I Didn't See Anything (Part Two)

Artist: Kade Mallory

Part 2:


I couldn't see anything, just whiteness. Maggie's scream played over and over in my mind. I could still hear the sound of metal twisting and breaking, the loud thunder-like boom from the impact of metal on metal.

Am I dead? I couldn’t help but think of my family. How would they handle the news of their daughter and her best friend being murdered? I could see their grief stricken faces as they prepared my funeral. My mother sobbing as the guests gave their condolences. Would there be guests? Would anyone care?

Surely we’d be too disfigured to have a viewing. Our funerals would be closed casket. My body, too mangled, no one would want to see it. My family, left with the empty feeling of receiving no closure from my death.

Why couldn't I see anything? The noise was so loud I could barely hear myself think. I tried to rub my eyes. That's when I realized they were closed. Was I asleep? Wake up, Hannah, wake up!

Suddenly my eyes opened. I could barely make out any images through the blur. Everything was so silent it was very unsettling.

When my vision finally cleared, the images came together. I realized I was hanging upside down by my seat belt.

My head and body throbbed with pain. I had blood dripping from my scalp; I could taste it in my mouth. It had this horrible metallic taste. The smell of it made me sick. There was so much blood. Where was it all coming from? It soaked my clothes making them sticky and clingy.

"Maggie," I whispered. "Are you-" I turned to look at her. The sight was horrifying. I covered my mouth to keep the scream in.

Maggie dangled upside down in in her seat, between the dashboard and her seat her eyes still looking at me. Her body was mangled body was broken and ripped apart. Blood dripped off the ends of her hair. Her face permanently twisted in pure terror. Her dead eyes looking right at me. I knew she was gone forever.

My eyes welled with tears. “Maggie…” I whispered, “I’m so sorry.” I turned away. My best friend was gone, there was nothing I could have done to protect her. Why did this happen to us? Why did this happen to her? My heart ached at the thought of how I was going to explain this to her parents, how I couldn’t protect the one thing they held most dear.

The pain in my head increased. I looked around for something that I could use to cut myself out of the seat belt. Glass shards gathered on the roof of the car. There were pieces of jagged metal surrounding me but they were out of reach. I felt around for something sharp. On the remains of the driver-side door, my hand slid against something metal, cutting it.

“Ouch,” I groaned, I then grabbed the shard of metal. It was stuck between the seat and the floor; it was loose, so I pulled and it came right out. I began frantically cutting the thick webbing, the metal shard dug deep into my palm. Blood seeped through my fingers and dripped off my elbow. My heart raced and I felt as if I was going to have a heart attack. I bit my lip to keep calm.

Finally, I released myself. I fell head first into the shards of glass that pooled below mer. I groaned in pain, although landing on my head was the least of my worries. I still hadn’t checked to see the severity of my own injuries.

I crawled out the empty windshield and collapsed on the ground, looking up at the stars. The night was so dark, it seemed as if I could see every star in the sky. You couldn’t see that many in my hometown. The night was so beautiful, and quiet; too quiet. I had to get up and find help.

It took everything I had to get up. When I got to my knees, my heart began to pound faster. It was so loud, I could hear it. My head spun and adrenaline coursed through me again. I began hyperventilating as the events from the night played over and over again in my mind. A shrill scream broke through my throat.

I held my head and tried to focus on something other than my complete sense of despair. I need to find help, but how? There is no one within miles except for… Him.

Anger began to sharpen my focus. He did this to us. He killed that poor woman. He tried to kill us. He killed… Maggie. He killed my best friend. Rage took over and I was no longer scared anymore. I knew what I had to do.

The cracking of twigs caught my attention. My heart stopped as I turned around. There he was, raising a shovel over his head. Everything went black.




I woke up in what looked like a shed, or a small workshop. The room stunk like rotting flesh. My eyes had trouble focusing, When they finally did, I took in my surroundings. How long have I been here? I lay on the ground; pressure on my hands and made me realize my hands and ankles were fastened together with duct tape. Duct tape sealed my mouth.

I looked around for any sign of the man. Nothing. I listened for him. All I heard was silence. There were tables with tools on them everywhere. My head stung with pain, so much pain. I felt something stiff behind me, I rolled over to see what it was.

Staring right at me were Maggie’s eyes, wide and glazed over. It startled me and I quickly slid away. A muffled scream vibrated the duct tape on my mouth. I realized the woman was lying next to her. Flies began to gather on them. They were beginning to smell. Acid kept rising in my throat. It took everything I had to keep it down.

I took a deep breath and looked at them. I looked at the poor woman, her face plain and tear-stained. I wondered if anyone would ever find us. Would I ever know her name? I wondered if she had a family, if somewhere there was a child left motherless. Will the world ever know what happened to her?

I looked at Maggie. Just hours ago, she was smiling and dancing in the moonlight. She was the only person I had ever really trusted. Without her, I felt so alone. My eyes welled with tears, that dropped to the cold cement beneath me. They both laid there lifeless, yet they looked so peaceful.

I couldn’t just sit here. I had to do something, for their sake. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The door to the shed creaked open.

“You’re awake.”

I turned in the direction of the voice. There he was, staring at me. He was tall, and very well built. He kept clenching and releasing his fists. His brow furrowed. His eyes were glazed over, only he was alive. Any part of him that wasn’t this monster before me was long gone.

He lunged at me, I tried to dodge him. He grabbed my hair and dragged me to a chair he had in the corner, forcing me to sit down.

“Do you see this!?” he yelled, pointing at Maggie. “Your friend is dead, and it’s all your fault.” He shook his head. “You could have just drove on by, and she’d still be alive.” He backhanded me. I choked back tears as my face stung. My cheek began throbbing.

He grabbed another chair and sat down on it facing me. “Now, you’re stuck in this mess with me too.” He ripped the duct tape off my mouth.

“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered. “You could let me go home, and pretend this never happened. It would be like I’d never seen anything.”

He smiled. “There is just one problem with that.” He took a knife from off the table next to him. The tip was red already. The image of the woman’s death flashed in my mind. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.” He jammed the knife into my thigh.

The pain was excruciating and I screamed. He pulled it out and I bit my lip to try to stop screaming. Tears tumbled from the corners of my eyes.

"This is all your fault," he said, getting closer to my face. I could feel his breath against my lips. "And I'm going to make you suffer." He pulled the knife back and went for my stomach.

Anger rippled through my body. "No!" I shouted, as I slammed my forehead into his face, I heard the sound of his nose crunch from the impact. I lifted my feet up kicking him away causing both of us to tumble backwards.The knife flew out of his hand. My chair crumbled beneath me.

He held his face and groaned in pain. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth.

My head slammed against the table behind me. Blood dripped down my neck. The knife lay only a few feet away from me. I scrambled toward the knife, I knew I had to be quick. I sat up with my back facing the knife and grabbed it with my hands behind my back, frantically sawing at the duct tape binding my wrists. I got halfway through and ripped it the rest of the way.

I began slicing through the tape around my feet as the man staggered up, dazed, still holding his face. He was furious, throwing things around and shouting.

I finally broke through the tape around my ankles when he grabbed my hair again. He drug me across the floor, even though I dug the nails of my free hand into his wrist.

He let go and I fell to the ground. The knife was still in my hand, I plunged it into his foot and tried to crawl away. He cried in pain and ripped it out of his foot.

My attacker grabbed my hair and wrapped his free arm around my neck cutting off my air supply and crushing my vocal cords. I clawed at his arm to try to get him to release me. He wouldn't budge. I gasped for air. My eyes felt as if they were going to pop out of my skull as pressure began to build.

Just as I was about to pass out, he dropped me to the floor. I laid there dazed for a moment, almost ready to give up. I watched as he walked back over to the knife, picked it up and walked back over to me. He grabbed my hair, pulling it up, forcing me to my knees.

He put the blade to one side of my my throat."It's time for you to join your friend."

I was ready to let go and succumb to the darkness until my eyes fell upon Maggie’s lifeless body. The anger returned and my heart thundered. From the corner of my eye, I saw a fairly large crescent wrench laying on the floor, the kind my father used rebuilding the engine on his old Ford truck. It was close enough to grab. I snatched it up and hurled it into his head with a soggy crunch.

The man collapsed to the floor and lay there motionless.

My first instinct was to run into his house and call 9-1-1, but anger burned inside and consumed me. All I wanted was for him to suffer. I stood there, my mind spinning and my heart racing. One thing I knew for certain, I wanted revenge.

All I could think about was all the many ways I could make him suffer; bleed like he made me bleed. I felt my own sense of sanity slipping from my grasp. Rage pulsed through my veins and I invited it. I began to lose myself and I didn't stop it.

I drug the man to one of the chairs and grabbed the duct tape from one of the tables. I layered his wrists and ankles in tape, then pulled up another chair and relaxed until he woke up. Then put the final touch on his mouth with a thick piece of tape.

"You're awake." I said, a cruel smile began to stretch across my face.

The man struggled and tried to break free, groaning as he realized he couldn't.

"You took my best friend from me. You think I was just going to let you do that?"

He stared at me with a look of despair.

"Now it's your turn to know what it feels like to be a victim, to know what it's like to have a piece of you sliced away. These girls were loved; they'll have great funerals surrounded by the people that loved them. All you'll have is the dirt you lie in."

For a brief moment, I saw fear in his eyes. His expression caused an uncontrollable hysterical laughter to rumble through me. Slowly my laugh faded away until there was silence. Nothing but the sound of our breathing remained.

After a few moments of silence, I stood up and walked behind him, wrapping my arm around his neck. I dug the knife into one side of his throat and slashed it to the other side. Instantly the wound began to bleed.

He gasped for air, his breath wet with blood. It squirted from his neck and splattered on the ground, pooling underneath him. His clothes saturated with it. His life began slipping from him. With one more gasp of air, his head slumped to his chest.

I fell to the floor laughing and crying hysterically. It was finally over. My hands trembled and were painted in his blood, but I didn't care. I felt no remorse.

Slowly, I got up and limped out the door.

Hours later, I used the man’s landline to finally call the police, I told them everything. Then I sat down on a rocking chair on the man's porch and rocked back and forth, watching the sunset and listening to the sirens as they got closer and closer.

Present Day:

When my story ended, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. As the memory faded, I realized I was crying. It felt good to cry. This was the first time I was able to tell my story start to finish without collapsing to the ground in a heap of terror. I can still feel the crescent shaped scars on my knees from my nails as I dug them into my skin as I rocked back and forth from each panic attack.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks and looked at them glistening on my fingers.

“I’m proud of you, Hannah.”

I looked up to see Dr. Carlisle smiling. “Thank you.” I whispered.

“I think you’re ready.”

“Really?” I felt like it was too good to be true.

“I’ll sign your release papers in the morning. Hannah, you’re going home.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For so long, the man I knew nothing about, consumed every minute of every day. At last, I was finally free.