Seven Days with a Corpse The Love I Never Needed

His daughter screamed. The family portrait she'd painted at preschool slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor alongside her little bunny sippy cup. She turned to run, but Rosalind snatched her up by the arm. The child wailed, tears streaming down her face. Rosalind slapped her hard across the cheek. "Shut up, you little brat!" "You and your father are both useless garbage. If either of you had been worth a damn, your daddy wouldn't have had to go chasing after my husband!" Rosalind's hand was brutal. A single blow knocked loose several of the baby teeth that had already been wobbling. My soul screamed without sound. I threw myself at Rosalind, kicking and clawing in a frenzy of hysteria. She'd killed me so fast. So fast that only now was the reality catching up to me. "Let go! Let go of my daughter!" "Warren and Tristan are the ones who sinned. What right do you have to take it out on me and my child?" "Go kill them! Go kill THEM!" The fury of my spirit actually stirred a faint cold breeze in the physical world. Rosalind set the child down. The girl had clearly wet herself from terror. Rosalind smiled at me. "Julian, I just thought of a much more interesting game." She grabbed my daughter and bound her roughly to a dining room chair with rope. Then she took socks from the balcony drying rack and stuffed them into the child's mouth, layer after layer, until my little girl's face turned a deep, suffocating red and she couldn't make a single sound. After that, Rosalind emptied the refrigerator. Every last scrap of food. Not a crumb left behind. When she was finished, she picked up my phone again and typed out a text to Warren. "Honey, Lily Abbott and I had something come up—heading back to my hometown! Won't be home for a week!" "Don't bother coming back either! Go take care of whatever you need to! Come home Monday and I'll have a surprise waiting for you!" Rosalind finished typing, then dangled the phone screen in front of my corpse's face. "Julian, let's make a bet." "Let's see if your husband reads this text and notices something's off. Rushes home to save your daughter." "Or if he spends another week tangled up with mine, and comes back just in time to collect the bodies." When Rosalind sent that message, a sliver of relief cut through my panic. Because she'd made a fatal mistake. I didn't have a hometown. Warren and I had both grown up at St. Catherine's Orphanage until we were twelve. Then the Henson family found him, and he became an heir to a fortune overnight. On our wedding day, so I wouldn't feel the sting of having no family, he'd hired an entire AI team to reconstruct the faces of parents I'd never met, based on my own features. He'd even used holographic projections to let them witness our ceremony. My spirit drifted toward the window and looked down. Warren's car had already pulled up to the front gate of the complex. The moment he saw the word "hometown," he would know something was wrong. He'd come upstairs to check, at the very least. Even if he ran into Rosalind, even if there was a confrontation, my daughter would have a chance. She wouldn't be left to starve to death, tied to that chair. But the second Warren read the text, he tapped the screen dark. "Julian says he's taking the kid back to his hometown for a week." He hooked a finger under Tristan's chin and pulled him into a long, deep kiss. His eyes were still glazed with desire that hadn't cooled. "Guess this gorgeous body of mine is all yours this week." He didn't stop to wonder where my "hometown" was. He didn't stop to wonder why my messages had been so strange all day. He just sent back a single, affectionate reply: "Baby, I'll miss you."

Then he yanked the steering wheel hard and turned back toward the hotel. Warren and I had been married for eight years. As a spouse, he was attentive in every possible way. He remembered all my preferences, every little quirk about my body, and he always knew how to make me feel valued. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries—he never missed one, always showing up with lavish wire transfers, luxury cars, designer watches. Two years ago, when I broke my leg in a car accident, he knelt outside the hospital room and begged the doctor, forehead pressed to the floor. He pleaded with them to save my life no matter what—said that even if I ended up in a vegetative state, he would never leave my side. Everyone said he loved me more than he loved himself. But he could never cut things off with Tristan. Even though the two of them were constantly seen together in public, their names trending online as some kind of couple. Even though I'd caught them in bed together more than once. Warren could still look me dead in the eye and explain it away without flinching. He and Tristan were both married, he'd say. They were just best friends—gender didn't matter. And what they did together was nothing more than "practice," just keeping in shape so they could better satisfy their actual partners back home. I asked Warren for a divorce countless times. Every time, he swore up and down he'd change. But every time, the only thing that changed was how well he hid where he and Tristan met up. So when I discovered yet another secret rendezvous between them three months later, I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. I didn't even frown. Instead, I quietly found an offshore trust company. I opened a trust fund overseas in our daughter's name. Then, like an ant carrying crumbs one grain at a time, I began transferring everything Warren had given me over the years—the cars, the savings—bit by bit into that account. My plan was simple: wait for the right moment, then take our child and vanish from Warren's world entirely. What I never could have imagined was that when I was just one step away from freedom, I would die under the knife of Tristan's wife. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to scream, let alone beg for my life. Rosalind had chased after Tristan for eight years, been married to him for five, and given him everything she had. But Tristan had the audacity to flirt openly with Warren at her own mother's funeral. Even then, I'd had a feeling that Rosalind would snap someday. I just never imagined that when she finally lost her mind, the first person she'd want to kill would be me. Darkness fell and lifted. Lifted and fell again. Forty-eight hours slipped by in the blink of an eye. The little girl tied to the chair finally worked her small hands free from the ropes. For two days and two nights, she had cycled through crying, sleeping, and struggling. Crying, sleeping, struggling. Sometime past midnight on the second night, she thrashed so hard that the chair toppled over, and her head slammed against the floor. She lost consciousness briefly—but the impact knocked the sock loose from her mouth. She gasped in huge, ragged breaths, sobbing and calling out for Mommy and Daddy in a broken, hiccupping voice. Meanwhile, her birth mother, Warren Henson, was wrapped up with his so-called best friend. Two days later, the girl finally freed herself from that chair. But the terror and hunger had taken their toll. She couldn't stand. Her legs wouldn't hold her. All she could do was drag herself across the floor, following the trail of dried blood, inch by inch, toward the phone that had fallen from my hand. After two days and two nights, the battery was down to five percent. Using the speed-dial shortcut I'd taught her, she called Warren. The first time, no one answered. The second time, no one answered. The battery drained lower with every passing second. So did her chances of survival. On the third try, Warren finally picked up—but his voice was laced with barely concealed irritation.

"Sweetheart, can whatever it is wait? I'm a little busy right now!" "Mommy..." Her daughter's voice was raw, barely a whisper. Warren froze for a second, then softened his tone as much as he could. "Lily, baby, Mommy misses you too!" "Just be a good girl and play with Daddy for a few days, okay? Mommy will see you on Monday!" "Mommy, Lily's tummy hurts... Lily's so thirsty... Daddy melted, Mommy. Please come home..." Lily was only five. She didn't understand what death was. All she knew was that the blood pooling beneath me looked like a melted strawberry slushie. Warren didn't understand what Lily meant. "Be a good girl, Lily. Mommy's really busy right now. If you're hungry, go find Daddy, okay?" "And you can't eat melted ice cream! Tell Daddy to buy you a new one! Be good, Lily! Mommy loves you!" Warren hung up. My phone drained its last sliver of battery and went dark. Afterward, Warren and Tristan lay in bed, each lighting a cigarette. Something seemed to nag at Warren. He grabbed his phone and called me back. "The number you have dialed is currently powered off..." Warren's expression soured. He tried again. Same message. Powered off. He stubbed out the cigarette in a hurry and reached for the dress draped over the chair. "No, I need to go home and check. My husband's phone is off! Something about my daughter's call felt wrong." My desperate soul caught a glimmer of light. If Warren came home now, Lily still had a chance. But Tristan caught Warren's arm. "It's one phone call. What could possibly be wrong?" "He probably went somewhere and forgot to charge it." "If you're really worried, just send him a WhatsApp message. Problem solved." "Your husband and my wife are both gone for once. Can't we just enjoy this one week together?" Warren hesitated, then set the clothes back down. He picked up his phone and messaged me on WhatsApp instead. "Babe, why is your phone off?" "Lily just called me. Is everything okay?" The message went through. The other side immediately showed typing... A few seconds later, several photos from an airport appeared. "Everything's fine. Took Lily out for a little trip. That kid was messing around with my phone again." "Gotta go, the plane's about to take off." That day, before Rosalind left, she had logged into my WhatsApp on her own phone. Those messages were typed from her dim kitchen, a whetstone scraping steadily against a blade. She said she wanted to make it look like I was still alive for as long as possible. That way, when Warren finally saw my body, the agony would cut even deeper. And somehow, those replies, riddled with holes, were enough to put Warren completely at ease. He settled back into the king-sized hotel bed, comfortable as ever. He reached over and draped an arm around Tristan's shoulders. "You were right. My husband took my daughter on a trip. Looks like it's just the two of us this whole week." Over the days that followed, Warren and Tristan let themselves go completely. They spent nearly twelve hours a day tangled in the sheets. Every morning and every night, Warren sent me a "good morning" and "good night" on WhatsApp, and Rosalind dutifully replied with scenic photos. Some of those photos still had watermarks on them. Warren never once questioned a thing. At first, I spent every day hoping Warren would catch the flaws in those messages and come home to save our daughter. But now, my spirit hovered beside my dying child. Numb. Hopeless. Warren hadn't failed to notice the inconsistencies. He simply craved the thrill Tristan gave him. So he chose to lie to himself. On Friday, Rosalind sent Warren a picture of the family portrait Lily had drawn. The same one she'd brought home the day I died. Warren's eyes welled with tears, overcome with emotion. He decided on the spot to get the drawing tattooed over his heart. Tristan went with him to the tattoo parlor. When the artist reached the part of the design that was me, Tristan snipped off a strand of his own hair and had the tattoo artist mix it into the ink before pressing it into Warren's skin. Warren called him shameless. But he didn't stop it. The tattoo was finished on Monday. Warren sent a photo to my WhatsApp, saying he couldn't wait to see the surprise I'd prepared for him. By then, Rosalind had already pressed a freshly sharpened knife against Tristan's throat. Tristan had arrived at the house first. Over WhatsApp, she kept urging Warren to hurry upstairs. Warren suspected nothing. He pushed open the front door, gifts in hand. The stench of decay nearly knocked him off his feet. What greeted his eyes was my body, already bloated and rotting, intestines exposed. And curled against my chest, our daughter.