Twisted Sentiments

Twisted Sentiments

That’s what the newspaper headline read. I groaned; one bad joke to the cops in my state of shock as they took her away in the back of a squad car, and they were repeating it back to the media. I had unintentionally crafted the headline that would be the demise of the last remaining bits of my wife’s reputation. At least no one from the SWAT team shared my initial crack about Body by Victoria. They didn’t respond at all to that one, staring at me blankly with a hint of suspicion in their eyes when I lied to them I truly didn’t know what she had done.

She should’ve ran when I told her to. My wife wasn’t a bad person. Well, obviously what the FBI found in their investigation says otherwise. And the SWAT team escorting her out of our home certainly didn’t help. She had surrendered peacefully, though. She didn’t like hurting people. She never set out with bad intentions. It’s just that she never really had anyone she could count on until she met me. And by the time I came along, the damage had been done. I had asked her to stop, convinced her that what she had done was bad, and she promised she would never do it again. She told me that she trusted me, and that her love for me kept her sane. As long as she had me she was done, and I was more than willing to be everything she needed and support her in any way possible. She was the love of my life.

We were happy together, past everything and finally living a normal life. We were planning on having children, remodeling the house so that it was modern and child friendly, when her past came back to haunt her. No matter what, the past always comes back to haunt you, no matter how hard you try to move on. Victoria wasn’t a bad person. I genuinely believe that.

It all started about six years ago one evening when I was trying to get away from the hustle and bustle of campus. Midterms were coming up, and everyone was going crazy. I needed a quiet place to work, so I got in my car and drove until I stumbled across a nearly empty diner. It was old and a little run down but still had warmth and coziness, and I thought that for once it would be nice to get some food that wasn’t ramen or some cheap meat from the cafeteria. I was so deep in my work that I didn’t notice someone approach my table.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know. It’s terrible for your hair.” I looked up to see a woman who was absolutely breathtaking looking down at me smiling a shy, crooked smile with her soft pink lips. Large, emerald green eyes peeked out at me from under a wide brimmed burgundy fedora that matched the skirt of her uniform.

“Sorry, what?” I asked, so mesmerized by her beauty I had completely forgotten what she said in the five seconds since she had spoken. I felt my face flush.

“I said you shouldn’t do that to your hair.” She gestured to my index finger with several strands of hair knotted up around it.

“Oh.” I quickly tried to remove my finger from the gnarled mess, but the hair tightening around my finger so tightly it felt like it would cut off circulation. I gave a good yank and my hair snapped, a small clump of hair coming off with it. I felt my face flush a darker red, but she continued to smile.

“It’s okay, it’s a nasty habit to break.” She fidgeted with a small pencil tucked into her notepad. “We’re doing a shift change, I’m your new server and wanted to introduce myself if you need anything. So… I’m Victoria. Do you need anything?”

“Oh…” I looked down at the table in front of me, laptop open to a story I was stuck on about the ex-roommate who had fallen in love with me and proceeded to attempt to murder me after I rejected his advances. But that’s another story for a different time. I quickly glanced around the table, struggling to figure out what I might need.

“Top off your coffee?” Victoria suggested.

“Perfect,” I grinned. “Thanks.”

Victoria waltzed over to the counter and returns with a fresh pot of coffee. As she leaned over to pour the coffee, I noticed an interesting brooch pinned to her top.

“That’s an interesting brooch,” I said.

She grinned. “Thanks, made it myself!”

“Really?” I was genuinely impressed.

“Yeah, it’s kind of a hobby of mine. I’m an artist. I really like incorporating natural materials into my pieces,” she told me, briefly fidgeting with the brooch.

“What’s that made out of?” I asked, nodding to the stringy reddish material woven into floral shapes. “Straw?”

She nodded after a brief pause. “Yeah, I enjoy working with delicate materials. It’s challenging. I have to move slowly, and focusing makes me slow down mentally and emotionally. I kind of zone into my projects and all of the stress of the day fades away.” She looked down at my laptop. “What are you working on?”

“A story. I’m a writer.”

She gave me a huge smile. “Nice! Two artists.”

“Victoria!” The diner’s owner stood behind the counter, leaning over with her hands on her hips.

“Guess I’d better get back to work.” Victoria started to move toward the kitchen before pausing and turning back to me. “I’d really love to read your story though, when it’s finished.”

“Yeah, maybe we could hang out sometime.” I felt my cheeks flush. “I’d love to see more of your art.”

Her smile faltered for a moment, but then it was back. “That sounds great!”

When she brought me my check, her number was written at the bottom. I wasted no time calling her the next day. I was worried I was coming off as desperate, but to my relief she sounded excited to hear from me. Later that day I picked up some coffee and we met at a local park, where we spent the remainder of the day sitting by the small lake on a picnic blanket. We talked about her art, movies, my writing and a plethora of other topics, the conversation flowing effortlessly. I had always been awkward on dates with little experience in the love department, so I was thankful that I had finally met a girl who was both interesting and interested in me.

We spent nearly all of our free time together after that, and then some. During her shifts I would sit with my laptop and order coffee after coffee. Her boss wasn’t too happy to see me “lurking” as she called it, but she begrudgingly respected our young love and didn’t make a fuss as long as I was ordering food and drinks and Victoria kept our interactions brief and professional. She’d occasionally wink at me from across the room, or brush her hand across mine when refilling my coffee.

When I wasn’t in class and she wasn’t at work, we went on little adventures. We’d get in the car and pick random amounts of time. Victoria would close her eyes, I would spin her in a circle, she would point, and we would drive for an hour and seven minutes in that direction. We explored abandoned buildings, walked barefoot on frozen beaches, and went searching for wildlife for her to incorporate into her art.

Her art was beautiful. She was reluctant to show me at first; for the first several months of our relationship, she refused to have me over to her place. On the nights we stayed in we would always hang out at my apartment, her excuse being that I was in the city where all of the excitement was. She lived in the country in a house she had recently inherited from her grandmother, and it was filled with her artwork that she was too shy to share. She said letting others see it made her feel exposed and vulnerable, so when she finally invited me over I felt honored that she was welcoming me into such an intimate part of her life. It made me realize that our relationship was the real deal, and I felt beyond lucky that such a wonderful woman could love me so effortlessly.

She didn’t just make jewelry; she painted, made wreaths, bookmarks, wall art, and anything and everything else she felt inspired to create. When we would explore outside she would pick berries to crush up as paint and flowers to weave into her designs. We would pick up plain frames from thrift stores to paint and she would weave shapes into the thin layers of canvas inside. All I could do was write, while she could do all of this. Still, she inspired poetry. I wrote her sonnets and haikus and the occasional short fantasy stories about us flying to the moon, taking us wherever she wanted to go as she smiled and laughed with glee, gently running her fingers through my hair as she listened. She was my muse, and she inspired me beyond my writing. She inspired me to be the best version of myself, and I only hoped that I could do the same for her.

Shortly after I graduated, on our one year anniversary, she asked me to move in with her. She said that she was lonely in the house, and she trusted me more than she had ever trusted anyone. That was when I realized it was my moment, and I pulled out the ring I had kept hidden in my pocket all night and got down on one knee. She said yes, and it was bliss. We had a fairytale wedding, and married life was perfect. We would argue about silly things on occasion, like what kind of wine glasses to purchase, or when she insisted I not cut my hair despite how much I hated having it long. Love was about compromise and making occasional sacrifices, and I would have done anything for her.

One day about two years into our marriage, I found a blue box in the attic that looked strangely new among all of the old clothes and knick knacks left behind by her grandmother. I blew some dust off the top and gently opened it to find dozens of newspaper clippings and photographs. There were pictures of several different men and women with Victoria, names scrawled on the backs. I smiled seeing all of my wife’s happy memories, and I wondered why she didn’t have these pictures framed or in albums. There were a few that appeared to be pictures of her with past lovers, but I did my best to fight back a wave of jealousy. I was, after all, the one she decided to marry. There was a picture that looked recent of her with a woman with curly red hair that made me feel particularly jealous; they looked happy together. Almost happier than Victoria and I looked in our wedding pictures. Then I began to look at the articles, and my jealousy was abruptly interrupted by an uneasy feeling.

The articles were missing persons and obituaries going back almost a decade from various cities across the country. All of the obituaries were unnatural deaths such as drug overdoses, hit-and-run accidents, and deadly falls. As I looked through them, I realized they were the people in the pictures with Victoria. My blood ran cold. How and why was my wife linked to all of these tragic stories? There had to be an explanation. She had told me that she was new to town on our first date, seeing inheriting her grandmother’s house as an opportunity for a fresh start. Maybe she had been a detective and left the force? Maybe she worked for some secret government agency and these missing people were work friends abducted by aliens? Nothing I could think of made sense, but there had to be a logical explanation. When I heard the garage door opening, I carefully placed everything back in the box as I had found it and went back downstairs to greet my wife.

A few weeks passed, and I began to question how well I really knew Victoria. I realized how quiet she was, and that she didn’t share much about her past. We had bonded over our interests and desires for the future, and I felt bad that hadn’t noticed how little I knew of her backstory. I tried asking a few inconspicuous questions such as where she had moved here from, to which she vaguely mentioned New York before quickly changing the subject. It dawned on me that my lack of knowledge of her past wasn’t something that simply hadn’t come up, but rather something she avoided. When her friend Jenny went missing as we entered the holiday season, she became even more withdrawn from me and from the rest of the world. I did my best to console her, while my suspicions grew the longer Jenny didn’t turn up.

“I know you’ve been in the attic,” Victoria said as she set a dinner plate full of food in front of me.

I choked on the wine I was sipping. “What?”

“You were in the attic. You saw my little collection in the blue box.” She calmly set her plate on the table and sat in the chair across from me. She didn’t seem angry, and I was thankful for that.

“I didn’t look. I mean I bumped into it and the lid came off a little, but I just saw a few pictures before putting the lid back on. I didn’t mess with it.” I was nervous to eat the food she had placed in front of me. I hadn’t watched her make it; for all I knew, it could’ve been poisoned.

“It’s fine if you saw inside. I trust you. I’m sure you have questions. Let’s talk about it. Eat while your food is still hot.” She gestured to the food in front of me.

“So… what’s in the box?” I asked, still trying to pretend I didn’t know as I gently stuck my fork into a piece of pot roast, staring into the table as I carefully avoided showing emotion.

“Do you actually think that will work?” Crap. She had caught me in my lie. Then I realized she was looking toward my hand, and I was subconsciously dipping the food on the end of the fork into my wine glass.

“I don’t know, it’s just a flavor experiment.”

“Oh. I thought you were hoping the alcohol would kill the poison I put in your food.”

I froze. “What… poison?” I dropped my fork onto my plate.

She laughed. “Relax. I’m not trying to poison you.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “Honey, I love you. I would never hurt you.”

I relaxed, believing her words. “Sorry, I guess I’m just a little tense. To be honest with you, I did look in the box. What happened to those people? Were you in the FBI or something?”

She let out a loud, sharp laugh that made me jump. “You find evidence that your wife is a serial killer and that’s where your mind goes?”

I spit out the food I had just put in my mouth. I quickly took a swig of wine, gargling it around my mouth and spitting it back into the glass.

“I don’t think alcohol kills poison,” she repeated.

“Think… or know?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter; I didn’t poison your food.” She sighed, taking a moment to think before continuing. “I have… abandonment issues, I guess you could call them. People come into my life, I learn to love and trust them, and then they betray me and I feel… inspired.”

“Inspired? How so?” I swallowed a roll of bile rising up in my throat, learning forward with genuine curiosity.

“Well, Sweetheart… I kill them. And I make art from my pain.” She looked down at the brooch she had worn often when we first met, but hadn’t worn much once our relationship became serious. “This one is Molly.”

I was confused. “This… what? Molly?”

“Molly. My girlfriend before you. I really did care about her deeply,” she said sadly.

“What did you do to her?” I tried to remain calm as my eyes quickly swept across the room trying to locate the nearest weapon I could use in self defense.

“It was a crime of passion. I didn’t mean to do it.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Everything was perfect. And then one day I came home, and she wasn’t alone, and I lost it.” She covered her face, putting her hands over her eyes as she cried into her sleeves. Before I knew what was happening, I was next to her with my arms wrapped around her. When she finally stopped crying, I sat down in the seat next to her.

“What do you mean about your brooch? That it’s Molly?”

She looked down at it once more. “Her lover ended up in a ditch two towns over. I didn’t care about that body, about that person who took my beloved Molly from me. The police found her DNA on the corpse, but they never found her. They assumed she did it and fled the scene of the crime. They’re still looking for her to this day. And they’ll never find her.”

“What did you do with her?”

“I burnt her body down to a pile of ash, grinding up the bones until they were dust. Then I mixed the ashes with paint and created that.” She pointed to a beautiful landscape she had painted of rolling hills with the ocean off in the distance. “That was our favorite place to go to get away from the city. I painted that as homage to her. They’ll never find her body, because I turned it into something they can’t recognize. Art.” Through her light sniffling she sounded almost proud.

“And some of her ashes are in the brooch?” I was both nauseated and fascinated. In a strange way I felt almost proud of her for what she had pulled off, but I quickly pushed that thought from my mind.

“No, this is her hair. I kept a little so I could keep her close to me. I wove it into the shape of her favorite flower. I haven’t thought about her as much since you came into my life, though. You helped me heal.”

As frightened as I was to ask, I needed an answer to my next question. “How many others?”

“You mean how many others have I killed?” She thought for a moment. “You don’t really need to know that. It doesn’t matter.”

“Where’s Jenny?”

She chewed her lip thoughtfully, carefully considering what to say next. “Come see.”

Victoria led me to her studio, a barn towards the back of the property where I typically wasn’t allowed to go. She had always told me she didn’t like anyone seeing her creative process, so out of respect I had never so much as taken a peek inside. At first glance, it was what you would expect from an art studio in a barn. There were several tables with canvases, paint supplies, sewing materials, jewelry materials, and everything else an artist could ever dream of. She had a setup that would make anyone jealous, mind-blowing finished paintings and sculptures that didn’t fit the decor of our house scattered and displayed throughout. I followed her through the studio as I stared around in awe, almost forgetting the reason we were there. That is until she slid back the large rolling door hiding the back section of the barn.

 A putrid smell punched me in the face as soon as I entered. The room was almost empty with only the faintest bit of light filtering in between the boards that made up the wall. A small beam of light illuminated a body crumpled on the floor. Jenny.

“I gasped. “Victoria-“

“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Jenny is – was – my best friend, and this has been hard on me. Please be supportive.”

“She was the maid of honor at our wedding.” Victoria didn’t have any family; she was an only child, and her parents had passed away when she was ten (I now wondered if she had killed them, too). Her grandmother had been a big part of her life, but passed away before we met. My family and our friends had sat on both sides of the aisle, and while they supported our relationship and loved Victoria, Jenny was the only person who was there explicitly for her.

“I know, I know,” Victoria whined. “But we were talking and she said you were cute, and after what happened with Molly I got scared and jealous. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You killed her based off of that?” I questioned incredulously.

She glared. “You know, you have such beautiful hair. I hope I never have to cut it.”

“I said ‘til death do us part’ and I meant it. But this is Jenny.” I stared at what remained of our friend, feeling the tears start to fall down my face.

Victoria’s expression softened as she walked over and wrapped her arms around me. “I promise I’ll make us the most beautiful Christmas wreath out of her hair.”

Victoria kept her word; Jenny’s corpse disappeared, and by mid-December we had the most beautiful wreath I had ever seen hanging above our fireplace. It was hard to accept at first; Victoria had killed at least three people, which by definition made her a serial killer. Who knew how many others she had taken the lives of, for one petty reason or another.

As time went on, she explained to me that she was abused as a child. She had killed her parents, making out of their combined hair the necklace she had worn every day since we’d met. Even though they had hurt her, she still loved them. In a really messed up way it was sweet; a twisted sentiment. That’s what all of her art was, hair and ashes precisely woven into little keepsakes of those she had loved and lost. Contrary to my suspicions, I learned that her grandmother truly had died of natural causes, and I learned that the angel statue that stood protectively by our front door had been made from her ashes. Victoria was definitely the most creative person I had ever met.

I learned to empathize with Victoria; while I didn’t condone her killings, she did stop at my request. I made certain she felt secure in our relationship, and once she felt confident that I meant what I said, she was done for good. The natural materials she used for her art came from the earth rather than human remains; flowers, clay, sand, etc. I got my hair cut and asked for what was swept up to be put in a bag for my wife. My request earned me a strange look from the woman who cut my hair, but she obliged with no questions asked, and I gifted my hair to Victoria. She was delighted, and she wove a bracelet from it that she wore always. That was the last thing she ever made from a human body.

Three years passed blissfully. It looked like Victoria’s past crimes of passion were truly behind us. We were getting ahead of ourselves, painting a nursery for a baby that wasn’t even on the way yet when we heard the sirens. We both looked at each other, wordlessly understanding that they were here for her. We heard the SWAT team kick down the front door.

“Run,” I pleaded. “I’ll try to distract them and hold them off. You run as far and as fast as you can, and I promise I’ll find you. We’ll go on the run. They’ll never catch us.”

She shook her head sadly. “There’s nowhere to run.”

She gave me a gentle kiss before moving toward the door. I tried to grab her, but she slipped past me, holding her hands up above her head. I thought Jenny’s corpse was the worst thing I had ever seen, but seeing several tiny red lights trained on various lethal parts of my wife’s body somehow topped that. She told them that she would go with them willingly, letting them cuff her as she explained that I was upstairs and asked them not to hurt me. She denied that I knew anything, and I artfully played the surprised and horrified spouse as she went with them peacefully.

Our house became a crime scene. After a long night of questioning from various FBI agents, they took me back to grab some clothes and then dropped me at a hotel. Victoria confessed to her crimes as part of a plea deal to avoid the death sentence. She told them the names of everyone she killed, where and when she took their lives, and where their remains could be found. I realized the severity of the situation and the fact that my wife was a killer, but at the same time, she was still my wife. She wasn’t a cold blooded killer, but rather she was a killer with a heart that was too big. She wasn’t sick or twisted, she was sensitive. All she had needed to change was one person she could count on. I genuinely believed that with me by her side, it was all over, and she never would’ve killed again.

It turns out she had killed seventeen people total. I was surprised to hear such a large number, and I was disappointed in her. I was nauseated at the thought that those same hands that I had held as I slid a wedding band onto her finger as we exchanged vows had done all of these horrendous things to so many people. At the same time, I thought about everything else. Watching silent films, going for hikes, searching the forest for berries she could use as paint, the way her laugh sounded as she threw back her head, laughing as her hair blew crazy in the wind as our car barreled down the old country road leading to our house. All of that was over, her bright light extinguished from my life. Everyone thought they were seeing the real her for the first time as news reports spread, but I knew that I was the only one who had ever truly known her.

As the court case proceeded, it was revealed that Molly’s mother had always had her suspicions about Victoria. She had known about her daughter’s affair, which Victoria was unaware of. She knew who Molly had cheated with and the real reason her daughters DNA was on the corpse, and after it was found she went to the police to tell them her theory about Victoria. Despite the fact that she was correct, they only took the evidence of the affair as further proof that Molly had committed the crime and fled town. When Victoria moved from New York after Molly’s death, Molly’s mother wasn’t ready to let it go. She hired a series of private investigators to tail Victoria, bringing in new ones as each gave up after months of failing to find any incriminating evidence.

When she couldn’t find any more PI’s to work on the case, she decided to tail Victoria herself. That’s when she saw Victoria kill Jenny. She went to the police, telling them what she had witnessed, and they traced Jenny’s last recorded cell phone location to our house. Rather than arrest Victoria immediately, they worked on building a case against her. The FBI became involved, gathering all of the evidence they could before coming for her that fateful night.

I hated seeing her name dragged through the mud; her crimes were all over the news and on the front page of national papers. International news outlets began picking up the story, and her name was even trending on Twitter. I had to get a new number and legally change my name to keep people from bothering me. The worst of them wanted her art; they wanted the jewelry, the paintings, the sculptures, anything and everything. They offered me thousands, some millions, but I could never do that to her art. It was too personal. It was her life’s work, and I did everything I could to protect it. Everyone wanted a quote, an interview, anything I could give them to teach them more about the artist who killed people for art supplies.

That wasn’t why she did it; they weren’t just random people, they were people she loved who had hurt her, and I angrily tried to explain that to a particularly aggressive reporter outside of the courthouse on the third day of her trial before Victoria’s lawyer ushered me away. He told me to never speak about it publicly, that it was in my best interest to distance myself from the situation as much as possible and play dumb about anything I may or may not know. He told me that Victoria wanted me to move on with my life and forget about her, but I couldn’t. That was my wife, for Christ’s sake. So I requested a meeting with her, and she agreed with the stipulation that it was the last time we would ever see each other.

The visiting room had several guards stationed in various positions outside. She was a high security, high profile case, and there wasn’t a chance in hell they would let her out of their sight. I was surprised that they let me see her at all, but she had a good lawyer, and I think they assumed that she would tell me new information to help in their case against her. After walking through the prison for what felt like hours, the guard escorting me opened a door, and there she was. For the first time in weeks, there was my beautiful beloved right in front of me. I wanted to run over and hold her, but I knew better. I calmly sat down across from her.

She smiled. “Hi there.”

“Victoria.” My voice cracked, overcome with emotion. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” she said wistfully. “I wish things were different. If I had known you would come along back when I was a little girl, they probably would be.”

“I’ll always be by your side. No matter what,” I promised.

“You kept your end of the deal; death did us part,” she smiled grimly. “Seventeen deaths, to be exact.”

“I don’t condone any of what you did. But the public will never know you like I know you.” I held out my hand to reveal the bracelet made out of my hair. “They said it was okay for you to have this.”

She sighed, carefully fastening it to her wrist. “I’ve really never deserved you, have I?”

“You’re perfect,” I told her, and I meant it.

“If only that were true.” She shifted in her chair, leaning forward. “Move on with your life. Forget about me. I’m never getting out of here, but you still have a chance to live a good life without all of this drama.”

“I love you,” I told her.

“I love you too,” she replied. “Now get out of here, and don’t ever come back.”

I took her advice and left. The only problem was that I had nowhere to go. Our house had been overrun by reporters and other nosy people trying to get pictures of the newly infamous murder farm. Others trashed the property, leaving graffiti and toilet papering the trees. I moved all of Victoria’s art to a storage unit a few towns away where I knew it would be safe, donating nearly everything else inside. I called the fire department to volunteer the farm for training, and they burned it to the ground in a training exercise a few days later. With that, I was free and ready for my much needed fresh start.

On my way out of town, I stopped for food at a diner that was all too familiar. The owner looked at me knowingly as I entered, and I gave her a solemn nod. As I got out my laptop, she came over and set a cup of coffee down on the table beside me.

©  Alex Keathley 2019