Who Is My Fiancée?

I have wanted to break off my engagement to my fiancée for one year now.  She is thirty-eight years old and beautiful—in a wholesome kind of way.  She is lean and athletic and very confident in her abilities.  And she scares me beyond anything I have ever experienced.  I am afraid that if I try to leave her I will end up in jail or dead.  She is not the person who I originally fell in love with.  I discovered that a little over a year ago.  That is when our relationship permanently changed.
 

My fiancée had called me at nine-thirty on a Monday night and told me to come over.  She lived about ten minutes away.  But this was unusual because we did not see each other until the weekends.  To some people that may seem odd.  But that is what our agreement was.  It had not always been that way.  We did it out of necessity.  Because when we stayed at each other’s place during the week we were normally very tired the rest of the week.  We had an extremely active sex life that often lasted until the early morning hours.  And since we each have stressful jobs we could not afford to be tired during the week.  Our mistakes can be costly ones.  I am an architectural engineer inspector for skyscrapers.  She has a job with the federal government in the Consumer Affairs Department.  It requires her to have top secret clearance.  She reads documents and analyzes data on the United States.  That is all I know about her job.  She had told me that was all she could tell me.  And I loved her so much I accepted what she said. 

 

We had both been very busy that week.  So I was pleasantly surprised when she asked me over.  Initially, I pretended to resist her offer.  I reminded her why it was a bad idea.  Then she countered with an offer that convinced me the idea was not so bad. 

 

She was standing in her doorway waiting for me when I drove up.  She was wearing a short black night shirt and holding a bottle of champagne. I asked her what the occasion was.  She said we were celebrating because I had listened to her and come over.  As soon as we closed the door she kissed me.  It was one of her long, passionate, aggressive kisses.  Between breaths she said she had to open the champagne. 

 

We downed two glasses each during foreplay.  Foreplay only lasted a few minutes.  Then we did what was natural to us.  We had sex.  Two years of dating and now engaged and our sex life had not slowed down.  Neither of us had ever been with anyone that we had that much intensity with.  This would be her second marriage and my first.  I was thirty-six and had been in many relationships.  None of them compared to what we had. 

 

After several hours of love making we fell asleep.  She woke me up around an hour later.  I heard her and felt her breath as she whispered in my ear.  “I want to show you something in the guest bedroom.”  I was a little groggy from having the champagne on an almost empty stomach.  I had only eaten some nuts for dinner before she had called.         

 

She took me by the hand and led me into the guest bedroom.  I had a smile on my face and ready for phase two.  The room was dark.  That part of the house was dark.  I assumed she was about to introduce some kind of toy or exotic apparatus into our sex life.  She could be spontaneous when the urge hit her.  She paused before turning on the bedroom light.  “Don’t be mad,” she said.  “I have an explanation.”  I asked her what I should not be mad at.  It must be kinky, I thought.  “Just keep an open mind.”  She flipped on the light switch.  I stared briefly and jumped back.  “Take it easy.  It’s not that bad.”  I had to catch my breath.  “Breathe.  Just breathe.” 

 

A nude male was lying motionless on his back on top of the bed.  There was a lot of blood from his chest down.  He appeared to be Hispanic.

“What the hell?” I said.  She kept telling me she could explain.  She was calm.  Her attitude made me that much more nervous.  “Is he dead?”  She assured me that he was.  “We have to call the police.”  She said we did not and that it would be a dumb move.  “We do.”  She said no.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  What happened here?  Who is he?  Did you do this?”

 

“I need you to calm down and help me,” she said.  “I’m counting on you.”  I asked how I was going to help her.  “First, you need to lower your voice.”  I apologized for not being calm like her.  “I forgive you.”  I sarcastically told her thanks and that her forgiving me made me feel better.  “You know you can tell the level of love a person has for you during a crisis.  And right now I’m questioning your level.”  

 

“I’m sorry if you’re questioning my love because I can’t be as calm as you!” I must have yelled it.  She told me stop yelling.  “There’s a dead body here.”  She watched me pace the floor.  “Does this have something to do with your job?”  She said I knew she could not answer that.  “It does.  Doesn’t it?”  She did not answer.  She only stared at me.      

 

“We’re going to put him in my trunk,” she said.  I told her I was not going to do it.  I was not going help her get rid of a body.  “Do you want to see me go to jail?  Do you know what they do to people like me in jail?”  I told her I did not want her to go to jail.  Then I asked her what she meant by people like her.  “I’m not going to get into that right now,” she answered.  I told her there had to be a good explanation for it if she did it.  “Then help me.”  I told her to tell me something.  I asked her what was going on.  “I did it.  And the explanation will not be of interest to a jury.”  She stared at me.  “Now are you going to help me or not?”  I told her I could not.  “You can.  You can do it.  I need your help.  I’ll explain it later.  I’ll tell you everything, every detail, but later.” 

 

I argued with her for what seemed like a long time about what to do.  “You’re acting like pussy,” she said.  “Be the man I love.  Protect the woman you love.”  I told her she had to do the right thing and call the authorities.  “I’ll do it on my own.  I now see I can’t depend on you.”  I asked her did he rape her.  She did not answer.  She just stared.  I pleaded with her to tell me something.  “Help me roll him up in the sheets and comforter.”  Her tone was cold and harsh.  I stood there.  “Now, please.”  I was feeling nauseas.  She must have noticed my face.  “You’ll be okay.  Turn your head away from him and help me roll him up.” 

 

I was so confused by now I began to help her roll him up in the sheets.  “Wait here,” she said and walked away.  I stood there looking at the body and then looked away.  Within seconds she was back with a roll of duct tape in her hand.  She unrolled and ripped off a piece and taped the sides of the comforter together.  She did this about ten times.  Then she ran a piece of tape the length of the comforter and taped it over the short pieces of tape.  She pressed the tape down on the comforter to make sure it stuck.  Then she laid the roll of tape on a towel on the nightstand. 

 

“Get his feet,” she said.  I looked down at the bulky roll of linen.  The man had to be around one-hundred and seventy pounds.  I was about five pounds heavier than he was.  My fiancé was maybe one-thirty or one-thirty-five.  “We’re going to take him to my car.”  Her car was parked behind her house.  It would be a long walk to carry dead weight from one end of the house to the other. 

 

“Why don’t I take his shoulders?” I said.  “His feet will be much lighter.” 

 

“Thank you,” she said and smiled a little.  “But I can handle it.”  She gripped the comforter tight and pulled his upper body off the bed.  She stayed in a squat position and took small steps backward toward the back door.  She was wearing a tank top and shorts.  Her arm muscles were very visible.  They looked strong.  Veins showed beneath the skin of her arms.  Her legs were the same.  That was the first time I saw how strong she really was.  I knew she worked out.  I knew she was fit.  But I did not know she was that strong.        

 

We struggled to get the body to the back door.  I struggled more than she did.  She maintained a steady pace until we reached the back door.  It was slightly open.  So she pushed it the rest of the way open with her foot.  “Go slow,” she said.  “You don’t want to slip on these stairs.”  We walked cautiously down the stairs.                

 

We laid his body on the ground behind her car.  She opened the trunk and looked at me.  “I can get his upper body in there,” she said.  “Can you swing his legs inside?”  I told her I would try.  “I need you to do it.  Not try.”  She grunted and used her knee to lift the body’s upper torso up and inside the trunk.  “Swing his legs inside.”  The body was in the trunk.  She stared inside the trunk.  I was sweating and feeling sick to my stomach.  “There’s a knife on the counter,” she said.  “Will you get it for me?”  I was trying to breathe to calm down.  “Now would be great.”  She smiled at me.  I stumbled back inside the house to get the knife.  When I walked back outside she reached for it.  I handed it to her.  “Thank you.”  She watched the body for a moment—tilting her head left then right.  Then she turned toward me.  “Turn around.”  I told her I was not turning around.  I was scared she would stab me in the back.  Who was this woman I thought I had known?  “I hope you’re up for this.”  She turned her attention back to the trunk and began stabbing the body over and over.  I ran beside the house and leaned against it.  “Not against the house.” 

 

I could hear her grunting with every stab and the sound that the knife made entering the body.  I vomited next to the house.  “Stop,” I said.  “You’re crazy.  Who are you?  Where’s the person I was going to marry?” 

 

She told me to keep my voice down.  “You sound frantic,” she said.  “You want to attract the neighbors?”  She had left the knife sticking up in the body.  “I needed to make sure.”  I could only shake my head.  “Are you okay?”  She began to walk toward me.  “We’re going to work this out.  This has to be traumatic to you.  It would be for me.  Here.”  She extended her arms to me.  “Come on.  A hug always makes me feel better when you give me one after a long day.”  I was speechless.  What was she talking about?  This was not a long day.  This was murder.  “Let’s go back inside and make love.  Things will look better in the morning.”  She smiled.  I told her I was feeling sick, that I needed to go home. 

 

“That’s a bad idea,” she said.  “You need to stay here tonight.  This would be upsetting to anyone.  I’m even a little shaken by it.”  I told her she did it. Now I was an accomplice.  “No one saw us.”  She reached out and placed her hands on my head and rubbed my head.  I moved my head from her hands.  Those were murderer’s hands, I thought.  “Stay here for the night.  We’ll talk in the morning.  I promise.  Once I explain everything to you, you’ll understand.”

 

“I’m not feeling well,” I said. 

 

“Let’s get you inside,” she said.

 

“I’m feeling dizzy and sick,” I said.     

 

That is all I remembered about that night.  I woke up the next morning naked and in bed with her.  She was laying half way on top of me.  She woke up and told me I was wonderful last night.  I jerked up and asked her about the body.  “Tell me about the dead man,” I said.  She told me it was taken care of and for me not to ever mention it again.  “Is the body still in your trunk?”  She said there was not a body in her trunk.  I got out of bed.  “Where are my clothes?” 

 

“They were too damaged to be saved,” she said.  “So they were thrown away.”  I did not know what to say to her.  “There are a pair pants and a shirt on the chair.”  They were clothes I had left at her place. 

 

I put on my pants and ran toward the back door.  She called for me to come back inside.  I grabbed her keys from the counter on the way out the back door.  When I got out the door I pushed the trunk button.  It clicked and popped opened.  I pushed it the rest of the way up.  It was empty.  I touched the inside of the trunk to see if she had cleaned it out.  It was dry.  I looked for stains.  There were not any.  I thought I was going crazy.  I ran back inside to her.  “What did you do with it?”  She was saying something when I remembered the guest bedroom.  I ran to it.  The bed was made.  There was no blood in sight.  I yanked the sheets and blankets back to reveal the mattress.  There had to be stains.  There were no stains.  I felt the mattress.  It was not wet.  I looked under the bed.  I went back to where she was still laying in bed.  “What did you do?  What did you do to us?”            

 

“It’s not our worry,” she said.  “Just let it go.  Don’t ruin our lives over this.”  I demanded answers from her.  She would not answer anything.  She propped herself up on her elbow.  “Listen to me.  We’re engaged.  You love me.  I love you.  That’s all there is.  Nothing else matters.”  I asked her more questions.  “Nothing else matters.”  That was her answer to all my questions.  I told her I could not live with it.  “Yes, you can.  And, you will.  I won’t allow you to get weak on me.  We have a great life together and we’re not going to ruin it.  That means neither of us.” 

 

The last words she said have had me worrying ever since.  The way she said it was as if she had said all she was going to say on the topic.  Now I feel stuck and afraid when I am around her, and even when I am not around her.  Sometimes I feel like I am waiting to be killed.