14 Chapter 13: Madalyn's Story

Walking down the path that lead to the gate Joshua took in long deep breaths to calm his fury. The whole situation was maddening, but he didn't want to take that attitude with him as he headed out to meet Madalyn. As he started to take in the scenery around him and listen to the soft breeze flow through the fruit trees in the area he stopped in his tracks for a moment in surprise. There was something he had just noticed that for some reason seemed to evade his thoughts ever sense they had come to this farm. "Where are all the animals?" He said out loud to his self.

There were no songs from birds fluttering through the trees, there was no chirping of insects in the grass, and there was not a single farm animal on the largest farm in the entire area. As he passed more farms on his way to find Madalyn he was able to see there were no animals there either. It was as if they had all vanished along with the people when everything started. 'Why would all the animals disappear?' Joshua thought as he tried to find any signs of recent animal activity. Letting out a sigh he decided to put the situation to the back of his mind to investigate later, but for now he had found what he was looking for.

One of the farms he was passing by had a pole outside the front porch with a dirtied hooded jacket hanging from it waving in the wind. The lights were on in the building and when he approached he could hear the clatter of dishes coming from inside. He knocked on the door before entering the building and came inside to see Madalyn cooking some breakfast. Her eyes were still a bit red showing that she had been crying the night before and the bruise on her face was now covered with gauze. She took one look at him before waving him over to take a seat at the dining table.

Joshua took her up on her offer and took a seat at the table. He quietly watched as she finished a skillet of eggs and paired them with some bacon and toast she had already finished cooking. She split the food and put them on to two separate plates before setting them on the table. Then she brought a pot of coffee over and filled a cup for the both of them before settling down in the seat across from him. Clasping her hands together she said one quiet prayer to herself before starting to eat with Joshua following suit.

The room was quiet except for the clanking of forks on their plates for the longest time. Joshua wasn't sure how to start up a conversation about what they had planned to discuss so he just decided to wait until she decided to talk. After a few more bites and a sip of her coffee Madalyn calmly put her fork down before looking towards Joshua and catching his attention. "I'm going to tell you about my past between George, this town and everything else. I just want you to listen to my story. When I'm done then we'll see if you still want to work together or not." She said calmly.

"Alright. I'll just listen." Joshua said before putting his fork down and giving her his undivided attention.

"I've always been a small town girl, but this town isn't the one I originally came from. There are many small farming towns around this area and many of them send their children to school in a bigger town further west of here due to the fact that most of the smaller towns only have a total of ten to fifteen kids at a time. So most kids in the area know each other from school more than from town." Madalyn started to explain.

She got a bit of a far off look as she looked in the direction of what Joshua assumed was the school she and most of the other kids went too. "My family wasn't a very wealthy one. We owned an extremely small farm that didn't have much of a specialty and could only grow whatever we could get our hands on. My Father would sometimes have to work as hard labor on other farms just to get by while my mother would sell off some of our product in town on her own. Knowing our situation I decided that I wanted to help out as much as I could in the future, so I would study my heart out during school. I hoped to gain a scholarship for college so I could get a good job and help my parents in any way possible." She said with a far off look as if she was remembering better times even under those circumstances.

"George on the other hand was from a rich farming family. His parents owned one of the largest farms in the entire area along with multiple small farms that they had other people operate." She said as sadness started to fill her voice at the thought of what would come next. "George was the first son so he was in line to take over in the future, but his parents took more of a liking to his little brother as he was a much smarter and more attentive person than George ever was. Of course people didn't know that at the time so everyone still assumed he would get the farm and George's little brother would go off to college. How wrong we were."

Laura stood up from the table as she took their now empty plates back into the kitchen to set in the sink. She continued to tell her story as she turned on some water out of habit to clean up all of the cookware. "George and I didn't exactly fit in the same circle of friends when we went to school together. He was the big jock on campus that was a bit dull and straight forward. He played linebacker for the football team and had a lot of friends around him. I on the other hand was the quiet studious poor girl with few friends. He was a year ahead of me even though looking back on it I'm surprised at the fact he didn't have to repeat a year with the grades he had. I guess his family background helped him out there." She let out a soft chuckle at some memory that must have popped up in her head.

"Any ways George took an interest in me in my junior year while he was a senior. All the people around me started to encourage me to go out with him, but I was more interested in my grades then having a romantic relationship at the time. At some point my parents found out and did something that would start a chain of horrible consequences for me. My father had worked at one of George's family's farms and his parents had taken an interest in me sense their son seemed to be smitten with me. After a talk with them one day my father came back encouraging me to go on a date with George. At first I wanted to refuse, but after my father explained how it could be helpful for my family I decided to give it a try." She turned off the faucet as she turned around looking back towards Joshua. She walked back over and once again set across from him as she took a sip of her coffee before she continued.

"George wasn't a bad person at first just a bit over the top. He was always easy to anger and used football as an outlet as a kid. Our relationship grew over the months and we were seen as one of the nicest couples in town at the time. Soon George was going to graduate while I still had my final year to finish. After graduation he convinced me to sleep with him." She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing. "He wasn't overly aggressive or anything, but I knew that if I had refused at the time then it could both cause problems for my family and might even cause him to start having negative emotions towards me. I had spent almost a year with him up to that point so I decided we were close enough to take the next step. That was a mistake."

She turned to look towards Joshua as anger started to build in her eyes. "After the first time it started to become expected for me to sleep with him when he wanted. For that summer he would always come over to my home just for that reason and my parents wouldn't care in the slightest. While all of that was going on George's parents had decided to test him to see if he would be able to handle being over their business in the future. They gave him one of their smaller farms near here and wanted to see how well he would run it. He failed spectacularly." Madalyn said with a cold look. "Whenever something wasn't going his way he would use sex as a way to get rid of his frustrations which put me right in the line of fire. I should have noticed the signs of him becoming more abusive then, but I stayed with him like a good little girl for my family. Half way through my senior year I found out that I was pregnant." The comment got a look of surprise from Joshua as he hadn't expected it.

"By the end of my senior year not a couple of weeks after graduation I was walking down the aisle as my father handed me off in my marriage to George. Looking back on it all of those smiling faces then seemed so fake. His parents seemed disappointed in their son at the way he was handling the farm, my parents seemed to only be trying to please everyone else there, and George had the biggest fake smile of them all. He was clearly not ready to be a father…a couple months later he would get his wish. I had a miscarriage." When Madalyn said those words she looked down towards her stomach.

"I was devastated. I had been looking forward to being a mother so much after I had come to terms with it, but fate wouldn't allow it to be. George at first was happy with an extra pep in his step until his parents became even more disappointed in him for not giving them a grandchild. He immediately had a complete change in attitude when he learned of this and blamed everything on me. For a while we tried and tried again to have another child, but I could never get pregnant again. Soon we visited the doctor to find out why but nothing was wrong with me. Later that same night I suggested that maybe he should also get tested and that was another mistake. That was the night where he first hit me. It was a harsh slap to the face that sent me sprawling to the floor." Her eyes grew darker as she described what happened.

"That was the first time I noticed how filled with anger he was. I was so focused on trying to have another baby that I hadn't taken notice of how quickly George was starting to explode all the time. Things only got worse when his parents had finally given up on him and named his little brother who had recently graduated as the heir to their business. George took all that anger out on me, he blamed everything on me. There was nothing I could do about it. People would just look the other way because they were afraid of his back grown. Even my parents didn't seem to mind sense their farm was doing so much better with George's parents backing it." Her eyes started to tear up at the memory.

"I remember going to the police to report him, I even showed them all the bruises I had to start hiding under my clothes. Instead of getting help George showed up at the police office an hour later with his big fake smile as he talked to them before taking me home. I was beaten so badly that night that I couldn't show my face in public for two weeks. I was completely trapped with no one to help me until finally this mess happened. I got my chance to break away from him and get back at him for all the things he did to me. I took it last night, I finally am free to be me again." She said with a frail smile as she looked towards Joshua. "That's my story now go ahead and say I shouldn't have done it. I'm sure those towns' folk back there already want to gun me down if they could."

"No, I think I get it. I've been around something similar before." Joshua said as he let out a held breath before looking Madalyn back in the eyes.

"What did your father hit your mother or something." She said with a disgruntled frown as if to say that wouldn't be the same.

"No, gods no. If anything my mother would be the one to beat some sense into my father." Joshua waived off her claims as he chuckled at the thought. "My mother used to hold a meeting with some of her patients that she had found out had been victims of domestic violence. Sense I've always wanted to become a doctor and follow in her footsteps sense I was younger, when I became mature enough to know about those types of situations she would have me come along as well. At first a lot of them were afraid of me, but eventually they started to open up with me around. I've heard a lot of stories similar to yours in one way or another and I've learned to see the signs of domestic violence as well. If I didn't know you had some type of power to retaliate against him I would have believed you know matter what after seeing all the glaring signs."

"So what? You pity me and that's why you want to keep me in your group?" Madalyn continued to stare at him waiting for his response.

"That's not the case. We're in a situation where working on our own and hoping everything works out in the end will probably lead to all of us dying in the long run. I want us to work together to survive and even if you killed him I'd rather have you on my side than a backstabbing man that would have gotten half of us killed in the future. I'm not saying I fully trust you yet, but I want a chance to get to that point. That's all I'm asking for." Joshua replied truthfully laying all his thoughts before her in hopes she would give him a chance. For a while the room was once again quiet as she looked away from him and turned her gaze to a nearby window.

"Poison." Madalyn said quietly as she continued to look out the window.

"What?" Joshua asked.

"My power is actually control over poison. It's not overwhelmingly powerful yet, but just a bit put into George's food killed him over night. "Madalyn explained. She noticed Joshua glance towards his cup of coffee before returning his gaze to her in surprise. "You're lucky that I'm trusting you otherwise you'd be dead within the hour." She said with a smile that made Joshua feel like he was being watched by a snake. It was not a feeling he wished to ever have again in the future.