Buried Alive

The day Chad finally said he'd marry me, his "perfect" ex-girlfriend, Bethany, offed herself.

He tore up our engagement and screamed at me, saying I should die instead.

Guess what? He got his wish.

I ended up kidnapped and shipped off to some hellhole in Myanmar. Every day felt like it could be my last.

Two years later, the cops rescued me. Chad was there, all red-eyed, mumbling apologies.

I just looked away. "Got someone new," I said. "Buzz off."

1.

Everybody knew how head-over-heels I was for Chad.

I'd become his ideal woman—long, dark hair, apron-wearing, and all that.

After five years of playing the perfect girlfriend, he finally asked me to marry him. I was so high on happiness that I didn't think twice when Bethany asked to meet up.

Bethany was his "one that got away." She'd come back into his life a year ago, trying to rekindle things, but I was in the way.

That night at the hotel, she slapped a doctor's report on the table.

"Look, Sarah," she said, "I'm sick, stage four stomach cancer. They're saying I've got maybe three months left. Can you just give Chad back to me? I'm gonna die soon anyway, and then you two can still be together.”

I was totally in love with Chad. There was no way I was giving him up, even for a minute.

I shook my head. "No, not for three months, not for one second."

Bethany’s eyes went all desperate and hateful.

"Sarah, you have no idea how much he'll despise you after this," she spat out.

I lit a cigarette. "He'll love me forever...oh, and by the way, we’re engaged today.”

I tossed the butt and walked out without looking back.

That night, Bethany slashed her wrists in her bathroom.

Her suicide note had one sentence:

Sarah, I was done with him, why couldn't you let me go?

There was a cigarette butt near the note, with my lipstick mark on it.

Oh, and the stomach cancer diagnosis was nowhere to be found.

I was in hysterics, trying to explain to Chad that it was a set-up.

"She has cancer, she's dying, and she's doing this to get back at me for taking you!"

The cops confirmed Bethany’s medical history, but it was too late.

I was waiting for Chad to apologize, say he’d messed up.

Instead, he yelled at me and slapped me across the face twice!

“You knew she didn’t have much time, and you still pushed her to her limit! You’re just evil. Why didn’t you die instead!?”

He blamed everything on me and blocked me on everything.

I spent two days locked in my room, figuring out how to win Chad back.

Then I got a text from him, on some burner number.

He said if I went to the hotel where Bethany killed herself and kowtowed three times in front of the bathtub, he might forgive me.

I went without a second thought.

As soon as I walked in, someone put a rag over my nose.

When I woke up again, I was in Myanmar.

…

The plane's announcement pulled me back to the present.

The female cop next to me gave me a hug. "Sarah, we’re home."

The plane touched down, and I set foot back on American soil.

My sister,...