The rest of the weekend was spent with more verbal abuse and threats than anything physical. I thought there would be more assaults to come, yet there weren’t. The only time Melissa inflicted pain upon me was when she was helping me bathe and wash my hair.
At one point, she wheeled me into her bedroom.
“Time to get a taste of what you’ll never be able to experience firsthand,” she said. “Yeah, I actually kind of like having you around at times, homewrecker. I can share all my secrets with you and know you’ll never tell.”
She pushed my chair toward the back of the large room and then knelt down on the floor in the corner. Slowly, she pulled up a corner of the carpet and revealed the wooden floor below. Then she tugged at a loose floorboard. She carefully pulled it up, set it aside, and then started pulling out bundles of cash.
“Do you know how much money is here, homewrecker? A quarter million dollars, all in one-thousand-dollar bills. So I’m sure you see how easy it would be for me to zap your ass if you do the wrong thing, leave town, and live quite comfortably until my retirement kicks in. After all, I don’t have much left going for me here, thanks to you. Change might be good for me, so just maybe I’ll split soon enough. After I have fun torturing you for a while longer, perhaps I’ll pull up stakes and move on.”
I doubted that much. Melissa still had friends and family in the area. I found it hard to believe she would just abandon them unless she absolutely had to. If she were that indifferent, she wouldn’t be threatening me with a stun-gun necklace.
Melissa replaced the money, floorboards, and carpet, and then proceeded to nearly choke me on dinner. My mouth burned horribly. She hadn’t even waited until the food cooled before she started shoving it in my mouth.
I was relieved when a friend came over to visit later on because I knew I would be safe while she was there.
Melissa went out late Sunday afternoon, leaving me behind as usual. I had no idea where she went. I didn’t even know she was going out until I heard the front door close and the sound of her car pulling out of the garage. It wasn’t exactly like she stopped to say hello or goodbye.
Alone in the house, I found my voice that day and was actually discovering other things as well, little by little. Excited, I had to suppress the urge to do things too quickly when I knew it was critical that I did things just right and at the right speed. Every ounce of my instinct told me to act like nothing had changed. I had to remain weak, obedient, and put up with Melissa’s abuse for a little while longer. I savored every opportunity I got to improve my bodily functions that were beginning to awaken, despite the doctor’s odds. This was mostly when I was home alone or when Melissa was in the shower. I didn’t want to do anything while she was asleep and risk waking her up.
If anything gave me consolation during those moments she tormented me, it was knowing that she believed nothing had changed.
But it had.
I was almost able to laugh to myself at how Melissa had made the grave mistake of showing me her stash of cash.
ns216.73.216.122da2
and then Add to home screen.