The Lives I Could Be Living

By Barb McIntyre

Dani Armstrong has been found guilty of breaking and entering with intent to cause bodily harm, assault causing bodily harm, and five counts of involuntary manslaughter. She knows that she will have to live without the privacy she craves for as few as four and as many as twenty more years. The parole board will decide how long it will be before she will be able to sleep behind a solid, windowless door that she has locked from the inside. Dani regrets the life she is living, but she does not regret what she did to the man who raped her best friend. When the friend, unable to come to grips with what happened, committed suicide, Dani vowed to make him suffer.
A few of the women in her writing class tried to persuade her to write about what she had done. It would sell, they insisted. People would love to read about the gory, real-life details. But Dani does not want to think about, much less write about her real life. She wants to think and write about the other lives she could be living. Fantasy lives where she could be a completely different person, and her every move would not be observed and documented. Lives where she could be a butterfly, free to soar, to coast, or to land and rest on a beautiful flower.
This book describes some of those lives.

The Honourable Mr. Campbell Greenshields, the judge who handed down Dani's very long jail sentence, often glared at her with his mouth twisted into an uneven smirk. She was on trial for breaking into a man's house while he was asleep, cutting off his penis, tossing it into his blender, along with half a bottle of his very expensive whisky, and blending it into lumpy, disgusting slime right in front of his eyes. Not surprisingly, sympathy for her victim had been evident in the voices of the witnesses and the expressions on the faces of the jury members throughout her trial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667826622

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Text Description automatically generated

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, places, and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to real persons or events is coincidental.

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Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE PhD, PART ONE

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE PART TWO

DANI MURPHY (née Armstrong), THE WIDOW

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE WRITER

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE LOTTERY WINNER, PART ONE

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE LOTTERY WINNER, PART TWO

DANI BLAKE (née Armstrong), THE WIFE, THE MOTHER, AND THE NURSE

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE TECHIE

DANI ARMSTRONG, THE VISITING NURSE

AFTERWARD

PROLOGUE

My name is Danielle Armstrong, but everybody calls me Dani. Danielle is the female version of Daniel, which means God is my Judge in the Hebrew language. But it was The Honourable Campbell Greenshields who handed down my very long jail sentence. Judges in Canada have the title Honourable, which means deserving of respect. That man does not deserve that title. The name Campbell is accurate, though. It means crooked mouth. My judge was a middle-aged, overweight, pale, almost bald man with a raspy voice who twisted his mouth into an uneven smirk whenever he glared at me. Something he did fairly often, and it made the days in the courtroom even more of an ordeal.

And the expressions on the faces of some of the jurors were sometimes almost as bad. Eight of the twelve jurors were men, six of them around the age of my victim. And I was on trial for breaking into a man’s house while he was asleep, cutting off his penis, tossing it into his blender, along with half a bottle of his very expensive whisky, and blending it into lumpy, disgusting sludge, right in front of his eyes. Let’s just say that the overwhelming feeling in the courtroom was sympathy for my victim, and that men wincing was a frequent sight.

For the record, I’m a twenty-eight-year-old nurse, and I’ve worked in the operating room of a mid-sized hospital for over five years. My only living relative is a sister who lives an ocean away, and with whom I exchange birthday and Christmas greetings via Facebook. We haven’t seen each other since our father’s funeral, which was seven years ago.

Dad enjoyed retirement for about a year before slipping on a patch of ice and dying from a traumatic brain injury before they could get him into the OR. Our mother died of ovarian cancer on my eighteenth birthday. Sue and I aren’t estranged, exactly, it’s just that we have nothing in common. She’s fifteen years older than me, and she’d left home before I was old enough to get to know her.

Other than being an orphan, and having no more than online contact a few times a year with my one sibling, I was a normal woman living a normal life. I had a nice apartment, an active social life, friends, a job I enjoyed, and a series of boyfriends. I’d never felt anything you could call love for any of them, but I did like them, and I enjoyed their company until we drifted apart. I was waiting for Mr. Right, but enjoying my life in the meantime.

The penis involved belonged to Anthony Winthrope. The fact that both of his names are blatant misnomers tells you a lot about the man’s character. John Winthrop, Anthony’s great-grandfather, added an e at the end of his surname when he got off the boat from England. There’d been a Lord Winthrope in the next village, and Anthony’s great-grandfather thought that the name would give him a bit of a boost up the social ladder of his new country.

Anthony thought the story was hilarious, especially since his great-grandfather hadn’t managed to climb even one step up that ladder. Both Anthony’s grandfather and his father had only managed a rung or two, but Anthony had fulfilled his great-grandfather’s dream. He was a successful, wealthy man, highly regarded by the people he wanted to impress.

And the man was the very opposite of highly praiseworthy, which is the meaning of the Roman version of the name Antonius. Anthony Winthrope abused women both physically and psychologically. He was also a rapist and, in my mind, a killer.

My best friend, Karen, fell in love with him, and not only tolerated, but found excuses for his behaviour. Their relationship lasted for just over four months.  They hadn’t even talked about living together, but it was classic spousal abuse, as far as I’m concerned.

Karen had detoured past his place on her way to her yoga class the night he raped her. Her plan had been to surprise him with his favourite home-cooked meal. He’d told her that he was on a deadline, and would be working through most of the night. She’d expected him to be really pleased with her gift.

Well, he wasn’t pleased, and he wasn’t working. Another woman, wearing a dress that showed much more leg than Karen would be comfortable with and much more cleavage than Karen had, answered the door. The man Karen thought loved her rushed up behind the woman and reddened with anger when he saw Karen standing there, clutching her insulated bag.

Karen was sitting on her sofa and still sobbing, thirty-five minutes later, when he let himself in with his key – the one she’d given him a month into their relationship.

Note that he had a key to her apartment. She did not have a key to his house.

He was furious. He’d expected sex with his guest, but she’d left after realizing that she wasn’t the only woman in his life. He’d tried but failed to convince her that Karen was just a friend, or that they should both have another drink and forget the interruption.

He snarled a list of Karen’s inadequacies while kicking the furniture and slapping her around. He ranted about his desire for sex with the other woman, who had a much better body, was much more intelligent, better educated, and much, much better in bed than Karen could ever be. Then he raped her for a very long time. The fact that it took him so long to finish was, of course, her fault.

She called me a while after he left, but she wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital. She desperately didn’t want anybody else to know what had happened. The poor woman was overwhelmed with shame, along with everything else. She insisted that it was her fault. I tried to convince her that it wasn’t, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She begged me to just take care of her wounds and keep her secret. I reluctantly agreed to do what she wanted.

I treated the physical damage he’d caused. Her body healed, but her mind didn’t.

I practically moved in with her and did my best, but she never got over that night. She talked about him a lot. She talked about that night a lot. She’d wake up from nightmares and relive her time with him, remembering and retelling many little details. I listened. I couldn’t understand why she’d want to talk about him. I especially couldn’t understand why she’d want to relive all that pain. But she did, and I listened. And, as I relived all the terrible details of that night with her, over and over again, my hatred for the man who’d caused her all that pain grew and grew.

Two weeks after the rape, Karen fed her doctor a bogus story about a romantic breakup causing insomnia, and her doctor prescribe a short course of Lorazepam. The next night, she washed down the entire container with a lot of vodka. She was unconscious but still breathing when I found her. I called an ambulance, and she was rushed to the hospital where she died a few hours later. I was sitting beside her when she died. I held her lifeless hand and promised her I’d make the cold-blooded brute pay for what he’d done.

Karen is a girl’s name of Danish origin meaning pure, and one of the definitions of pure is free from harshness or roughness. That smug molester had defiled her name as well as her body.

Karen had been much more than a best friend. She’d been all the family I had. We’d always been there to wipe away each other’s tears and celebrate each other’s joys. I remember somebody saying that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Karen had been my home, and she was gone. I had nowhere to go, and it was because of him.

The man was a criminal. As far as I was concerned, he was guilty of both rape and murder. If not for him, Karen would still be alive. He needed to be punished. He needed to suffer as much physical and mental pain as he’d made Karen suffer – as he was making me suffer.

I was far from the first, and it’s unlikely that I’ll be the last woman to cut off an abusive man’s penis. The most famous woman to have done it, though, is Lorena Bobbitt.

On the night of June 23, 1993, Lorena Bobbitt, a victim of years of sexual abuse, severed her husband’s penis with a kitchen knife and tossed it into a field as she drove away. They found the penis, and it was successfully reattached in a nine-and-a-half-hour operation.

Several witnesses supported Lorena’s claims of abuse, saying they’d seen bruises and swelling all over her body. Friends said she grew visibly fearful when her husband approached. Others said he’d privately admitted getting excited by forced sex that involved hitting women in the behind, making them scream, making them bleed, and making them crawl.

Lorena pleaded temporary insanity caused by abuse and was found not guilty. Her only mistake, in my mind, had been not destroying the penis.

I didn’t know how to stop Karen’s short-tempered rapist from hurting other women with his words or his hands, but I did know how to make sure that the offending penis would never, ever be forced into another woman. I was going to cut it off with a kitchen knife, and I wasn’t going to make Lorena Bobbitt’s mistake. I was going to destroy it.

Of course, I knew that they’d build him a new one. They’d take a graft from a forearm or thigh muscle, attach it to the pelvic area, and cover it with skin taken from another part of his body. Then they’d insert a penile implant, and he’d be able to control his erections by pressing either the pump or the release valve they’d put inside his scrotum. But I was going to make sure that the egotistical misogynist would never enjoy real sex again.

I took my time. I planned everything down to the last detail. And I didn’t act until I was sure that every little piece of the jigsaw puzzle fitted together perfectly.

My car was in the repair shop that night, and I drove my neighbour’s car. Peter had just left for a two-week holiday in Ireland, and I was sure he’d never find out that his car had travelled a little over twenty kilometers while he was away.

Peter and I had what are called tandem parking spots in our underground garage. I’d never heard of tandem parking spots before moving into the building, but what it boils down to is that one of our cars had to be parked with its front bumper almost touching the concrete block wall, and the other one directly behind it and as close as possible. We had keys to each other’s cars so that whoever was parked in the spot closest to the wall could move the other car when they wanted to get out of the garage. I was lucky to be paired with Peter. He walked to work most of the time, and he traveled a lot, so the super had been right when he explained the routine to me.

Just think of it as shuffling cars instead of cards, he’d said, pointing to the empty spot behind Peter’s deep blue Honda Accord. Only in this spot, you’re almost always going to win.

It was a Wednesday night, the evil killer’s weekly poker night. The night he consistently arrived home around midnight and went right to bed. Karen had told me a lot about him. I knew that he was very difficult to wake up once he got to sleep, that he always fell asleep quickly, and that he slept in his briefs. I knew that he had a large kitchen filled with state-of-the-art appliances he liked to impress people with. I knew that there was a chrome and glass rolling cart in the third bottom cabinet to the left of the kitchen sink, and that he was very proud of the bottle of Laphroaig Lore Single Malt whisky he’d paid over two hundred dollars for. I knew that he never locked the door to the screened-in back porch, that he always put his phone in silent mode, and left it charging overnight on top of his dresser, right beside the antique lamp, with the lampshade his mother had made using pressed flowers and thin paper laminate. And I knew that he slept in an old-fashioned, mahogany four poster bed with hourglass shaped legs.

According to the clock on the dashboard, it was 12:34 a.m. when I parked Peter’s car several houses down and pointing away from the soon-to-be-punished lawbreaker’s house. I’d felt uncomfortable smashing my passenger side window the night before, but it had to be done. I hadn’t wanted my car to be seen in the area, and I hadn’t wanted to take a chance on someone seeing me do the car shuffle in the parking garage.

I did a quick inventory of the contents of my light-grey tote bag and was relieved to see that I had everything I needed. I saw the tattered plastic case that held the tension wrench and the pick, the two precut pieces of masking tape on the half-empty roll, the extra-large garbage bag, the extension cord, the two plastic Walmart bags, my old iPod, the two disposable ammonia inhalant capsules – the kind that used to be carried in ambulances – the medical supplies I would need to disinfect and dress the wound, the pile of large gauze pads, the surgical gloves, and the four lengths of partially pre-tied rope that I’d practiced with for hours. It goes without saying that I’d been wearing gloves when I touched anything I’d be leaving in the house.

I put on the gloves, pulled the tote bag over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and got out of the car.

Seeing the tattered plastic case had reminded me of Patrick O’Connor. Patrick and I were next door neighbours from the time I was nine until the day after my eleventh birthday. I knew that if I’d never met Patrick, I wouldn’t know how to do two of the things I was about to do.

Patrick’s older brother, Nick, had ordered a set of lock picking tools online, but had lost interest in them fairly quickly. He’d given them to Patrick in exchange for Patrick’s promise not to tell their parents that Nick and his girlfriend often spent their afternoons in Nick’s bedroom.

Patrick and I spent a lot of time practicing with the tools. Poor Patrick, I realize now that he gave them to me just before we went back to school that September because the fact that I was so much better with them really bothered him. At the time, I thought he was just being nice to me.

I put them in the box I keep my special things in, things like my grandmother’s cameo necklace, the three shiny, coloured stones I found on a beach holiday when I was six, the cracked collar that my old dog, Mutt, wore until he was killed by a speeding car, a picture of me as a baby in the arms of the grandfather who died when I was two, and my high school ring. I hadn’t thought about the old box for years, but I’d pulled it out of the back of my bottom dresser drawer when I realized that I was going to have to pick a lock.

The second thing I learned from Patrick was how to tie knots. He taught me the ones he’d learned the year he was in the Boy Scouts.  Then he found a book in the library, and we learned how to tie much more complicated ones together. Patrick was delighted to see that, no matter how hard I tried, he always finished first.

The sidewalk around the side of the amoral tormentor’s house was in almost complete darkness, but a neighbour’s back porch light lit up his perfectly manicured backyard enough for me to be able to make out the steps leading up to the door to the back porch.

I had to hold the small penlight on my key chain in my mouth, so that I could see to insert the tools into the lock on the door to the house. It took me a bit longer than I thought it would, but the door opened and closed without a sound. I put the tools back into the plastic container, dropped the container into my tote bag, and started walking towards the loud wheezes and snuffles coming from the bedroom. The door was open, and there he was, sprawled out on his back and partly covered by a loose sheet.

I put the roll of masking tape on the closest bedside table, walked around the bed, pulled out one of the lengths of rope, and slowly tied his arm to the bed leg. I left it slack because I wanted him to stay asleep for as long as possible. Then I did the same to his other three limbs. As soon as the fourth rope was in place, I pulled the first precut length of masking tape away from the roll and covered his mouth, starting just below the tip of his nose. I made sure it was securely attached, then added the second length so that it covered his chin. He began to wake up as I rushed around the bed and tightened each of the knots. He bucked violently and made guttural, unintelligible sounds, but the knots and the tape held.

Then I went into the kitchen, pulled out the rolling cart, and loaded it with his three-quarters full bottle of Single Malt whisky, his Vitamix Professional Series 750 blender, which I knew he’d paid over seven hundred dollars for, and his Le Creuset Chef Knife, another expensive purchase Karen had told me about, before wheeling the cart into the bedroom.

Just like he kept telling Karen why he was doing what he was doing that night, I made sure he knew why I was going to do what I was going to do. His eyes grew wider and wider, and he kept thrashing about and trying to scream, as he watched me unplug the lamp from the wall socket beside the dresser, plug the extension cord into the wall socket, plug the blender into the extension cord, throw the sheet that was partially covering him onto the floor, shove the extra-large garbage bag under him, so that none of the blood that would be spilled would damage the mattress, and arrange the medical supplies carefully between his outstretched legs. Then I picked up the knife, he’d told Karen he always kept well sharpened and polished, and cut through his briefs. I pulled them away from him and tossed them onto the floor, where they landed heavy-duty brown-stain side up.

I have to admit to relishing the look of terror in those cruel eyes as he watched me pick up his penis and slice it off with one smooth stroke. He’d lost consciousness before I started applying pressure to the area for long enough to stop the bleeding. I cleaned, disinfected, and dressed the wound in a way that maintained a little pressure. I soaked up most of the blood that had pooled on the garbage bag with the gauze pads and wiped it off of my gloved hands with one of the antiseptic wipes.

Then I opened one of the disposable ammonia capsules and gave him a whiff. I had to make sure he’d hear my running commentary, and see me pour the whisky into the blender, pick up his penis and drop it into the whisky, put the lid back on, and press the pulse button. Unfortunately, he lost consciousness again, but he’d seen what I’d wanted him to see. It was only for a few second, but he’d seen the blender do its job.

I took the top off of the blender and stood the knife up in the sludge. I put the blood-soaked gauze pads, the leftover wound care items, and the remains of the ammonia capsule I’d used, as well as the one I hadn’t needed, into one of the Walmart bags, secured the bag with a double knot, and put it into the second Walmart bag. I put it, the roll of masking tape, and the extension cord into my tote bag.

Then I used his cell phone to call 911. I’d made a recording that requested an ambulance at his address, on my old iPod, using a voice-changing app. I played the message, put his phone down beside the blender without disconnecting the call, and checked his wound. The clotting agent on the hemostatic dressing had stopped the bleeding, and the external bandage was only slightly stained.

I put my iPod into my tote bag, went out through the front door, and left it wide open. Then I sat in my car, took off the surgical gloves, turned them inside out, put them into the Walmart bag, tied it tightly, and watched the house through my rear-view mirror. When I saw the paramedics rush into the house, I started the car and drove home.

It was 1:29 a.m. when I closed the door to my unit. Everything had gone perfectly. No one had seen me leaving or coming back into the building, and if they had they wouldn’t have recognized me. I was wearing dark-framed, dollar store glasses, and I’d really overdone my makeup. I was also wearing loose clothes, that made me look bigger than I am, over a t-shirt and leggings. A wig with dark, short, wavy hair not only hid my straight, shoulder-length, caramel-coloured hair, it covered my forehead and the sides of my cheeks.

The first thing I did was to scrub my face. I didn’t like the way my skin felt, and I didn’t like how I looked, even though my mirror had told me that I looked better than usual. I’m a little on the pale side, and the color had livened me up. Once my face felt normal again, I added the oversized clothes to the small load of laundry already in my washer and started the wash cycle. I’d dry them when I woke up, and drop them, along with the wig and the glasses, into one of the donation boxes at the side of the thrift shop, on my way to work

I pushed the Walmart bag partway down into my almost full garbage bag, double tied the garbage bag, carried it down to the side door, and put it into one of the bins that would be picked up in a few hours. 

I put the roll of duct tape back into the Rubbermaid container that I used as a tool box. I deleted the message from the iPod, deleted the deleted message, turned the iPod off, and put it back into the junk drawer I kept meaning to clean out. I hung the extension cord back up in the closet and put the lock picking tools back in the box where they’d been for so many years. I disconnected my iPhone from the charger and checked for messages. There were none. The iPad didn’t have location services, and my iPhone would show that I’d been home all night,

I had a short shower, went to bed, and got a restful, dreamless eight and a half hours of sleep.

I’d known all along that the maximum sentence for aggravated assault was fourteen years. I hadn’t realized that breaking and entering with intent to cause bodily harm might be a separate charge and could add another ten years to the sentence. And it wouldn’t have made the least bit of difference if I had because I didn’t believe for one second that I’d get caught, let alone sentenced. It did not occur to me that I might have to live in a jail cell for however long it took to pay off a debt to society. As far as I was concerned, it was society that owed me a debt.

I’d been careful. I hadn’t mentioned Karen’s name, and the fact that