35. July 4, 2021

Rod­ney Har­ris, the fam­i­ly chef, pre­pares din­ner while his wife, Emi­ly, suf­fers from severe sci­at­ic pain. He serves a pris­on­er in their base­ment, Bon­nie Dahl, a cold bot­tle of Diet Pep­si, secret­ly tam­pered with a dose of Val­i­um. Rod­ney speaks to Bon­nie with a cold detach­ment, view­ing her as mere live­stock nec­es­sary for their grim pur­pos­es.

Bon­nie, deprived and weak­ened, quick­ly suc­cumbs to the drugged soda, her des­per­a­tion and despair pal­pa­ble. Upstairs, Emi­ly anx­ious­ly waits for news of Bon­nie’s con­di­tion, her dis­com­fort over­shad­owed by a mor­bid antic­i­pa­tion. Rod­ney reas­sures her, intent on adding more seda­tives to ensure Bon­nie’s com­pli­ance.

In the base­ment, Rod­ney cau­tious­ly checks on Bon­nie, con­firm­ing her sedat­ed state before drag­ging her across the base­ment to a room equipped more like a hor­ror movie’s surgery than any­thing found in a nor­mal house­hold. With dif­fi­cul­ty and amid per­son­al phys­i­cal agony, he man­ages the logis­tics of prep­ping Bon­nie for what is hint­ed to be a fatal pro­ce­dure, aimed at alle­vi­at­ing Emi­ly’s pain through unspeak­able means.

This chap­ter intro­duces a dis­turb­ing nar­ra­tive of des­per­a­tion, moral cor­rup­tion, and the lengths peo­ple will go to alle­vi­ate per­son­al suf­fer­ing. Rod­ney and Emi­ly’s twist­ed depen­dence on oth­ers for their well-being con­trasts sharply with the ter­ror and help­less­ness expe­ri­enced by their vic­tims. The chill­ing nor­mal­cy with which Rod­ney con­ducts his prepa­ra­tions under­scores the hor­ror of their actions, leav­ing read­ers to pon­der the dark­ness lurk­ing with­in seem­ing­ly ordi­nary lives.