A spooky short from Elle’s life: A piece of inspiration for
Bay Girl
On a bright sunny California day I made a pit stop at the
local drug store on my way home from work. I desperately had to have the latest
V.C. Andrews novel, which, if memory serves correctly was one of the Heaven
series. I shifted my egg shaped, chocolate colored Honda into neutral, applied
the emergency brake and happily flounced out of my car with only one thought,
buying my new book. As I walked the short distance into the drug store I heard
a set of quickening footsteps behind me. Upon stealing a glance, a thrityish
man, average looking wearing an everyday business suit was swiftly gaining
ground on me. Something about him gave me the chills so I rushed into the
store, grabbed the book off the shelf and wasted no time in run-walking to the
checkout. Observing that he was no where to be seen I waited in line, checking
for his whereabout every few seconds. I safely made it to the cashier, sighing
a breath of relief, thinking I had escaped him. As the cashier handed me the
bag he walked up behind me, and attempted conversation. I ran out the door,
jumped into my car, locked all the doors, and started up the little 4 cylinder
engine. As I readied my car into first gear I heard a knock on my window. I had
been in such a rush to get away from him I stopped watching. He motioned for me
to roll down my window, and asked if I wanted to go have Chinese food with him.
I shouted, “No,” and chirped my car out of it’s resting place. I was sixteen at
the time and was scared out of my wits. Thoughts of him being worse than a
pedophile swirled around in my brain. The story doesn’t end here. He trailed me
out of the parking lot and down many streets. Instead of going straight home, I
zigzagged all over the small city until his car was gone. Eventually I made it
home safely, but not without parking my car behind the fence so it couldn’t be
easily seen and telling my parents all about the blood chilling incident. I was
a teen long before cell phones or beepers for that matter, and I wholeheartedly
believe that is an incident in which using a cell while driving should be
legal. If I’d had one, then I would have dialed 911 without hesitation.
I
used the power of the internet to try and find information on my mom. I again
wasn’t sure where to start so I went back to archived newspaper articles;
disappearances, strange deaths, anything that would tell me what happened. I
had found a lot of disappearances, but none that were my mom or even close. I
looked through deaths, murders and unsolved mysteries. Finally, I found a story
about a young woman who was found floating upstream in a river. It wasn’t far
from where I had lived and the date was about the time she went missing. It was
also within the months of my being alone in the cabin. The body hadn’t been
identified and there weren’t a lot of details: she was in her early thirties,
red hair and petite in size. The description matched my mom. She had been
strangled before being thrown into the river, and her attacker was never found.
If this was my mom, was she killed in a bad drug deal? Had she whored herself
out to the wrong man? Again, I was left with answers but even more questions. I
wrote down the name of the officer in charge of the case and the author of the
newspaper article.
I wanted to make
phone calls, but not from my room. Any
calls made through the hotel were on record via the phone bill. I also didn’t
want to be followed by Mr. Dancy Eyes, or anyone else for that matter. I had
always been able to melt into a crowd, to be seen but not really seen. Now my
face was plastered everywhere, and I longed to blend. Didier had some clothes
in my room, so I rummaged through them until I found something that looked
okay. A pair of baggy pants and a button down shirt. I pulled my hoodie on over
it, rolled my hair into a cap, and took a quick glance in the mirror. Not too horrible, since oversized clothes
were in style.
On the streets I
needed a phone, an untraceable one,… a throwaway cell phone. A few blocks down
was a store, something like a jiffy store, the kind of place that sells
cigarettes, candy and other miscellaneous items. Inside they had disposable
phones, so I purchased one and headed back to the hotel. No good. I didn’t want
to go back to the hotel. My sense of anonymity forced the need to find
someplace that had no connection to my present life. Spotting a small café with
a seat outside, and nobody else around I made my phone calls. I wasn’t sure who
to talk to first, but thought the media might be my best choice since they were
always so nosy.
The
reporter who worked my mother’s case was as good a place as any to start, I
thought. Her office gave me a run around and finally patched me through to her.
“Gina Brandt” she said pointedly.
“Thanks
for speaking with me. My name is Charlotte Greenbrier. I’m a journalism student
and I would like to ask you some questions about a case you worked. I have to
write a paper on an unsolved mystery.”
“Which
case?”
“It
was a couple years ago, a woman in her early thirties with red hair found
floating upstream in a river?”
“Yeah,
she was badly bruised, but it was post mortem, most likely caused by the stream’s
current dragging and bouncing her off the rocks. Her body had been decomposing
already for months. She didn’t have any ID, couldn’t find a dental record or a
finger print match in the system.”
It was difficult
for me to continue talking and listening. The article had run in several
different papers within the area, but nothing turned up. She was a mystery
woman, whom nobody claimed. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes, and my
throat start to burn, but I couldn’t cry, not now. I knew my mom was a junkie
and not much of a mother, but she was all I had until she was gone. I wanted
more details about her physical characteristics. “Could you give me a
description of her?” I asked.
“Sure. She was
Caucasian, approximately five feet tall, thin, and had freckles. She had track
marks up and down her arms, but that was all printed in the paper. I was in
your shoes once so I’m going to give you something that wasn’t printed and
didn’t lead anywhere, maybe you can do something with it. She had had a picture
tucked into her shoe. It was very badly damaged and the police weren’t able to
make out much, but it was a picture of a child. They couldn’t even tell for
sure the sex, but the consensus was female.”
I thanked her
and she relayed which police station had the picture in evidence, in case I
wanted to take a look. After I hung up I had to compose myself. My mother was a
loser but she hadn’t left me on purpose. She had been taken from me and she had
loved me enough to keep my picture with her.
I paid my bill and
went for a walk. I had to think about what I had just learned. What had she
been involved in that had gotten her killed? Drugs? I knew it was drugs, well,
maybe not. We had lived a quiet and secluded life. Was she running from
something, like I had eventually run? Was my life a mirror of hers? Maybe she
was a runaway like me but had gotten pregnant, with nowhere to go and no one to
turn to, so she turned inside herself. When she was gone, she must have been
working because she always came back with money. Maybe she was a whore who
wanted to keep her child from that kind of a life. Not that our life was much,
but she was there when I was young and unable to fend for myself. If I called
the police now, what would I ask them? I had to think about this so I went back
to the hotel and snuck up to my room without being noticed, or so I thought.
I
sank into the tub with a bottle of wine, and blasted the jets. I awoke to a
gentle kiss and nudge from Didier. “Justine, this is a bad habit, you… the tub
and wine,” his voice gentle but equally scolding. He helped me out of the tub
and wrapped me in a towel, gently drying off my body. Small streams of water
from the edges of my hair traced a path down my back. Taking one hand under my
legs and the other across my back, he lifted me up and gingerly lay me on the
bed. Smothering my body in kisses he sent a quake of hot shivers, and we made
love. After, I was about half conscious, and soon slipped back into sleep
again.
My
sleep haunted me. First, I was running from some man whom I have never seen or
met. It was dark and I was in the woods by our shack, in nothing but shorts and
a tank while deformed tree branches scraped against my skin. The man had
straight black hair and coal eyes. In his hand he carried a noose. My foot got
stuck between two rocks, and from the momentum of my body running, I fell. The
leaves caught me. I twisted my head to look over my shoulder, and he was gone.
Suddenly, I was twelve years old and alone in the shack. In my next dream my
mom was in a restaurant, holding a picture in her hand, and they were arguing.
He handed her an envelope and left, angry. It was an unrestful sleep. I woke up
feeling my life was in danger and even more confused about who I was and where
I had come from. Was my mom even really my mom? Deep down I knew she wasn’t. I
didn’t look anything like her.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/ElleKlass
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Blog-https://thetroubledoyster.blogspot.com
Whitehall Publishing- http://whitehallpublishing.com/ek.html
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