The Continuing Downward Spiral of Sarah - The Bride of Bundy

The Bride of Bundy

Photo by Donovan Reeves on Unsplash

She had always been incapable of making her own decisions, and the ones she convinced herself were hers were always the worst ones she could make. This one was no different, and her sorry excuses for friends, in their usual fashion, cheered her on for no other reason than to be seen as “friends.” They knew him, so he must be “good,” although they didn’t really know him.

This time she had gotten herself into a situation she was unlikely to ever be able to extract herself from. When she had made the choice to lie about Bob to the authorities, to pass off a tale of almost pure revisionism, she had not, exactly, been acting under her own agency. No, in fact she had been manipulated into it by a scheming sociopath of a man, a smiling user she had known for years. A man who’d never had any romantic interest in her, never acknowledged her photos, never said an unsolicited kind word…until she needed help and he realized how easy she was to control.

This man-child had a job he knew she would see as authoritative, and he played it to the hilt. He helped her engineer her narrative and, once he knew he could get her to pass it off as truth, at great risk to herself, he knew he could control her every action. That’s when he decided he was interested in her, that all-of-a-sudden interest that comes from having the ultimate advantage and knowing it. He could make her do whatever he wanted by appealing to his profession, and he used that to further his perverted sense of power and sadism. He wasn’t physically interested in her for any other reason than the rush he got from being able to impose his will on her. Of course, he did it all with a smile and fake words, but it didn’t really matter to him if she got into trouble for having heeded his advice. By the time the trouble he had pushed her to seed came to be, he would have complete control and be able to convince her that he could solve her problems for her, that it was everyone’s fault but his, even her fault entirely. The gaslighting would be epic.

Sarah was so emotionally-stunted, it never occurred to her that this very hoary, grotesque excuse for a man, who now seemed to be wholly into her, had endangered her for his own selfish game. And it was highly unlikely she would ever make the connection between her current and impending circumstances, the brewing trouble, and this man having used her emotional turmoil to substitute his will for hers. If she were eventually arrested because of the lies he led her to proffer, she would blame Bob, not this man who led her there. If she lost her job because of the lies he encouraged her to sow, she would blame Bob, not this man who led her there. The man who led her there would remain her love interest, or what she thought was her love interest, when his interest was, and always had been, control, only control.

He had twisted his help, that wasn’t help at all, into a perverse game of conquer, used it to further what she thought was romantic interest. She had already given herself to him and her only preprogrammed response, if it ever dawned on her that he was responsible for her situation, that he was the one who had bent her will, would be to make excuses for him. Sarah had neither the spine nor the intelligence to banish him and her past trauma made her the willing servant of this user. She did not learn, no matter how obvious they were about it.

She was now, as yet unbeknownst to her, merely his concubine, a concubine of a malignant-minded, rotting, self-adulatory, jazz-sociopathic authoritarian who was far too old for her, although that gap deepened her feelings of having found a daddy surrogate, a man who would protect her, by subtly pushing her into harm’s way so he could continue to take advantage. It was only a matter of time before he began to show his true dictatorial colors, but Sarah was already lost and would never see it. And, if she did see it and did try to extract herself from his grip, his profession allowed for him to torment her FOREVER, without ever being caught.

Sarah had truly stepped in it this time. The monster she had turned Bob into in her mind and in the minds of others, with the “help” of this manipulative corpse, was exactly what she had just made herself subservient to. The irony was thick enough to smother. And the ultimate tragedy in it all was that she thought she was climbing up, being too blinded by titles and watches to know any better.