text: I met Tim on Tinder. Tim was the best boyfriend I could have asked for. As a 25 year old woman living in the heart of Seattle, I had been close to giving up on my love life. Men were scary, unreliable infidels. I believed that for a long time, at least until my friend Suzie convinced me to give Tinder a try. “Please?” she practically begged me during brunch one day, “Please just go on one date. If it sucks, I’ll never bother you about it again!” Drunk on margaritas and breakfast food of questionable quality, I relented. I went on one date. One date with a man named Tim Henry. It went very well. Too well, even. I learned that he worked in IT, that he’s deadly allergic to strawberries, that his ex-wife died of breast cancer in 2013. He learned about me, too. How I grew up with abusive parents and now take care of my younger brother, Zach, while pursuing a degree in psychology. Tim was really into true crime, and he got me hooked on it as well. The stories were harrowing, heartbreaking, disturbing- but some morbid curiosity kept us listening. We developed inside jokes, shamefully mostly revolving around cannibals and the gruesome details of specific murders. As a psych major, it was all so interesting. Obviously, those psych classes got me nowhere. I didn’t see the red flags. True crime is a lot easier to listen to if you’ve never lived through a podcast-worthy horror story of your own. Until then, true crime is a “what if-“ an almost impossibility that ensures you lock your doors at night, but never steals your sleep. After? It’s all too real. Tim and I got married in 2019. As many married men do, he started to let himself go. Let down appearances. He began to confide in me. He spoke to me about how he often had thoughts of murder, of skinning someone alive. I explained to him what intrusive thoughts were, and he seemed satisfied with that explanation. Later, he told me he had been diagnosed with harm OCD- a subcategory of OCD where the patient has obsessive and unrealistic worry about hurting other people. Such as putting all your knives under lock and key so you don’t kill your entire family. In reality, these patients are often even less capable of murder than the average sane person. It explained a lot of his obsessive violence thoughts. How he’d want to kill me for the smallest of infractions. I made sure to turn the lights off in the kitchen every night since he told me he wanted to rip my fingernails out the last time I forgot. I would never have admitted it, but Tim was starting to scare me. I knew it sounded awful, to be afraid of someone with harm OCD, but I would come to be thankful for my paranoia. I began to keep a strawberry in my pocket. I was out with Suzie on one of our regular Friday night dinners when I had forgotten the name of Tim’s company. Naturally, I Googled it. Strangely enough, I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find Tim at all, actually, anywhere on the internet. Even his Tinder account had been deleted. Being somewhat tech-savvy, I used an image search to scour the internet for a face match. To my horror, several matches popped up, none mentioning an IT company. The headlines blurred together in my head. I was so shocked I could barely hear Suzie asking me what was wrong. I skimmed the previews, shortened and cut off by the small screen of my phone. “Seattle man kills wife in brutal love story gone wr-“ “’I found her skinned alive’ a harrowing story of l-“ “Man charged of first degree murder escapes p-“ “Tim Fuller, a monster loose among the streets o-“ I got up and rushed home, leaving an equally horrified Suzie in the dust. I had seen enough. I had heard enough. I needed to know the truth right then, even if it costed my life. Even if I was in danger. I loved Tim, and if he loved me, he would tell me the truth. That’s what I told myself. Even though he lied about having OCD, his ex-wife passing from cancer, and working in IT. However, I know better now. You can’t “fix” killers. I burst into the house and shoved my phone in Tim’s face. Something in his eyes gave away that the articles were not fake. I felt the world shift from under me as grief and shock dizzied my perception. The world shifted again when Tim tackled me to the ground. Everything from dinner to the second Tim snapped felt like milliseconds. I heard him screaming, but the words were too far away, too muffled to hear. Something warm spread over the back of my skull. Spots danced over my vision. My body felt cold and sensationless. I felt like a corpse long before my death. \ Tim often told me how his mother had suffered from severe OCD. He mentioned how he wasn’t surprised he was diagnosed, as OCD tends to be genetic. I believed every word out of his mouth, especially considering I had an actual harm OCD diagnosis from early childhood. One he never had. To sum up my childhood- I had always been afraid of myself. I was afraid that if I didn’t barricade my door, I would hurt my little brother in my sleep. I kept myself away from sharp objects. I didn’t listen to true crime for fear I would get ideas. Eventually I convinced myself that my fear was not based in reality. But now I know better. Maybe it was because of how my parents hurt Zach. Maybe it was how they hurt me. But deep down, I’ve always known I’m capable of violence. I was just afraid I would misuse it. But when I heard Zach scream- When I felt Tim’s body weight shift from mine- When I saw something in his hand, smelled blood in the air, tasted copper in my mouth- *I was no longer afraid.* \ My vision cleared as I launched myself upwards- barely gaining complete consciousness before hurling myself into Tim’s back. He tumbled forwards, the knife in his hand skittering across the kitchen tile. He grabbed my hair and pulled, I kicked his groin, we scrambled and flailed for the weapon like two spoiled children fighting over a toy. A sharp pain radiated through my ribcage as Tim punched me as hard as he could, knocking the wind from my diaphragm just long enough to brush the knife handle with his fingertips. My ears rung and diluted the sound of his nose breaking as I shoved his head into the floor. Chaos reigned over the small section of bloody kitchen floor we inhabited. Tim finally grasped the knife. The blade tore through my shoulder as my husband swung and stabbed at my flesh, blood warming my cold body even faster than before. Red flashed into my vision, but it wasn’t from my cuts or Tim’s nose. His cold grey eyes widened as I shoved the strawberry from my pocket as hard as I could down his throat, silencing his screams of rage and grunts of violent effort. I pushed my fingers down as far as they could go. His grip on the knife faltered, and I seized the opportunity to steal it, stand, and back away in one not-so-smooth motion. My husband was dying. I watched as he choked and shoved saliva-coated fingers down his throat in an attempt to dislodge the strawberry. His face turned a mottled red color and began to swell. He kicked his feet and flailed on the blood-slippery floor in pain. His eyes now held fear and desperation, not anger. I could have helped him, called the cops, run away, etc- but I didn’t. I watched Tim’s body drain of life. I watched his chest seize up, depraved of oxygen. I watched his lips turn blue. I watched the veins in his forehead pop. I watched blood bubble from his nose. I watched his tongue swell and seal the strawberry into his throat. I watched Tim suffer. I watched Tim die. I liked it. \ The verdict came back. Free of charges, due to the necessity of my manslaughter. It was self-defense. My lawyer had the easiest job in his career, defending me. An escaped murderer, leading a double life? And the strawberry? So clever! Plus, I had to protect my younger brother. I was practically a hero. I was happy to continue my life a free woman. No one had to know how much I enjoyed seeing Tim die. But if people did know, they would understand. He lied to me for years. I’ll have to be in therapy the rest of my life. Zach will never rest easy again. I did what I had to do to a man who deserved every second of it. With therapy, I came to understand that. A few years after the incident, my therapist recommended I start seeing men again. I had recently become open to the idea. After all- the situation with Tim was such a rarity, it would be shocking for it to happen again, unless I was actively seeking out escaped convicts. Even after the years of therapy, something nagged at me. I liked watching Tim die. I got to watch the life go out of his eyes. I got to live out my obsessions. I got to draw blood. And none of it was my fault. It would never be my fault. So I took my therapist’s advice. As I scoured the Seattle police databases for men with violent criminal records, I re-activated my Tinder account.