Five years ago, Ava got married to Jeff. During the early years of marriage you couldn’t get the two away from each other. But then, Ava got pregnant. When she told Jeff he acted surprised and delighted, but she knew by the tone of his voice when he said,

“Oh joy! A little baby boy or girl of our own,” that he wasn’t as thrilled as he had tried to display. Quite the contrary. He was mortified and even disgusted. Why? Ava and Jeff hadn’t been intimate since the night of their honeymoon on October 31st of 2006. He knew that this baby was not his, and he didn’t want it. But he wanted Ava; he loved her more than anything.

A few months went by and Ava’s stomach had grown into a mountain compared to her petite body. Jeff saw this and it angered him but, he loved her, so, he bit his tongue for a few more months. On the night of January eleventh, Ava went into labor. Jeff rushed her… well I shouldn’t say rushed… driving in the winters of Killington, Vermont are like asking to skid off the road into a snow bank and freeze to death. So, Jeff quickly but cautiously drove Ava to the nearest hospital. When they got there, the nurse took Ava straight to a delivery room. Jeff couldn’t bare the sight of the kid just yet. He waited in the waiting room.

Jeff tweeded his thumbs for a couple hours until, finally, the doctor walked out of the long hallway, which contained the maternity and delivery rooms.

“Mr. um… I didn’t catch your name and I didn’t have time to look at your wife’s file…”

“Jeffery Johnson,”

“Well, Mr. Johnson… I don’t quite know how to put this. Um… Your baby,” he was cut off by Jeff.

“Not my baby. My wife was um… raped,” he said, of course he knew that was a lie and that Ava had cheated on him. He didn’t want the doctor, or anybody for that matter, to know this though.

“Well, the baby didn’t make it,” he said in a soft tone.

“Really?! Yes! I mean no! That’s terrible! How will I ever go on living?” Jeff said in a sarcastic voice. The doctor gave him a look of disbelief and returned to the room where Ava lay holding the stiff body of her baby. Umbilical cord still wrapped around it’s neck.

Jeff convinced Ava to leave her baby behind at the hospital and drove her home. He was much more talkative on the drive home. Ava was not. She slipped into a deep depression and this hurt Jeff. He didn’t like her when she was like this, so, he convinced her to start jogging. This seemed to help her. She started talking to Jeff a lot more. One night she asked him a question that he didn’t know how to answer,

“Why weren’t you upset when the baby died, Jeff?”

“Um…” he staggered, “I was I just… um… Ava, I can’t lie to you. I know you cheated on me and that’s how you got pregnant.”

“Are you kidding me?! Jeff, do you remember your 28th birthday?” she said in disbelief.

“No, I had a lot to drink. Why?”

“That’s the night our baby was conceived… I can’t believe you!” She got out of bed started to leave the room.

“Wait! Ava I didn’t know I’m sorry!” he said, trying to save what was left of his marriage.

“No Jeff, it’s over. You should know better by now than to make stupid assumptions. I’m done. Goodbye Jeff!” She slammed the bedroom door behind her. He listened to her as she skated down the stairs and out the front door. That’s it. She was gone.

Ava ran three miles to her dad’s house. She couldn’t drive Jeff’s automatic Subaru and she liked to jog. It cleared her mind. When she arrived at her dad’s house she said she couldn’t stay for long. She said she had a plain to catch. She asked her dad if she could stay in the family’s summer home on Star Island in Miami. He said sure and off she went without even saying goodbye.

When she arrived at Miami airport she got off and felt refreshed, she ripped off her North Face coat and threw it in the trashcan outside of the Dunkin’ Donuts. She knew she wouldn’t be returning to the cold weather for a while. When she got to the summer house she tipped her cabbie and sent him on his way. Underneath the Garden gnome dressed in a Miami Dolphins jersey, was the spare key to the house. When she opened the large wooden door to the house, she slipped off her Nike running shoes and went to the bedroom to unpack. While unpacking her suite case, she grabbed her Addidas running shirt and Nike running shorts. This brought her back to the cold mornings in Vermont. She slipped in her running attire and swiftly slipped out the door and on to the asphalt.

On her run she passed many houses. Gray ones, tan ones, white ones, and a black one, but all big. Star Island housed some of America’s richest. She had a bad feeling about the black house, so she decided to turn and head another way. She came to the gate keeper’s box at the entrance to the island and stopped to talk to the gate keeper.

“Why hello young lady. Don’t tell me your old man Jaxon’s daughter!”

“Yes sir, Ava Jaxon at your service,” she replied.

“I remember you when you were just a small… oh watch out,” a man quickly buzzed threw the entrance in a red Ferrari. But, he had time to wink at Ava. He continued into the driveway of the black house. The gate closed behind him and Ava lost sight of him.

“Who was that?” she asked the gate keeper.

“Harold Gates. He comes down every year with some new girl.” He replied

“Oh I see, well I got to go sir.” And she was off.

She started running every morning always stopping to talk to the gate keeper, and to secretly watch the black house. But, one day the gate was opened, and that bothered Ava. She didn’t like that it was open. Why was it open? She wondered to herself. She decided to check it out for herself. When she got to the end of the driveway she looked up and saw the red Ferrari with the trunk door open. She couldn’t help herself. She needed to see what was in it. She slowly moved closer and noticed blonde hair flowing out of the trunk. When she got closer she saw a body covered in cuts and deep wounds. Surely it was a doll, she thought to herself. She slowly extended her arm until it touched the face of the body. What she felt was not plastic though. It was skin. Before she could turn and run she was hit on the back of the head with something hard. Maybe a baseball bat or even a large stick.

When she awoke she couldn’t move. She was bound by duct tape to a wooden chair. She opened her eyes to find Harold sitting feet away from her.

“Morning sunshine.” He said with an ear to ear grin on his face.

“Why did you do this?” She asked him.

“You know my secret baby. You saw Brittany. I can’t have you running around telling everyone, now can I?”
“I swear I won’t say a word!” She said. Lying of course.

“You’re a terrible liar babe. Now, who knows you’re here?” he asked.

“No one, I swear,”

“If you continue to lie I might have to hurt you babe. I don’t want to have to do that,” Harold said.

“The gate keeper! He’s the only one, I swear!”

“Okay. Good. I’m going to go pay a visit to the gate keeper. Don’t move baby,” and he left.

Ava saw this as a chance to escape. She tried to get up, but the duct tape held the chair to the floor. Luckily, from all the running she has been doing, Ava’s legs were stronger than the duct tape. One last push and the chair came free. Now crouched over, with a chair attached to her by her abdomen, arms, and legs, she slowly waddled to the fridge. She felt that she could slam the chair into the fridge to break it off. One, two, three, slam! The chair crumbled when it was thrown against the fridge door. Thank god for the humid Florida air, she thought to herself. Now free, she needed a way out. Slam! What she had heard was the door in the other room slam.

“Honey! I’m home!” Harold called from the other room. She grasped a chef’s knife off the kitchen counter and waited behind the door for Harold to come through. When he did, she stabbed the knife into his stomach and he fell to the floor.

“I thought we had something special babe,” he said, gasping for air. She said nothing and slowly walked out off the room and through the front door. Just as she thought she had gotten away, Harold burst through the door. She started running. Surely, he couldn’t run with a knife wound threw his abdomen. But, I guess when life in prison is a strong possibility, people can do anything. He started after her, quickly getting closer. She turned and saw the knife that had once been in his stomach, was now in his hand.

Just as Harold was about to swing he tripped over the curb of his driveway. He went down hard and to Ava’s luck, broke his leg. He could no longer run. She saw this as an opportunity to kill him and finally end all of this. Bad decision. When she got closer he lunged at her grabbing her leg. She fell to the ground as he sunk his teeth into her calf. She could no longer stand, let alone run. Harold raised the knife above his head and drove it down into Ava’s chest. She felt the life slip away from her. She lay there bleeding as Harold picked up her dead body and tossed it into a large trash bag along with Brittany, the blonde from the trunk. He carried it to the beach, which usually took 30 seconds on a count of it was 500 feet from his house. But, he couldn’t move as fast as he would like to on a count of his broken leg.
When he finally got to the beach he walked out to his waist where he could make sure the bag floated off into the middle of the Atlantic. This was a bad decision on Harold’s part. Harold had lived on the beach his whole life, but never learned to swim. A current caught his legs and he slipped. He screamed for help but the only one on the island was the gate keeper, who Harold had recently killed and already disposed of. Harold slowly drowned and let go of the bag. He sunk to the bottom and the bag drifted out to sea.
The world would never know the story of what happed to Ava Jaxon, Brittany Whats-her-name, or Harold Gates. Ava finally got to see her baby again. As for Jeff he found another woman and had a baby girl with her. He named her Ava after his ex-wife that he never knew what happened too and still loved dearly.