Aubrey and Chloe had been friends since Pre-K. They'd played dress up and dolls and softball and planned out their weddings together. They were inseparable. Their parents joked that Aubrey would marry Chloe's older brother and Chloe would marry Aubrey's younger brother so that they could truly call each other sisters, and when they were younger, the girls didn't that was such a bad idea.
As they got older and determined that they didn't need to marry each other's sibling in order to be sisters, Chloe started dating. She went through boy after boy and Aubrey was there with Ben & Jerry's, Kleenex and Bridesmaids after every break up.
While Chloe focused on boys, Aubrey focused on school. She tutored Chloe to keep her friend from falling behind academically. She wanted to be a lawyer, had wanted to be one since she had learned when she was six that her daddy was a lawyer, and she would stop at nothing to achieve her goal.
After high school, Aubrey went off to college and Chloe decided to stay in their hometown to continue working as a waitress in the local diner. She enjoyed her job and the people in town loved her. Especially Earl. Earl was a few years older than her, but he was handsome enough and seemed like a good guy. He was tall and muscular, but lacking a little in the intelligence department. He was sweet to her, though; he always tipped her more than was necessary and gave her shy smiles from across the diner. When he finally got the nerve to ask her out about two months after Aubrey left, she accepted immediately.
They went on date after date and he seemed happy, and that made her happy. After six months together, although he was in love with her, she wasn't in love with him. But he was the only younger man left in town that she hadn't already been previously affiliated with, so when he proposed, she said yes. Maybe she'd fall in love with him after they were married. And if not, she didn't mind settling.
They were married not quite a year after their first date and, while not quite how she imagined it, their wedding was absolutely perfect. Her twin nieces were the cutest flower girls on the planet and Aubrey was her Maid of Honor (of course) and her father walked her down the aisle and pretended he wasn't crying as he gave her away and Earl and her mother and everyone just looked so happy that she couldn't help but feel happy, too.
They had an ideal marriage for all of two weeks before Earl started beating her.
The first time he hit her was because she burnt dinner. She hadn't been paying enough attention, focusing instead on talking to Aubrey on the phone. She had had a particularly rough day and Chloe had made comforting Aubrey her top priority. When she smelled something burning, she cursed and told Aubrey she'd call her back before diving for the frying pan full of bacon. Earl entered the kitchen as she was scraping the scorched food into the garbage can and asked her what had happened.
"I burnt the freaking bacon," she sighed angrily.
"Weren't you paying attention?" he questioned, agitation clear in his voice.
She dropped the pan into the sink before turning to face her husband. "Yes," she said, rolling her eyes. Then she remembered her conversation with her best friend. "Well…not entirely. I mean, I was watching the food, but Aubrey had a really bad day today and I was trying to comfort her so I guess I wasn't-"
A sudden, stinging pain in the left side of her face stopped her in her tracks. "What the-"
He grabbed her upper arms roughly and yanked her body to his. "You need to fucking pay attention, Chloe! You just fucking wasted $10 worth of food because you're too stupid to pay the fuck attention! Watch what you're fucking doing next time, got it?" he shouted.
Tears clouded her vision as she nodded. His fingers tightened around her arm and she whimpered. "Please let go, Earl. You're hurting me."
He sneered at her, momentarily strengthening his grip further before shoving her backwards into the counter. "God, you're such a fucking pussy. Why did I even marry you? You're dumb as shit and weak to boot." The tears she had been trying to keep at bay finally spilled over her cheeks at his words, and he rolled his eyes at her. "Jesus. Don't cry, you're an ugly crier. My dinner better be ready in 15 minutes. I'm gonna go watch the game."
After that first time, he beat her for every reason he could possibly think of. His dinner wasn't warm enough, a man had checked her out while she was at work, she left a few unwashed dishes in the sink, she forgot to wash his favorite shirt. It seemed that she could do no right and he could do no wrong. She learned to wear more makeup and long sleeved shirts and dark sunglasses to hide the marks he left on her skin. And she didn't dare say anything to anyone about his abusive behaviors for fear of him finding out.
Chloe finally got the nerve to file for a divorce and put a restraining order on him after eight months of constant abuse, and he went to stay at the local motel.
He stumbled drunkenly through the front door and into the living room a few nights later, huffing angrily when he found Chloe curled up on the couch watching some reality show. The sight made him so furious that he snatched a handful of her hair and tugged her up to stand before him. "What are you doin'?" he slurred. "Shouldn't you be cleanin' the house or some shit? Why're you so fuckin' lazy, Chloe?"
"What are you doing here, Earl? You're not allowed to be within a hundred feet of me!" Chloe gasped as his fist made contact with her cheekbone. She dropped to her knees and clutched her wounded cheek in pain.
"Don't talk back to me, bitch. And don't-ugh, stop crying! Don't be such a goddamn baby! I didn't even hit you that hard." He grinned devilishly at her. "I can hit a lot harder than that, babe." The toe of his shoe slammed into her ribcage and she cried out, falling over and curling into a ball. She began to sob loudly, which only fueled his rage. "Shut the fuck up!" he screamed at her, kicking her repeatedly in the stomach, chest, face, anything he could get at. When she was finally silent, he dropped to his knees beside her and whispered, "Thanks."
He picked her up bridal style and staggered into their bedroom, dropping her limp, battered body onto their bed. He stripped himself down completely and stood beside the bed, swaying a little as he stared at her. "I want to fuck you so bad right now," he whispered huskily. He looked her body over once and nodded to himself. He quickly tugged her sweatpants and panties off before climbing on top of her unconscious form. But he couldn't stand to miss seeing even an inch of his wife's perfect body, so he attempted to pull her shirt over her head. When he failed at that, he settled with ripping the shirt down the middle and pushing the torn halves of the shirt to her sides. He was happy to find that she wasn't wearing a bra. He had been horny all night and beating on Chloe only turned him on even more. He pushed himself inside of her roughly and fucked her hard and fast, coming after only about a minute of thrusting. When he had finished, he pulled out of her and rolled off of her. He fumbled with his clothes for a few minutes before finally wobbling, fully dressed, out the front door.
Chloe woke up at around 4 am in so much pain she could hardly move. She glanced down at her body and was horrified to see that her clothes had been ripped off and her body was more torn up than it had ever been. She knew what had occurred while she was unconscious based on her torn shirt and lack of pants. Salty tears poured down her face as she reached gingerly for the phone beside the bed.
The last thing she remembered before she blacked out again is paramedics bursting into the room.
She woke up a while later and was shocked to find Aubrey sitting next to her and clasping her hand, eyes red from crying as she stared blankly out the window.
"Hey."
The blonde's head swiveled hurriedly to face her, relief etched in her features and a half-smile on her lips. "Hey! You're awake! How do you feel?"
Chloe groaned. "Like I was hit by a truck."
Aubrey's smile turned down. "By the looks of it, you were." She eyed her friend warily. "What the hell happened, Chlo?"
The redhead said nothing and diverted her gaze.
"It was him, wasn't it? Earl did this to you, didn't he?" When the injured girl didn't respond right away, she knew she'd found the truth. "What the fuck? How could he do this to you? Oh my god, I am going to fucking kill that motherfucker!"
"Y'know, if you'd said that a month ago, I would've begged you not to. But now…" Chloe trailed off.
"Now what?"
Chloe stared intently into her best friend's eyes, trying to gauge what her reaction might be to her next words. "Now I think it's time Earl and I took a little fishing trip on the lake."
"Babe, these black eyed peas suck. What'd you put on them, dog shit?" Earl sneered.
Chloe simply smiled sweetly at him and shrugged. "They tasted alright to me, Earl."
The man rolled his eyes as he finished off the Tupperware container of food, tossing the dish at his wife before continuing to man his fishing pole.
After a couple of minutes, Earl started to feel strange. He began to gasp for breath and doubled over in pain. He heard the woman he shared the boat with chuckling. "What's…What's so funny?" he ground out through gritted teeth.
Chloe grinned. "Those black eyed peas that you just ate? They were topped with cyanide. I'd say you have another, oh," she checked her watch, "a minute or so before your heart stops and you die, and I want you to listen to me very carefully until then." She pauses for a moment. "You have tortured me mercilessly for the past eight months. You have hit me, cursed at me, called me names, and generally made me feel worthless. The other day was the final straw. I am not going to live the rest of my life in fear of a piece of shit like you. I'm not going to put up with you any longer. You're a terrible excuse of a human being and you will rot in hell for what you have done to me, Earl Phillip Hayes."
She watched the life go out of his eyes and sighed softly. She looked around to be sure that there was no one in sight before tying Earl's tackle box to his ankle and rolling his lifeless body over the edge of the boat. She watched to make sure he sank before pulling out her phone and dialing Aubrey's number. "I'm free, Aubrey. I'm finally free."
A few months later, Chloe and Aubrey were sharing a dorm room at Barden University. It had taken a lot of bribing of the housing department to get them a room together, but they had managed it. Aubrey introduced her to the Barden Bellas, the a capella group that she had joined the year before, and Chloe auditioned and got in easily. She'd always been an excellent singer. She decided to major in the fine arts.
No one ever asked her about Earl. The police came by once to ask if she'd seen him, but when she'd said no, they'd dropped the case entirely.
Turns out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.