Disclaimer: Not mines, anything mention by name isn't mines. Except the OCs.

I don't know how I let this go so far. I was originally just doing this for shits and giggles, but I never expected it would snowballed so bad that it would end up like this.

It all started back when Jack and I made a bet. He'd bet me $40 that I couldn't get the town's weird girl to fall for me in 3 weeks. It was 40 bucks easy, how could I turn down the offer? And who was this weird girl? Her name was Ann Sawyer and she was known for being a involuntary loner, the kind that's painfully shy and has no friend. She might as well live home alone as her folks are almost always at work, and as far as school goes her grades are in the shitter and is pretty much on her way to becoming a high school drop-out. She's someone who has no one looking out for her or even has a large safety net or support group to watch her back and protect her from people who might use her. If that 40 wasn't taunting me in the face, I might have almost felt bad for what I was about to do.

I 'bump' into her at the library, making pretend that I was interested in whatever book she was pulling from the shelf, try some small talk before asking her out to dinner. She was pretty surprise and why shouldn't she? Girls like her weren't really my type. My 'type' being mostly cheap girls you find at the local bar and Ann wasn't someone who was gonna jump into bed with me just cuz I bought her a drink, which makes it all the more challenging and a bit more exciting to. I had finally sweet talked her into agreeing to go to dinner with me and I could already feel those 40 bucks in my back pocker.

First date in and I'm already starting to hate this girl. Her habit of brushing her soft, brown hair behind her ears, the way she nervously bites her lip, and the way her green eyes looked at me through her thick glasses making them all timid and sweet. She was truly an innocent in all this and again, if I didn't want that money, I almost feel sorry for her.

I win the 40 easily in one week, but something inside me told me I could still have some fun with this girl. Originally I was only going to keep her on her toes for a couple of dates before ditching her, but something motivates me to take it further than a few dates.

I start manipulating her into thinking she's in love with me, telling her how she's helping me learn to open up and love again after my mom left me and my old man when I was 6. Ann laps it all up, feeling like she's doing something meaningful with her life for the first time. Once I know for sure she's well and fully emotionally invested into me, I cheat on her right out in the open and make sure she's there to see it. I seriously started laughing after seeing the look of pure anguish on her face, then started feeling a little bit bad about it before spinning it back on her, implying it was all her fault because she won't hurry up and sleep with me.

"She doesn't mean a thing to me, honest," I told her, "but, c'mon babe, I'm going crazy not being able to have you. Don't you see how much I wanna be close to you?"

She's starting to cave, and I balances it out with a promise to never do it again. She bought it, hook, line, and sinker. But from that day on whenever she looked at me, I could see a level of mistrust in her eyes and I try my damnest to not start laughing at her every time.

We keep going out until one day where she said those fateful words.

"I love you." Not the first time Ann said that but this time the tone was different.

I smiled ear to ear, cuz I know that night was gonna be a good night, except for her. I knew she was a virgin so I made particulary sure to be as rough and painful with her as possible. I was gonna stamp out any ill-conceived notions she had that your first time is always the best and most sacred experience in the world.

"Ace?" She grunts as I trust in and out of her, "Is it suppose to hurt this much?" She asked with a small pained cry.

"Oh what, suddenly you're the expert here?" I asked feigning annoyance. "How about you shut up and let me finish what I'm doing."

"Ace?" She asked again after we had finished up. "Was I... good?"

"Yeah you were okay. I've had better though." I told shrugging.

Her bottom lips starts trembling and she splutters a apology. "I can do better next. I swear!"

"I'll hold you to that." I muttered, pretending her words have placated me. "You didn't exactly rock my world either."

The fear in her eyes at the thought of losing me made me smile inside. Rolling my eyes, I pulled her to him, like I was trying to mend things. I swear, I was starting to enjoy this way too much.

By the time I introduced Ann to the boys, she's a spastic mess. She can't go one sentence without tripping over her words or putting her foot in her mouth, and by the end of the day, everyone was barely tolerating her. It took all of my's self-control to not laugh at her then and there.

I did laugh when we were alone again. I call her dumb and stupid, and she believes me. When she starts crying, I calls her a pussy, and she believes that too.

Things start heating up in 'Nam and already I could feel the draft coming. Devising a plan, I managed to convince Ann to sleep with me again, an activity she grown to hate cuz I always left her feeling used, but I had promise I would be more gentle with her this and I did well on that promise.

I also secretly promise to forget to wear a rubber to.

A month later and Ann breaks down in tears in front of me with the news. I pretend to be upset, and I was to an extent, but I wass more relieved than anything that I got an out as far as the draft goes, just in case. Can't say my old man felt the same way when he found out.

"What were you thinking boy?! Were you even thinking at all!?" He practically screamed at me all red in the face.

I hung my head in shame, feigning remorse. "I know Pop, but I think Ann might've…"

"Might've what?" Junior proded, not so thunderous now.

"Fuck me, I think she got knocked up on purpose." I run a hand through my hair. "I mean, I mention the draft, and then this? It can't be all a coincidence."

Those words make Junior mad at Ann rather than me and it got him to see the upside to the situation.

"Well, you already know what you have to do." He told me, his tone soften now.

"Already got it planned out Pop." I told him.

Junior ended up personally arranging our tiny wedding, even going as far as offering Ann's parents a ride to the courthouse, which they take him up on.

"Take care of her," Her father said to me, sadness and accusation in his and his wife's eyes, like they suspected my game.

"It's a promise," I told them, fingers crossed.

Daddy-in-law frowns.

The wedding was a small affair, over in twenty minutes, and the reception wasn't much better. No one was hundred percent happy with the situation, and it showed. Toasts were made half-heartedly to Ann, and sympathetically to me. I did enjoy seeing how dim the light in her eyes were now.

Things became half normal for a while. Me and Ann had moved into a one floor house with two bedrooms, a kitchen area, and a outhouse. It was a shithole that made the Chamber's house look like a home from the View.

I started working a the Auto Shop and Ann got a job as a waitress at the Blue Point. We'd hardly saw each other, both of us working extra shifts for the baby. In hindsight, it was probably the best time in our marriage.

Then Eyeball got drafted, and I was already starting to feel worse for weasling out of it.

"I gotta do this man." He told me. "And besides, you got a family to look after now."

Being reminded of my wife made me feel worse, and I started cheating on Ann again to get an escape out of the life I had created. Besides, I always found comfort in strangers, and the woman I had married was more like an outlet. Who needs therapy when you got a human punching bag? The hurt in Ann's sparkling greens never failed to take the edge off my depression.

Then Ann miscarried.

"It just one of those things that happen," was how the doctor explained the baby's loss.

My emotions were all over the place. I wasn't overly excited to be a dad, but that was still my kid y'know, and there was a pain in my chest that I can't shake. I was now possibly eligible for the draft again too, and I'm stuck married to an idiot for no good reason. It's a bad day all around.

For three days, Ann lied in bed and cried while I came home from work and stared at a wall. Things would probably go on like that for a lot longer if news that Eyeball's platoon had gone missing and, after a extensive search, was declared missing in action and presumed deceased. It became too much to take.

"I should have been there with him." I yelled at the wall before turning to look at Ann, tears forming in my eyes. "If you weren't such a sorry excuse for a wife, none of this would have happen!"

Ann bawled louder.

"Shut the fuck up!" I screamed. "Don't think you get the right to cry right now! I do the right thing and marry ya, and you can't even fulfill your part of the bargain."

"I didn't mean to!" she sobbed, pulling herself to her knees on the mattress.

I don't know why but the phrase struck a negative chord with me. One minute she's blubbering at about my height, the next she's sprawled on the ground, holding her face. Shock permeates through the room, and the world was still until she stood up.

"I'm leaving," she croaked, and it's like she was thinking clearly for the first time in ages.

You think that be the end of it right? She leave, we go our separate ways, and at last I be out of this sham of a marriage, but something angered me. Like I had spent way too much time and energy for it to end like this. I grabbed her by her hair and start hitting her again, and again, and again.

"Please stop!" she begged. "I'm sorry, just please, John!"

Her pleading was useless. It's like a dam has broken, and I couldn't stop.

"We ain't finish til I say we're finished!" I hissed in her face when it's over.

She nods, head bobbling so fast it might fall off, blood around her mouth and bruises starting to show. Her eyes are wide with a new kind of fear. She's scared of him, not of losing him. She'd be glad to lose him now, and I despised her even more for it.

The physical abuse becomes a regular occurrence, but I knew how to be more careful about it. Not enough to make it look like Ann's gone a few rounds against Joe Louis but just enough to kill any ideas she get about leaving me. It's a new type of control, and I use it cleverly, manipulating her into doing whatever I want, no matter how humiliating. The possibility of things getting even worse terrifies her, and I feeds off it like a drug.

I was sitting at a bar when a famous I haven't heard in years called out to me.

"Wow wow, Ace Merrill as I live and breath."

I raised an eyebrow at this.

"Ace? I haven't been called that in years Fuzzy." I looked to the man sitting down next to me.

"Neither have I as that." Fuzzy, well, Norman now replied.

"What brings you town, I thought you fled?" I asked him taking sip from my beer.

"Heard about Eyeball." He replied. "And you. Gotta say Ace, out of everyone in the old gang, you were the last person I expect to do the whole Wife and Kids things."

"Yeah, well, you can minus the kid part now." I grumbled before taking another sip. "Jesus, how did everything get so fucked up?"

"That's another reason why I'm here." Norman told me. "How would you like to do a job? For old times sakes?" I'll admit, that caught my attention.

So I pack up and get ready to travel with Norman. On the bright side, I have an escape from this damn trap I ran himself into. But before I leave, I make sure to give Junior power over my finances.

"So she doesn't clean me out," I explained. "She wouldn't do it deliberate, but Ann's not too smart when it comes to money."

"I'll do it." Junior said. I could tell he was still mad about how my life had turned out and blamed Ann Sawyer for every second of it. In his mind, he will never consider her a Merrill, and that sat alright with me. "But what is it that you're doing?" He asked suspiciously

"Just a job." I told him quickly. "I'll only be gone for a week at best."

The job was actually me, Norman, and a few guys he knew would be traveling to break into this old codger's house and steal some of his paintings. Norman heard they were worth a fortune and he wanted in on that. Luckily the old man was away so we could sneak in and out with none the wiser.

We were all sitting in the trailer of the truck and the ride made me uncomfortable because the guys would start asking questions. Questions I don't wanna answer as they start to reveal some harsh truths.

One instance is when one of the guys asked me, "So what's your wife like, Merrill?"

I honestly balked at the question. I had spent so much time tearing her down that I never took a minute to actually start to know her as a person. So I lie to save face.

"Uh, she's a good cook." I told him. I think? I don't think I've ever taken the time to consciously acknowledge it. I've only ever told her she sucks at everything she does, and cooking's probably been one of the specific things I used as an example.

The guy smiled. "I bet she's real pretty too, huh? Gotta be to keep you around."

I smiled back, but I felt uneasy. I don't know if she's even pretty.

Soon another guy joined in. "So what she look like Merrill?"

"Um, brown hair, green eyes..." I try to remember at the top of my head before shurgging. "I'm not really good with descriptions."

The guy from before smiled slyly, "Mines a blonde." Thankfully everybody's attention was now off me.

We had reached the old codger's place and snuck in. We manage to grab three paintings before his security ran in and arressted us. Turns out he wasn't as gone as Norman thought. Instead of calling the cops, turns out the old man had a sadistic streak and locked up in his cellar. Only taking us out when he feels like a little torture.

We be beat with hot pot pans and the whole time I remember how I used to do the same thing to Ann. Christ, have I really become that much of a monster? What the fuck happen to me?

Eventually the old man got bored and decided it was time to take us out. He made us stand up against a wall with our backs turn. We heard the sound of guns cocking and we all knew what was gonna happen next. While everybody else trembled in fear, I just closed my eyes and sighed accepting my fate.

'I deserve this,' I thought to myself, 'Ann, if you can hear me, I'm sorry.'

The End.

A/N: Yeah, this is darker than my usual output. lol