FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #3

     I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. The story was about a young girl. I knew it was the same girl because the paper said that she was abducted on Friendship Heights NW. That’s where I lived at the time. I also knew it was the same girl because she had been missing for a month, the same time I had heard the screams outside my house. Her body was found near College Park. Her throat had been cut and her blood, now dry, was sleeping on white plastic bags.

     I was a history professor at George Washington University. I have sense retired and now live on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, near Nags Head. I’m working on a book. It’s quiet and peaceful here and a good place to write, to clear my head. But it’s a type of hell for me, too. I miss the city, the noise. But I can’t go back there. Not yet; maybe never.

     The nightmares grew worse two weeks after her body was discovered. I dreamed of the cold, DC rain falling angrily on the street that evening. Her screams haunted my mind and I couldn’t sleep. I woke up drenched in sweat. My teeth were sore from grinding them half the night, so I went to the dentist to get fitted for a mouth piece to wear to bed.

     I was hoping for the rain, the rain in my dreams, to wash away the memory. My therapist took the rain as a sign of me trying to subconsciously erase the past, to get on with my life. I tried to think of the rain as a calming, therapeutic rain, but it never worked. It remained angry. It turned to blood and the blood polluted the streets. The only thing that was washing away was my sanity.

     My last dream before moving to North Carolina is of me watching a group of children playing on rusty monkey bars at the Turkey Thicket Playground.  Even now, I can see them clearly through the chain fence. I decided to move the car up closer, to get better look. There was a tree blocking my view of the swings. I flicked my cigarette out the window and gently pressed my foot on the gas. How I wished to be a child again: innocent and satisfied.

     I was working late that evening, grading papers on American foreign policy. I was just finishing up the fifth or sixth paper, when I heard the screams. The rain can manipulate sounds, and so at first I thought it was a dog or something howling. But then I heard it again and knew that it was a girl screaming for help. I closed my window to drown out the noise. I couldn’t go help; rather, I wouldn’t go help. I didn’t call the police. It was someone else’s problem. I assumed someone else would call if the girl was really in trouble. My mind was telling me to stay focused on my work, that the screams were probably some kind of college prank. George Town University was just a few blocks away and underclassmen were often involved in fraternity or sorority shenanigans and acceptance rituals. Some of them had egged my house once on Halloween and I wasn’t about to give in to another one of their games. Besides that, the FoxHall community was not a prime spot for violent crime. That occurred elsewhere, on the NE side.

     My mistake. And I’ll have to live with that mistake for the rest of my life. I fear my dreams will always be with me.    

     I sat in my car for the longest time watching the children. Sometimes I would stare at the street and watch the steam rise like death angels. After awhile, maybe thirty minutes or so, I decided to get out of the car and take a walk. I listened to the sound of my feet on the cold and wet street as I locked the car up and walked away.

     Halfway up the block, I saw a man curled up against a cardboard box. Maytag was written on the side. He watched me carefully as I approached. He didn’t say anything; just watched me. I thought of the box as a lonely bedroom of sorts and, for some reason, I don’t know why I did it because I usually don’t, I pulled out my wallet and handed the man twenty dollars. He thanked me as he slipped it under his hat. Like me, he probably wondered why I was there. I don’t know, but something drew me there that day. Maybe it was the young girl’s screams, my guilt for not helping.    

     I walked farther down and saw a trash can, it’s top aflame. It looked like an army of orange demons waging war against the iceman. Young men hovered over the burning can and stared at me as I approached. Young men I say, but life on the street had been rough on them, their faces blown into different shapes like beach dunes, some of their teeth rotting or missing all together, their eyes frustrated and lonely and questioning, as if they were high. And probably were. And they had probably never seen a buzzed cut, middle class white guy on this side of town before. I gave them some money, too, and told them to go get a room in a nice motel and clean up and get a decent meal. It was obvious that they were not familiar with the local soup kitchens and shelters that catered to men like them. Or maybe they just liked living on the street. And maybe they were just going to use my money to buy more drugs.

     As I rounded the corner, I saw a girl, maybe sixteen, her knees curled to her chest, a glass pipe hanging from her mouth with a bubble on the end. Grey smoke, like a demented halo, circled above her. Her shoes were untied. She was shaking. I couldn’t see her fully because she was wearing a hood. Reebok was stencilled on the front of her sweatshirt. I gave her some money and told her to check into a clinic. She flipped off her hood and looked at me with dead eyes. Those eyes. I will never forget them. They were the eyes of the missing girl, now dead, because of me.

     I woke up and screamed. I screamed until my lungs gave out. It was then that I knew I needed to retire and get the hell out of here.    

     Now I sit on my porch and look at the ocean. I’ve been living on the Outer Banks for six months. It’s the middle of November and cold. Not DC cold, but cold enough for a jacket and hat. I sip my coffee and wonder. I pray. I hope. A blank Word Document looks back at me.

     How do you write a book about guilt? A lonely and frozen tear slides down my cheek and digs a trench of ice and wrinkles. It’s raining. Like that day I watched the kids playing at Turkey Thicket. Like that night I heard a young girl scream.

     I think my hope is ruined. I don’t think even the rain can wash the blood away.

 

 

back to Contest #3