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Trigger Warnings at the bottom of the post. This one's dark as hell, so let me know if I miss anything.

The original version below features a yandere wife, but it's a pretty simple rework to switch to a husband. Let me know if you'd like a hand with any revisions. My general note for this character is that they are exhausted and traumatized.

The date is December 27th, 2022. My name is [Y/N] [Note: Cut the following line if male reader]…although I suppose I'll go back to my maiden name soon.

Last night, I murdered my wife Rebecca. This is my confession.

You probably think my wife is the victim here because she's the dead one. Maybe she is. I don't know. Rebecca did love me, in her way. I don’t think she ever really wanted to hurt me. It was just an unfortunate side effect of keeping me in her life.

We met in our senior year of college and began dating shortly afterward. She grew very attached, very quickly. I was uncomfortable moving as fast as she wanted, and it seemed like she couldn’t slow down. When I decided to break things off, I had no reason to be afraid of her. Three weeks after graduation, she kidnapped me.

I was tied to a chair for the first few weeks. It was six months before I was allowed to leave the basement. A year before I went out in daylight. Almost two years before I was allowed in public and never alone.

There isn't much proof of what happened back then. My wounds are healed or scarred over. Rebecca’s tools are lost or discarded. Or maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe she just tucked them away in the attic like Christmas lights — not needed for today, but always ready for the future.

I wrote in a diary for a few months. [Darkly playful] Day 56 of my captivity. But I knew she read it, and she knew that I knew. So it just became another game between us.

After graduation, I had moved back to my hometown, halfway across the country from my college friends, and my relationship with my parents was strained. The only person who really missed me was my sister Alice. She looked for me, and she almost found me.

I didn't even know my sister was dead for three months. We were fighting, Rebecca and I — we often fought back then — and she screamed it at me. She apologized afterward, for telling me in the heat of the moment.

My wife buried Alice in the garden, and I planted a rose bush over her. Sometimes I think about the roots tangled up in her bones. Every Valentine’s Day, Rebecca would cut roses from it and give them to me.

There were opportunities to escape, I suppose. Things like that are always much clearer in hindsight. But you can't always see them in the moment. When Rebecca left me alone, I knew she could walk back in at any time. When I worked in the garden, she could be watching me through the window. The uncertainty paralyzed me, along with the knowledge of how far she would go.

She brought home pets for me. They were her best gifts – because I adored each and every one – and they were her worst gifts because she used them as insurance. No one questions a dead dog.

My opportunities to escape grew more frequent over the years, but I was well trained by then. Further, I was terribly afraid. How much could I really prove? How much damage could she do before the police arrested her? If I stayed, I could contain the destruction. She was almost normal if I was compliant.

After six years, we married. I signed our wedding forms with my left hand. I read in a book once that it wasn’t legal, if you didn’t sign with your dominant hand. I liked the thought that maybe we weren’t married at all. I liked to imagine how much that would unsettle her. I never checked to see if it was true. I had no interest in the truth.

She took me out much more after that. I never thought of myself as much of an [actor/actress], but we put on quite a show together, Rebecca and I. The perfect couple.

We continued like that for years, and she seemed happy. Life was easier when she was happy.

Maybe Rebecca got bored of me. I was bored of myself. I was almost a blank slate by then. Nothing left a mark on me. Maybe she felt settled and secure. Maybe she could sense my distance and was looking for a new way to tie us together. Regardless, she decided she wanted a child.

[F4F or M4M Only] I hardly existed, and she had a criminal record. No one was going to give us a baby. I was grateful for that.

I did want children, once upon a time, but not then. Not with her. I couldn’t even imagine the twisted mockery of a childhood we would have strung together.

I told her a thousand reasons why I didn’t want a child. I was convinced I had successfully dissuaded her. I was so sure that she had let it go. I was very good at lying to myself by then.

She hadn’t done anything to anyone in so long. I really thought I was the only one in danger. If I had known what she was planning, I like to think I would have killed her sooner. Or finally called the police. I don’t know…something. Maybe that’s a lie, too.

On Christmas morning, she came home with a baby — small and healthy and still covered in his mother’s blood. She called him my present. I smiled and thanked her.

I barely slept that night. When Rebecca asked, I blamed it on the baby.

I couldn’t sleep the next night, either. They had featured a missing woman on the news earlier that evening. She was 9 months pregnant, and she had disappeared on Christmas Eve. Her husband and parents were holding a press conference. They must have known she was gone right away, and they were standing next to the most beautiful photo of her. She looked a little like me, a little like Alice. I thought about her son growing up without knowing she had ever existed. Calling her murderer Mom. Wondering why his parents couldn’t love him.

I eased myself out of bed and whispered to the kitchen to get a glass of water — I always had an excuse ready — and a knife that was small enough to hide in my pocket. I crept back to our bedroom and into our bed. We were face to face when I plunged the knife into the hollow of her throat and dragged it across to the artery. I waited until Rebecca stopped moving, and then I waited for another hour. Then, I called the police to report a murder and return a missing child.

I thought it would feel good, finally being free of her. It just feels strange.

Trigger Warnings: Violence, Kidnapping, Child Kidnapping, Mentioned Death of a Pregnant Woman