and the house in Nebraska during our phone calls. How easy it was to entice him to take m
e to his childhood home. He was semi-hard from just the mention of how freeing it would be; how the last vestige of my inhibitions would drop even easier than my knickers in the seclusion of the country; how what I’d let him do to me would have his sanctimonious grandfather spinning in his grave.

  To seal the deal, I slid his hand under the hem of my ridiculously short dress, inside my knickers and let his fingers slip and slide in the wetness between my legs.

  When he closed his eyes on a slow blink as he smirked around a longing moan, I knew he was just a small nudge away from agreeing. So, I held his gaze and promised, “You can fuck me in every room”.

  He said he’d pick me up mid-morning.

  You may thing it strange that I could be in a state of arousal at the thought of having sex with the man who was the target of my revenge. Well, I had to be convincing, didn’t I? And it wasn’t as hard to get turned on as you’d think because a woman’s arousal starts in her head. She can get herself dripping with desire with just her imagination.

  And it didn’t hurt that Jensen was good-looking. In another life I really would have gone for him – if he hadn’t been a hard-drinking, womanising wastrel that is.

  We didn’t stop on the way, but that bit about taking a detour for Jensen to pick up a runza was a nice touch, don’t you think? The claim that the sandwiches so beloved by Nebraskans are “world famous” is as spurious as calling the baseball championship the “World Series”, but then Americans have a habit of forgetting there’s a big wide world beyond the borders of the forty-eight contiguous states. I’d never heard of them, but it’s astonishing what you discover from a Google search, and it’s the little things that lend authenticity to any story.

  And as with anything in life, it’s the little things that are so important. They’re at the heart of everything.

  You see, the thing about a big lie is, no matter how unexpected or shocking, if it’s wrapped around small truths, people will believe it.

  Truth: Jensen’s mother rebelled against her strict Lutheran father, got pregnant at just sixteen and was a drunk. She died one night while her father was out preaching, from a fall down the stairs.

  Lie: Jensen pushed her.

  Investigating officers found no evidence to suggest her death was at the hands of her twelve-year-old son, but you can see how easy it would be to believe it could have been. How the taunting of the other kids at school calling his mum a whore could lead Jensen to hate her sufficiently to do it. And it’s well known Jensen has a temper. Over the years he’s been kicked out of almost every bar and nightclub in downtown Denver and his small Nebraskan home town for brawling.

  Truth: As proof of his Christian charity, reverend Joseph Sharrow took in his unwed daughter and baby, but he was a strict disciplinarian. In the privacy of the familial home he made Betsy’s life a living hell and tormented Jensen, beating God into him with a leather strap.

  An old-school preacher, his sermons were full of warnings of the eternal torture suffered by the immoral and unrepentant. A self-styled guardian of people’s morality, he was guilty of the intolerance and hypocrisy so prevalent in the pious. Pontificating from his pulpit each Sunday about the wickedness of those who followed deities other than the one true God. How homosexuality was an abomination. Pushing his message of family values and righteousness, whilst he himself had been instrumental in ensuring his own flesh and blood got away with the mortal sin of taking not just one life, but two.

  Lie: His interest in the young boys of his Men of Christ group (and even Jensen) went further than their spiritual enlightenment.

  Who’s to say sexual abuse is only prevalent among priests? A dog collar’s as good a disguise as a cassock. There’s nothing to suggest the reverend’s interest in the boys was an unhealthy one or his abuse of Jensen was sexual as well as physical, but why not sow that small seed of suspicion in people’s minds? Doesn’t his memory deserve to be besmirched after what he did?

  And then we come to the big lie. That I was held captive and sexually abused by Jensen Sharrow.

  The small truths around which this huge falsehood is wrapped are the exposés, tucked within the inner pages of local papers and gossip magazines. More than one girl has spoken of how Jensen can be rough in bed – or wherever they were doing it at the time. Play on that and it isn’t really such a stretch for people to believe his roughness could extend to brutality.

  Most men secretly harbour a desire to dominate. Jensen may have been a little surprised when I told him I like it hard, but he very quickly went with it.

  Those marks around my wrists? Well I made sure I struggled when he tied me up. Those flimsy barely-there lacy knickers, the seams of which I’d carefully half unpicked to make it easy for him to rip off me? Yeah, I made sure I kept those as ‘evidence’. The bruises and abrasions on my skin from our naked alfresco romps were easily mistaken for injuries he’d inflicted. The things he used on me (at my instigation) and I used on myself to get him going all left their mark, deep inside.

  When viewed from a negative perspective, all the effects on my body of our frequent and forceful shagging would be seen as evidence of my having been raped. Repeatedly.

  Oh, and in case you’re wondering, that first time in the kitchen… with the butter? That was my idea. It happened, but not on the first day. I mean, come on, that’s something you work your way up to.

  To be honest, sometimes he took to his role of quasi dominant a little too well, really scaring me with his eagerness to inflict pain. This wasn’t the kink I was hoping to replicate, this was something more. Maybe I really had unleashed a hitherto suppressed sadistic side to his nature. He wasn’t a Dom in the sense of a genuine Dom/sub relationship. There was no after care. No holding. No stroking. No soothing words. No gently rubbing lotion onto my bum cheeks left flame red from the severe spanking with the spatula.

  But then it all added to the authenticity of my claim.

  It hadn’t been part of my original plan, but I got the idea of another girl after reading a front-page story in the local Nebraskan newspaper. A pretty, twenty-one-year-old had gone missing from a nearby town after telling her best friend she was meeting a guy she’d met online. Searches in various locations after tip-offs and an exhaustive investigation by the sheriff’s office and state police yielded nothing. And two years later she still hasn’t been found.

  Curiously, the girl’s disappearance coincided with a three-week period when Jensen was inexplicably absent from the gossip pages. It was as if he’d just dropped out of the social scene.

  I didn’t really think it was necessary, confident my plan was strong enough without it, and my intention was never to imply Jensen had kidnapped and killed that particular girl (her family had been through enough) but it couldn’t hurt to imply he’d previously done to someone else what he’d done to me. Only that time it had ended very differently. And I reckoned it could only add weight to my fear that after he tired of having me, Jensen would kill me.

  Of course, they had to be American brands, but it was easy enough to buy some Victoria’s Secret lingerie and casual wear from The Gap and add them to my packing.

  I had considered burning the casual clothes before I left home, but a plastic bag containing small fragments of charred fabric would have been hard to explain if my suitcase had been picked for a random spot check by US officials at the airport.

  So, I waited until we’d run out of the food and drink we’d brought with us from Denver and Jensen was safely out of the house for a couple of hours on a run to the supermarket for more, armed with the long list I gave him of all his favourite junk-food, and an iceberg lettuce. Of course, I couldn’t risk going with him, so I made the excuse of needing to soothe my aching body in a bubble bath. Then I burned the clothes in the barbecue on the patio and spread the remains in the scrubby grass behind the shed in the back yard.

  I was relaxing in the bath by the time Jensen returned. He didn’t need much encouragement to join me.

  When he lef
t you alone in the house, why didn’t you just run away?

  I knew that’s what they’d ask, and it’s a fair question. I wasn’t a wife or girlfriend, terrorised by an abusive partner for so long she’s too scared to run away because he promised he’d find her if she did.

  If I really were held captive I’m pretty sure my survival instinct would be strong enough that I’d try to get away anyway I could. So what was stopping me?

  Junior pastor, Troy Palin had been taking up the slack even before reverend Sharrow suffered a massive heart attack and left this mortal world. The tumour, undiagnosed and only discovered during the post mortem, had been pressing on the part of the brain that controlled rational thought, causing his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Paranoia setting in, convinced the devil was hiding in every shadow, the pastor locked himself away and nailed shut the windows.

  Bad for him, but great for me. A ready-made reason that explained my inability to escape enforced incarceration. Life can be a cruel bitch, but sometimes she’s generous to a fault. What a gift.

  With a remarkable lack of foresight, reverend Sharrow died intestate so, undoubtedly to his eternal chagrin, all his worldly possessions went to Jensen, his sole next of kin. Naturally, Jensen had zero interest in the ministry, but recognised it for the cash-generating machine it is. With a considerable increase in salary, reverend Palin took over the reins and Jensen gets a substantial monthly allowance, swapping his modest one-bed for a luxury apartment in a swanky block in downtown Denver complete with a cityscape view from the terrace and maid service – because Christ knows the lazy sod isn’t about to do his own laundry or clean up after himself. I exaggerated the state of the Nebraska house, but the truth is, Jensen was a slob.

  So, since reverend Sharrow’s passing, the ministry’s God-fearing congregation of worshippers have been funding the fast cars and even faster women that are the mainstay of every playboy’s lifestyle. I may hate Jensen for what he did to my parents and his utter lack of remorse, but even I find delight in that delicious irony.