The Never List

could even call it a dream. It was more like a tormenting memory that haunted my sleep.
    I was upstairs in Jack’s house, and he was testing me. Finally giving me the chance I had wanted and had been working toward, carefully and methodically.
    Without warning and in complete silence, he guided me off the rack, out of the library, and over to the front door of the house. Almost instinctively, I turned back from where I had come, looking back in through the door of the library, taking one, almost mournfullast glance at the rack, hoping the memory of the pain would inspire me in this moment.
    The wood seemed to shine, almost to glow. The sunlight burning through the window over it gave it a magical gloss. I turned my head slowly to look forward again at the door to the outside. I had never seen it open before. My feet must have moved, but in the dream I glided over, unable to stop, unable to control my own movements. A ghost, a chimera, I was nothing but air.
    Jack pointed forward, saying, “You want to see her, right?”
    He had told me before, taunting me I thought, that one day he would dig up Jennifer’s body, just for me, one day when he finally believed I had reached the level where I could be trusted. Trusted to see it. Touch it if I wanted to. Lie down next to it.
    I couldn’t tell if he was threatening me with the same death, however gruesome it might have been, that he offered her.
    I looked through the door, almost afraid of the open space it harbored, after all this time. I had spent months building up Jack’s trust in me, making him believe that I was accepting my “fate,” that I would never run away. I had built up that trust at a high cost, and I wasn’t about to lose everything I had put into it now.
    But was this the moment it had all been leading up to? One false move, and I could be dead. Dead or free. There were no other options, and there was a chance they were one and the same. Either way, nothing would be the same after this. This was a turning point. My heart felt as though it might burst.
    The opportunity had arrived unexpectedly. I hadn’t thought it would come this soon, so even though I had been planning, I hadn’t planned this far. I didn’t know if the time was right. I hadn’t eaten in two days, so my brain could hardly calculate the odds, as if there were enough data points in this situation to run any numbers. It didn’t help that I was fully naked and still in pain. I was utterly vulnerable, yet utterly determined.
    I had believed my mind was strong, but I knew in my heart I had wavered. That there had been times over these last months when I thought maybe I should give in and accept that this was the rest of my life. That I would stay here as Jack’s faithful servant until the day he decided to kill me. That if I didn’t fight back, even in my head, he would be merciful at least on the physical punishments. Then I could live happily with the little bit of release I had earned.
    Through the open door, I saw a small porch and beyond it a dirt driveway with a large red barn at the end. The barn was tall and run-down, with peeling paint showing the worn boards beneath it. Its door was cracked open about two feet, but all I could see was darkness within.
    I didn’t immediately notice the body. But eventually my eyes, unaccustomed to taking in such a large depth of field, made their way there. On the ground, to the left of the open door, was a blue tarp, carefully wrapped around a human figure.
    My heart nearly stopped when I saw that the discolored and bloated object jutting out at the end of the tarp was a foot. It was almost unrecognizable as part of a human body. It was dirty, the earth caked around the swollen ankles and toes. He had clearly buried her without a casket of any sort.
    He pushed me through the open door, and I started to walk slowly toward the body. Even though I had known for many months that he had killed Jennifer, and I thought I had mourned her, somehow seeing her there escalated my grief and fear, compounded it by a power of ten. And yet pushing back wave after wave of regret and pain, I drew my focus back to myself. Was this the moment? Should I run? Should I look at her? My sweet Jennifer.
    As I always did at that moment in the dream, I woke up in a cold sweat, Jack’s laughter echoing in my head. I sat up, went into the small, antiseptic bathroom of the hotel, and drank glass afterglass of cold water. I went back to the bed and sat down, not