In the meantime, Carlo was going to all sorts of specialists, yet not one was able to explain what could have happened that night. One week after the incident, Carlo was growing increasingly annoyed. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, the more we discuss it the stranger it feels,” he would tell us. Mom kept insisting that he was a somnambulist, someone who walks in his sleep. She maintains that Carlo left home in the middle of the night, something happened to his face, and he came back to his bed, all in his sleep.
The whole household, including Carlo, said they slept like angels. That shows everyone is as likely to be a sleepwalker as Carlo. I even wondered whether I could be capable of such profanation in my sleep. What’s weirdest of all is that the only place where blood was found in the entire house was in Carlo’s bed. Therefore, whatever happened, happened in his bed? “It’s almost as if every possible solution contradicts the facts and what we know,” one of the many specialists said. Unless witnesses were lying regarding what they did that night, this statement is most utterly accurate. Say he is a sleepwalker, then who did it to him? Why would anyone attack him? Did he do it to himself ? If he did, could it have been in his room? With what? In his house? Why was there blood nowhere else but in his bed? How did Carlo not feel any pain, wake up, or remember it? These unsolved questions are why the case remains enshrouded in mystery.
Last week, on Friday, Carlo slept on the floor of my room. I was too tired to ask him why he didn’t just sleep in his own room, but as soon as I closed my eyes the words Friday the 13th glimmered in the dark, followed by a bloody sickle.
KYLA DUHART
The Unfortunate Tale of Sam Withersby
DEAR KATE,
I am writing to you because I know you are the only one who will understand. You are the only person who would believe me. You know me better than anyone else and would never for a second believe I would do such a horrible thing without just reason. So here goes nothing . . . This is the real story of how my mom and father died.
It all started five years ago when my mother finally called the police and reported my father. My mother feared him and was terrified of the consequences that came with turning him in to the police for beating her, but I was glad she did because I couldn’t have taken one more night of watching him throw or punch her each and every time she didn’t do everything he asked then and there. She spent hours in the mirror trying to cover up every scar, bruise, and pain that she felt inside and out. This was my life for about nine years until September 30, 2011, when Mr. Lock, one of San Diego Police Department’s finest, put the metal handcuffs around my father and took him away.
My mom was smart, she didn’t wait around for him to be set free. She made us pack up our stuff, hop on a plane, and move to the house next door to yours. I loved being in that house. I never had to worry about my mother making the wrong move or getting thrown and punched because she didn’t make a sandwich exactly as he wanted. That house was a gateway to happiness. I would get home from school sometimes and my mother would be there waiting with a giant smile on her face because she knew that we were finally safe. My mom got a job as a business assistant—nothing special, but it did pay the bills and her hours worked beautifully into our lives, which made us happy and we hadn’t had that feeling in a long time.
I apologize to you, Kate, for never telling you. You’re my best friend, but I couldn’t even think of my father without breaking into tears, and frankly I did not want to talk about him. I was ashamed that my only father would be nothing more than a coward. So I pretended that I didn’t have a father at all.
Anyway, you remember that day when I went home early and the next day you asked me why I was being so distant? Well, I went home early that day because my mother got a phone call from a friend back in San Diego telling her that my father served his sentence and was free. She also informed my mother that he came to their house asking where we were. He was back and he was going to find us one way or another, it was only a matter of time. My mom couldn’t stop crying that day and became overprotective. She would get up at all hours of the night to make sure that the windows were closed, the doors were locked, and that I was still safely sleeping in my bedroom. She even put a tracker in my phone so she’d know where I was at all times, but I’d rather have gone through all those precautions than wake up one morning and find him in our house.
Later, I came to realize that some nightmares are meant to come true, we just weren’t aware of how soon.
Well, I guess I should elaborate on that since you haven’t seen me in about a week. The last day I saw you was the day I came home from school and saw my father sitting on my porch with a gun on his lap and black leather gloves on. He made me open the door and we walked inside. He gave a lecture on how we shouldn’t have left, betrayed his love, or even tried to escape, because he was always going to be around. He made it seem as if living with him was like being locked away without any hope of ever getting away, and with all honesty it was. I don’t know what was going on in my head at the time, but all I could think about was making him disappear because that speech made every pain he caused us to come back and wound me all over again.
“Do you want any water?” I asked, wondering if he would actually let me get away, even for a second, so I could clear my head. To my surprise he nodded yes. So I got up, walked into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, grabbed a cup, filled it with water, and snatched a knife from the bottom drawer and shoved it in my pocket.
“Hurry up in there, I am thirsty here. Oh! And put some ice in there, if you have any, it’s not like you guys can afford much. Your mother can’t do anything right, so I doubt she has a good-paying job. Or any job, for that matter.”
I hated him. How dare he make the assumption that my mother can’t do anything? But I knew it was best for me not to say any of this because who knows what he would’ve done with that gun.
“We don’t have any ice, but our faucet water gets really cold if you run it for a little while,” I said with irritation as I realized who I was serving. I couldn’t believe he had found us. My mom had tried too hard to close the past and focus on our future for it all to be shattered now. I walked back into the living room, handed him his water. We watched each other intently, waiting to see what would happen next, but the adrenaline was eating me alive. I needed to get away, so I pulled out the knife and sliced his shin and made a run for my bike outside, but it was too late. By the time I unlocked the chain his gun was held at the back of my head.
“Get inside now!!” He was angry. The type of anger that he had when he nearly beat my mother to death. We walked inside slowly. I was trembling with fear and dropped the knife, so all I could do was wonder if anyone would save me from this monster, but unfortunately people don’t always get help when they need it most.
“Get out a piece of paper and pen,” he demanded. I didn’t have any other choice than to listen to what I was told. So I went inside my backpack, pulled out a notebook and a pen.
“I want you to write exactly what I tell you!! Nothing more or less. Got it?” I nodded my head in fear so he would stop inching closer and closer with the gun. This was the first time in my life where I felt true fear and couldn’t do a thing about it.
Once I was done writing the note I taped it to the front door and we walked to his car. Now, you’d figure this guy would have the decency to let me ride in the “car,” but no, I was shoved in the trunk for who knows how long to who knows where. Sounds fun, right?
Anyways, when the car came to an official halt, he opened the trunk and walked me inside an abandoned warehouse, where I was tied to a pole and teased with the thought of food, but all I could really think about was my mother. How she felt when she was getting home, expecting to see her daughter after a long day of work, to find a note that read:
He’s back.
That was it. How could she know where to look, go, or even know who “he” was? It would have been practically impossible for her to find me, or so I thought. A
nd I also couldn’t understand the thought of how my own father would do this to me. I was his only child, his own blood, and here I sat hungry, tied to a pole, and forced to listen to his complaints and laughter about what he had to go through in Watson’s County Jail and how my mother wouldn’t live to regret the day she dialed 911.
That day couldn’t have gotten any worse, or so I believed, until about midnight when I heard a car pull up and somebody tiptoeing toward the warehouse.
“Sam. Sammy are you here? Your phone tracked you here. Are you here?”
“Mom!! I’m in here. Please come. Help me!” I yelled, oblivious to the fact that I had woken my father.
My mom ran in with a knife, the same one I had dropped on the floor back at the house, and proceeded to cut the ropes that bound me to the pole. She then pointed the knife at my father.
“How dare you? How dare you take my baby? She did nothing wrong!! This is between you and me. I have let you take away so much from me, you are not getting anything more!!” she screamed as she lunged toward him with the knife. I needed to help her, but I was so weak. What could I do? The gun!! I remembered. I ran to where my father was sitting and grabbed the gun, but it was too late. My mother was dead on the floor. He’d stabbed her. How could he have stabbed her?! I panicked and I was flustered with anger. So I picked up the gun, held it firm in my hands, and pulled the trigger without any remorse.
I called the police and reported the incident and they arrested me. Me!! He deserved to die, but the facts were these: my fingerprints were on both weapons, I admitted to killing my father, my father wore gloves, not a single drop of blood of my mother’s was on him, and I was only fourteen with two murdered parents beside me. So I was pegged as mental and sent to the Maulsby Asylum. Where I get to sit every day in a white room with soft pillows and write about my feelings and to you.
I’m sorry to end us this way, but if you haven’t learned from before, not everyone gets their happy ending, and frankly it’s not always deserved. So this is goodbye, Kate.
Sincerely,
Sam Withersby
ADELLE ELSE
Dream World
I REMEMBER WAKING UP. It felt as if I had been submerged in the dark for eons, finally coming up for a breath of luminescence. Tiny amoebas played in my field of vision as my eyes adjusted to the world outside the Cimmerian shade I had escaped from. The curtains next to me were drawn back to reveal a soft pink whisper of morning. My eyes fixated upon a bright red hot air balloon painted on a cerulean tile; a fragment of a glistening mosaic that reflected the blossoming morning sun as flickers of color and light engaged in a vivacious tango, causing the plain walls around me to erupt into a moving, breathing kaleidoscope.
I was so mesmerized by the light show that the creaking of a door swinging open startled me out of my daze.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it? I’m glad to see you awake.” A woman with a luscious head of hair that would fit right in to a Pantene commercial stood at the door, eyes sweeping over me in a brisk inspection.
I opened my mouth to speak but was overwhelmed by the dryness that seemed to have set up camp in my throat. I could barely produce a croak.
The woman cleared her throat and tapped her long, well-manicured nails against her clipboard.
“I am Dr. Em. You must be wondering quite a lot of things. I’m here to help you along the journey to recovery and answer any questions you may have.”
Despite her gracious offer, I noticed an authoritative note in her voice, mixed with the deep indent of a smile line dimpling her left cheek.
Slowly, her words sank in and I felt as if I had been struck with a hot coal iron.
“Recovery?” I asked.
I glanced around the room once more. The dripping IV next to my bed assaulted my vision, and a daunting machine was clear-cut in the dreamy light, producing soft pings in a meticulous cadence. My eyes drifted from the needle seemingly cemented in my vein over to the gown printed with a lackluster vintage rose design that drooped off my shockingly narrow shoulders.
Suddenly I wanted to get out of this bed. I had no recollection of how I had gotten there and had no interest in staying any longer. Weakly, I pushed up on my arms. They seemed to shake with the very effort of holding up my skeletal torso and the pinging of the machine increased its rhythm.
“I wouldn’t do that, hon.” A concerned Dr. Em watched from the doorway, with one inky well-threaded eyebrow arched.
I leaned my body toward the side of the bed in an attempt to dismount from the cushy mattress, but my legs didn’t follow. It felt as if there were an electric current racing through my legs, but I had no control over the movement of my lower limbs. An uneasy feeling gnawed at my gut as I stared at my legs. They seemed to be detached from my body as I took in their condition—thin, dumb, and limp.
I felt like an astronaut who had been launched without instruction. Lost, floating aimlessly in space, encompassed in constellations I could not map and planets I could not recognize. The absence of gravity caused my brain to feel dizzy and I felt as if I was going to crash ungracefully down to Earth at any moment. My mind brimmed with buzzing questions as I tried to focus on Dr. Em, but my vision was clouded with frustrated tears and my front teeth clamped down on my lip so forcibly I could taste the metallic jolt of blood on my tongue.
“W-why can’t I move my legs?” I said in the fullest voice I could muster.
Dr. Em finally crossed the threshold and materialized at the foot of my bed.
“Penny, I am going to be direct with you. I believe you are mature enough to be informed of your condition. By medical definition, you are a paraplegic, meaning you are immobile from the waist down due to a spinal injury from your car accident. You may also be suffering from symptoms of short- or possible long-term amnesia due to the colossal impact you experienced when you crashed.”
My thoughts sprinted in a thousand different directions as I sluggishly grasped at what she was saying. A salty taste rose up in the back of my throat as the flavor enveloped my mouth and my stomach convulsed, causing an upside-down geyser to rush out of my mouth into the conveniently located bedpan beside me. Tears began to run freely down my blazing cheeks as I buried my fingers into my knotted hair. I wanted nothing more than to run. For a brief second, I found solace in the fantasy of myself running, running so fast and hard that I encircled the earth once, twice, then three times. The return to reality was crushing. My world was a hula hoop ringing a young child’s waist, about to lose its swinging rhythm and collide with the ground in an unsuspecting instant.
I was overcome with exhaustion at the crushing weight of what Dr. Em had told me, throwing my head into my gossamer pillow, the plush material seeming to swallow my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed the world to return to the black I now longed to be drenched in, suddenly feeling a comforting warmness as the dark crept in.
A scent of salt water and cinnamon overtook me as crashing waves rumbled and rushed; the tide engaged in a playful wrestling match with the undercurrent. A laugh like a soprano bell tinkled, reverberating on an alkaline breeze. I looked up toward the direction of the musical amusement and saw the glowing face of a woman, seeming to mirror the sun with the warmth of her smile.
“Hey, look who’s up!” The woman’s toasty chestnut hair whipped around as she gushed down at me. The smell of cinnamon was rich and gave me an inexplicable sense of security.
“My little Penny, come, darling, look what I found.” She enthusiastically patted the spot next to her, grains of sand bouncing playfully around her hand.
I somehow found myself standing on tiny sandaled feet and toddled over, sand wedging itself between my toes while the wind blew some onto my chubby legs.
The woman held up an exquisite conch shell, a glaring shade of white decorated with spirals and ridges delicately etched upon its carapace, with a shy salmon lip peeking out.
“Listen, sweetie.” She put it to my ear. “The shells know the language of the mermaids, an
d if you try your very best to hear, it will whisper the secrets of the ocean to you.”
Her melodic laugh chimed, and I breathed in cinnamon as the shell whispered sweet nothings to me in the vernacular of the sea.
My surroundings shifted and the sand I was squatting in metamorphosed to dirt-red dust. My once-white sports pants were now a sullied russet in the knee. My hands were dirty with grime as I stood up, dusting myself off and adjusting my burgundy cap.
“Okay, Davidson, you’re up to bat next,” an abrasive baritone barked at me.
I stood at the heart of the copper field, a diamond panorama of dirt rimmed with grass stretched before me. My gaze migrated to the steel bleachers framing the vicinity, in search of someone. A man waved at me, beaming with a wide boyish smile that peeked out from under his burgundy cap.
My grip on the bat tightened as the pressure of the game and roaring midafternoon heat of the sun impressed upon me, encasing my body in a hot layer of sweat. I allowed myself a deep humid breath as I watched the pitcher begin to wind back her royal-blue-sleeved arm. The next few moments happened just as they would have in a movie; the softball came bludgeoning through the boiling air and made contact with my bat with an echoing smack! Letting the bat clunker to the ground, I dashed. My cleats beat against the dirt, rhythmically pounding while my arms swung back and forth, back and forth. It was like I was racing across the sands of Mars while the Martians attempted in an unorganized effort to catch the ball I had sent off into space. I ran and ran, gulping in the fever of the sun. The home base was meters, feet, inches away. I slid home on my knees, hearing a gleeful holler from across the field.
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