She left.

After that, I killed myself.

Now that may sound oversimplified, but if you want to hear the story in a nutshell, then listen up.

Sixteen months ago I met Betty. She changed my life.

Changed it for the better, or so I thought.

Anyway, we did the whirlwind romance thing, and the elopement thing, then we made a baby.

Life improved to the point of bliss. I received a raise and she already had a good job so money wasn’t a factor. She took a maternity leave and bore a perfect child.

I played daddy in the days and worked evenings; Betty worked days and played Mommy at night.

She also met a man that offered her a great deal of cash in exchange for some of her time.

I didn’t know about the man or his business until today.

Yea today, today really sucked, from the time of the phone call this morning till the time the bullet blew my head apart, today really sucked.

Betty and my four year old daughter Maggie left sometime during the middle of the night. She and my child simply disappeared. All her clothes are still here, all the baby’s things are still here, everything is here except them and the clothes on their backs.

Gone, left, disappeared.

*****

When I awoke alone this morning, I figured Betty must be in the shower, so I didn’t panic. But as the minutes clicked past, I began to sense an eerie silence in the house, a feeling of emptiness.

I ran room to room calling out for my two beloveds.

Nothing.

When I saw all their clothes were still here, I decided to call the police.

As I reached for the phone, it rang.

A friend of mine, Tom, called just to ‘chat’. Unusual because Tom doesn’t ‘chat’ any other time.

Soon though, he cut to the chase.

He told me about a porno site on the web called snuff.com. Tom told me I need to take a look at it. Then he mumbled something about not hating the newscaster because of the news.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like looking at titties as much as the next guy. Butts, twats, interracial asian lesbians; you name it, I’ve surfed for it. But until today I’ve never seen a snuff site.

And I’ve never seen my wife as a thumbnail.

That all changed about an hour ago.

Hanging up on Tom, I entered the url, then I clicked on a link and followed the path to another page of hyperlinks; every one a pic of Betty. This was not some whore look-alike, this was Betty. If nothing else, the dimple on her thigh is a dead giveaway.

An icon proclaimed the last update to be 02/15/02, two months ago.

Come to think of it, two months ago is the last time I saw that blue dress. It didn’t dawn on me it was missing until I saw that photo.

The first few looked like pictures I’d take; her wearing clothes and looking quite sexy, but as the photos continued they told a story.

Pic one, like I said, was just her in that blue sundress. The next showed her toying with the hem.

Then lifting, removing, and tossing in successive shots.

The sixth one showed the addition of a man, a very large, brutish man.

By the seventh, this man had her strapped to the hood of a car, her ankles bound to the bumper and her hands tied to the wipers.

She seemed relatively calm.

The following pic showed the car in motion.

Well, needless to say, the car hit a wall and smashed her legs. Maybe it was fake blood but it looked so real on my monitor.

The next few shots showed the brutish man and several others standing around my unconscious wife. All were holding clubs.

The last frame I saw, a high pixel Jpeg of this mob beating her to death.

One frame remained, but I didn’t click on it.

From the small thumbnail I saw men whacking off on a bloody dead face.

So what now? Surly these monsters didn’t kill my old lady, and if they did, they wouldn’t post it on the internet.

Surly.

Besides, this happened way back in February.

I returned to the site’s home page and saw another link. It said, "For the ultimate snuff-click here."

So I clicked there.

A movie of a woman being beaten to death, then balled by the same brutish man who killed my wife. I watched in utter amazement, downloaded another, and watched more. This was sick.

Then I came to the final movie.

What I saw on my computer screen made me throw up.

I saw my wife and little girl, just four months old, tied and killed.

The murderer used a chain saw to dismember my family.

The first thing I did (after wiping vomit from myself) was call the police.

That did about as much good as hollering up a sewer-pipe.

They told me to quit smoking crack and leave them alone.

Although I’ve never smoked crack, I did leave them alone.

I watched the last movie again. Maybe I could see something that proved this was fake, a forgery.

But during the last 10 seconds, both Betty and Maggie’s legs fall off. This was not a camera trick, this was for fucking real.

That’s just about the time I went insane.

Playing the clip over and over, watching a brutish man kill my wife, sent me to the brink.

Seeing Maggie’s legs hit the vinyl floor sent me over.

The flick lasted 83 second, I replayed it for at least an hour, maybe two.

Then I shot myself.

I saw brain and skull fragments splashing the wall like an avante garde-artist at a festival. I saw my body falling for the floor, then the tape ended.

I went into replay. I could start at any point of my life, but I couldn’t go past the end. If this is what being a ghost is about, then I don’t want any parts of it.

 Do you want to know the worse part of this story?

Right before the explosion that ended my continuation, I thought maybe just maybe I heard Maggie’s cry from outside the front door.