Better off Dead

It was of course my curiosity that ruined it all. There was a folder labeled "V family" on Adam's desktop. I opened it. I was the only V in the house. It turned out to be a series of emails and reports on what my family was doing. It made me feel strange. Why the hell would Adam check up on my family. I clicked on a file labeled TV show and watched as a video popped up on the screen.

The video was a TV show about missing people and the lengths their families were going through to get them back. There was a segment of the show on me. And it told about how my family had been tirelessly searching for me. I felt like shit. At the same time, I felt angry at Adam for keeping it from me.

I went into shock as I watched an interview from Zeke. He talked about how badly he missed me and how much he loved me. He was even crying during the interview. My heart was thudding in my chest. Then I saw an interview with my sister and everything went to hell. My sister also talked about her love for me. It was shocking because Tammy and I had never been close. She'd always called me names and picked on me because even though I was older, she'd always been bigger. And she was as big as a fucking house on TV, but to see her crying over me angered me. She was after all a blood relative. The kicker was when she showed her daughter to the camera and told how she'd named her after me. She had named a baby after me. The whole tone of the show was that I was probably dead somewhere in a ditch and my body just hadn't been found. I knew then that I had to go home.

I kissed Adam goodbye and left him a note. I told him that I had to go back to my family and he could trust me. I wouldn't tell the police anything about him. I didn't pack a bag or anything because if I just showed up with suitcases full of clothes it would look suspicious. I also didn't drive my car, I took a taxi. From the second that I walked out of that house, I started crying. I realized that I was probably making a mistake.

I guess that was because I loved Adam more than life itself, but I needed to see my family and at least let them know that I was okay. The way I figured it, I'd go home and stay there for two or three days and then I'd just disappear again and go back home to Adam. At least they'd know that I loved them all and that I was alive and well. As for Adam, he knew that I loved him and he loved me, so he'd forgive me when I got back. But we were going to have to talk about why he'd kept the information about my family from me.

I got out of the taxi in front of the police station that was only a half mile away from the trailer park. I stepped up to the desk in the small station and noticed that Bud Jenkins who'd been a patrolman two years before when I'd disappeared, was now the desk sergeant.

"Hey Bud," I said. "I got away."

He looked up at me and smiled. "Yes ma'am," he said. "What kin I do fer ya?"

"Bud, it's me," I said. He smiled again. It became clear then than he had no idea who I was.

"What's going through your mind right now?" I asked. "Honestly."

"Well to tell you the truth and with no disrespect meant, ma'am. I'm wondering what you want. Whenever one of you rich society women come down here with a problem, I end up having to send out three or four of my men to find some God damned frou-frou dog who jumped out of your Mercedes to chase a fucking squirrel. And I'll chase your God damned dog too, because if I don't I get my budget cut when you tell your husband about it and he talks to his friend the councilman or the senator. So do you have any pictures of your fucking dog?"

"Bud, what makes you think I'm a society woman?" I laughed.

"Well you're about as pretty as a new sunrise," he said. "Your shoes cost more than I make in a month. That bracelet would probably buy the trailer I live in. That beautiful hair had to have been done by some ritzy hairdresser. Any idiot can see you come from money and that's something that's in short supply around here."

"Bud, it's me," I said. "Victoria Bailey...Well Victoria Lake since I'm married to Ezekiel Lake..."

He looked at me again. "Vickie," he said then.

"My name is Victoria," I snapped.

"Just checking," he said, with obvious shock on his face. "You never did let anyone call you anything except your full name." As he said that, I thought about how much I loved it when Adam called me Tori. It kind of made me feel more like I belonged to him and him to me. A tear rolled down my cheek as I thought about how I'd run out on him while he was sick.

Bud started asking me all kinds of questions. He called his superior officers in and they called the District attorney in. They called my family and didn't get an answer.

"The phone is probably shut off," said Bud. The DA scheduled a press conference. He was grumbling and complaining about how unreliable hillbillies and trailer trash are. Bud agreed to run me home and bring me back in time for the press conference that the DA had scheduled.

Bud and I got into an aging Jeep Cherokee. I didn't want to sit down in it because I was worried about the wet spot on the seat staining my skirt. Bud put several towels on the seat and off we went.

When we got to the trailer park, I shook my head. It was even more run down than I remembered. A few of the trailers were new ones that I didn't remember. And some of the trailers were well maintained and looked like nice houses. Their owners obviously took care of them really well. But most looked like cheap houses on wheels and were just awful. I remembered how Tela had once said that my closet was bigger than one of these trailers and she hadn't been lying.

Bud and I got out in front of Zeke's trailer. The whole thing looked as if it was slowly sinking into the ground but not evenly. Even a little over two years since I'd left here the same fucking cinder block was being used as a step because Zeke was too cheap to buy or build a proper porch.

There was a beaten down baby bed in front of the trailer with a baby that was less than a year old in it. The baby was crying. Another child that looked to be about two years old was wandering around the front of the trailer unattended. She dropped down onto the ground and picked up a dandelion and tried to put it in her mouth. I grabbed her and took it from her.

"Victoria," I said. "You can't eat nasty, dirty weeds. They'll make you sick."

Bud looked at me like I was crazy. I wondered at the same time why the hell my niece was wandering around in front of Zeke's trailer.

I opened the door to the trailer and the stench made me almost gag. I heard the sound of squeaking springs and moaning. As I looked across the room, I went into shock. Not at the number of beer bottles strewn all over the floor or the general filth of the place; my shock came from what I saw in the corner.

My husband Zeke, who'd missed me and loved me, was obviously taking a break from tirelessly searching for me. And during that break he was fucking my sister up her giant ass.

They were moaning and laughing and with every thrust of his boney hips Zeke slapped Tammy's fat ass and watched it jiggle.

"Uh Zeke," said Bud several times before he was heard. Zeke turned to look at us and just pulled his filthy pants up around his waist. He gave Tammy another slap on her ass and told her he'd be right back. Tammy didn't even move. "Hurry up," she said. You could see her huge pussy from between her legs. It looked big enough to get your entire arm into. It was like looking into the back end of a cow.

Zeke came over and smiled at me and then spoke to Bud.

"Hey Bud," he said. "I didn't do it."

"But Zeke," began Bud. "It..."

"Well shit, I didn't know it was illegal," said Bud. "I saw everybody else doing it and..."

"Zeke, I'm here because of her," spat Bud. "She..."

"What kind of job is it?" asked Zeke. "Technically I'm not supposed to do any work. I'm on disability and if I get caught they'll stop my ch..."

"Zeke, you dumb assed hillbilly, don't ya know who this woman is?" asked Bud.

"Some nice, rich, big city woman who wants ta hire me, right?" asked Zeke. "She shore is purty too."

"She ain't that fuckin' purty," said Tammy coming over and taking Zeke's arm as if she was claiming him. I recognized that because I'd done it to Adam at a few of those parties we'd gone to over the past couple of years. The easiest way for a woman to let another woman know that a man was taken was to hug him or wrap herself around him in front of other people.

If I hadn't been still shocked shitless over seeing my husband fucking my sister, it would have certainly freaked me out.

"Tammy, why was Victoria running around in front of the trailer eating weeds?" I asked.

"Victoria?" said Tammy. "My baby's name isn't fucking Victoria. Her name is Tammi with an "I." The only Victoria around here was my worthless sister, who ran out on Zeke and stole his beer money. But she's dead."

"But that's what you said her name was on that TV show," I sputtered.

"None of that shit was real," laughed Tammy. "We was just play acting. They gave us two hundred dollars to say that shit. Real talk, nobody ever looked for Victoria. She was my sister, but she was an uppity bitch who got too big for her God damned britches. Nobody missed her and we didn't look for her. To tell you the truth, her leaving was a gift from God. It shore made things less complicated around here. I was already pregnant with Zeke's first kid when she disappeared. We'd have had a hard time explaining that shit. But just when we needed it to happen, the bitch disappeared in a puff of God damned smoke. It was like she got struck by lightning. Good riddance!"

Tammy looked over at Bud who was shaking his head and waving for Tammy to shut up.

"Tammy, this IS your sister Victoria," said Bud finally. "We found her!"

Zeke and Tammy's jaws dropped to the floor as they looked at me. Though their shock was simultaneous, their reactions were quite different.

"Oh fuck!" said Tammy.

"Welcome home baby," said Zeke throwing his arms out like he expected me to hug him. "I can't believe the police found you before I did."

"That was probably because you never looked for her," said Tammy angrily. She snatched the baby from my arms and dropped her off on the ground outside.

"Tammy, she's going to eat weeds," I said.

"It's none of your business what she eats," hissed Tammy. "I'm not sleeping on the fucking couch, bitch. I'll beat your skinny little ass. Come on, let's throw down. Right here, right now."

"Check this out," said Zeke. "I'm the sexiest guy in the park. I got two bitches fightin' over me. The winner gets ta suck my dick first." Tammy balled up her fists just as Bud stepped between us.

"Uh folks, the family reunion will have to wait. We have to go back to the police station like now. The DA wants to have a press conference."

A few minutes later I was standing in front of a camera next to the DA who was blushing and posing for the cameras as he told about his tireless efforts to find me and how his office had worked with the FBI to find me. He talked about how they would now, with my help, begin trying to track down the men responsible.

As they pushed me next to Zeke and Tammy, Tammy kept moving away from me as if she didn't want to be anywhere near me.

Zeke, on the other hand, kept trying to hug me every chance he got. And then he did it. He wrapped his arms around me and I smelled his foul breath. His unshaven cheek seemed to rasp away at my skin and he reached up and squeezed my right breast. I slapped the cowboy shit out of him and a couple of the FBI men came over to see what the problem was.

The FBI guys took me with them to begin interviewing me. They asked me all kinds of questions about where I was and could I identify any of the men who'd done it. I told them the same things over and over. I never saw anyone they always kept a hood over my head. I was locked away in a basement in the dark until I escaped. I didn't remember the sound of any voices because there were too many of them. I just wanted to be left alone.

The two agents left the room but they stood outside of it and I could hear them talking through a crack in it. "She's probably so afraid of what happened to her that she's traumatized," said one.

"Yeah, she figures that if she does anything to identify them, they'll come after her again. Shit, it's not like we were ever going to find her. No one knew shit. How did her sister put it on that dumb assed TV show? It was like she disappeared in a puff of smoke."

"And she's clearly lying to us out of fear," said the first guy again. "Did you see her fucking tan? She probably just got back from Florida."

"Fuck yeah, and what about all of that ice? Who the fuck kidnaps a person and makes them better? Maybe she didn't get kidnapped. Maybe she just ran away and now she's back."

"Let's run with that for the official report," said the second guy. "We'll tell the family that we're pursuing suspects or whatever but seriously, I have better things to do. I wish I could take that fucking bracelet into evidence. I could clear off a big ass chunk of my mortgage with that thing."

They started walking down the hall away from the room still talking about me. By the time the FBI let me go, everyone else except for Bud and a few other officers had left. Bud drove me back to the trailer park again.

When I got there I tried to open the door to the trailer but I couldn't get it to budge. The strange thing about it was that the lock on the door had never worked. I slammed into the door as hard as I could and it gave a bit. I realized then that Tammy was standing in front of the door to keep me out. I heard the sound of a hand hitting skin and I was sure that Zeke had just hit my sister.

The door opened then and he stepped out of the way of it.

He looked at me angrily but saw Bud outside. "We'll be back to check on you in the morning," said Bud.

Zeke seemed to be taking that into account. "I'm gonna let you git away with hitting me, cuz I know you ain't in your right mind," said Zeke. He was looking me over.

"You groped me," I said. He looked puzzled.

"You mean when I squeezed your little titty?" he said. "I'm your husband. You belong ta me. I can do whatever I want to you. You need to start remembering that now that you're back. It ain't gonna be like it was before. I'm not gonna be taking no shit offa you and your smart assed mouth."

I realized then that I'd been wrong. The whole time I'd thought that Adam was keeping the information about my family away from me because he didn't want me to leave him. I realized now that he knew what was really going on and was trying to protect me. For over two years the man had treated me like the most special thing in the world and I'd run out on him, assuming the worst and hadn't even given him a chance to explain. I had done the stupidest possible thing I could have.

As we stood there I could see Zeke staring at me. He was taking the entire picture in. I could almost hear the rickety little wheels of his brain working. He wanted my jewelry and anything else he could sell. And he wanted to fuck me. He was obviously tired of my sister and he and I were legally married. Even though he now had two kids with Tammy, he'd shove her to the side and move on.

In a few years, I'd be just like I was in that dream. I'd be just another trailer park wife who weighed three hundred pounds and had five or six bad assed kids and no future.

"You kin sleep on the couch tonight," he said. "...While I explain things ta your sister. But with us being married, tomorrow night we'll move you back into the bedroom with me."

The walls and doors of the trailer were as thin as paper. I heard Zeke and Tammy arguing. The argument ended with the usual cry of, "Because I said so, God dammit," from Zeke, followed by a slap and then silence. A few minutes later I was really surprised to hear Tammy's voice.

"Can we still do it?" she asked.

"Yeah, from time to time," he said.

"You know you're gonna have ta fight her to get some pussy from her," she said.

"Probably just the first few times," he said. "After that she'll toe the line, like always."

"But she don't like to do it," said Tammy. "There's something wrong with her. There always was."

"What about now?" she asked.

"Now what?" he asked back.

"Can we do it now?" she whined. The next thing I heard was the springs on the cheap bed squeaking so loudly I couldn't concentrate on anything else.

They were both full of shit. I loved sex. Adam and I could hardly keep our hands off of each other. But there was clearly a difference between what we did and what they did. Zeke had simply climbed on top of her and started rutting. He lasted for less than five minutes and then rolled over and went to sleep. Sometime during the night he climbed back atop her and did it again. He'd have to kill me to do that to me.

Later that night I heard the door open to the bedroom. I hadn't been able to get to sleep anyway. Between them doing their five minute fucks every couple of hours and Tammy running me down to my husband. I couldn't close my eyes.

Tammy was taking great pains to make sure that Zeke knew she wanted him. Every time he fucked her she told him that it was his pussy he was crushing and that his babies had come from it.

A few seconds after the door had opened, I felt something touch my wrist. I sat straight up on the couch.

"Zeke what the fuck are you doing?" I asked.

"I was just checking on ya," he smiled.

"Stop lying," I said. "I'm not as dumb as my sister. You were trying to steal my bracelet."

"No I wasn't," he said smiling. I think he really believed his good old boy charm might work.

"Zeke, this bracelet is expensive enough that if it came up missing, you'd be charged with grand larceny. You'd go to jail for a long ass time."

"You can't send your own husband to jail," she smirked.

"Yes I could," I said.

"Well, you ought ta be thinking about someone other yourself," he said. "That there trinket could go a long way towards helping your family ifn you wasn't so God damned selfish. I bet that thing is worth at least five hundred dollars."

"Are you crazy?" I said. "It cost more than twenty times that!"

"Well, I'm not no mathematical genius," he said. "But I knew it was a lot."

The next day, my brother Reb arrived and naturally he sided with Zeke. He spent a lot of time convincing Tammy not to beat my ass or poison me and he kept looking at us and smiling. I got the idea finally that he thought that sooner or later Zeke, Tammy and I would do a threesome. I almost threw up thinking about it. The entire family gathered and we had some sort of barbecue. They all kept looking at my necklace and my bracelet and my clothes, which I had worn for two days.

When I heard Zeke telling Reb that tonight was the night, I did throw up. They all came over to see what had bothered me. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and just cried. I think they got the idea that the food hadn't set right with me so they gave me some space.

After the rest of the family had gone, I sat on that cinder block in front of the trailer and tried to sleep.

"Are ya coming ta bed, Honey?" asked Zeke.

"Not just yet," I said. "My stomach is still hurting. I don't want to vomit on you. Why don't you sleep with Tammy one last time?" He grumbled but went back inside. I waited until I heard the springs squeaking before I went inside and slept on the sofa with my bracelet and necklace hidden in my bra.

By the next morning I was up as soon as it got light. Zeke came out of the bedroom and looked at me evilly. "Where's the bracelet?" he asked.