I am a victim of a serial killer.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkaf7yU28iT
“But how are you still alive, then?” They always ask me after I share this with knowledge with people. I’m not sure how I had even survived myself, to be honest. I just show them my throat, which is usually covered with a turtle-neck shirt or a scarf, where the horrid scar lays just to the left of my wind-pipe. Then, after they get a good look, I push whatever is covering my neck that day back up. After I show them, I usually get asked for details, and rarely do I ever give them. But today, I have to. I have to share my experience, with everyone who watches the Daily Grimm, a blog ran by a man named David Grimm. I will be pitied on a blog which millions of people watch every day.
It doesn’t bother me, or at least not enough to affect me. I simply had the misfortune of becoming friends with the manager of the blog, David Grimm. He wanted to feature me, because he was having some “Blogging Block” as he so claimed. So why was I feeling nervous and shy? Why did I just want to turn around and go back down the hall? Maybe it was because I didn’t appreciate having to reflect on the experience.
I stepped into the bright room, the orange wall-paper seeming to assault my eyes. For the home of a blog called the “Daily Grimm”, it seemed to be a rather chipper place. David already sat at the white sofa in the center of the room, his feet resting on the glass coffee table that sat in front. He seemed to look very relaxed. He didn’t seem to have heard me come in. I realized it was because he had ear buds in. I could still go back, if I wanted to. I could totally blow this guy off and save myself the effort and the pain. But that would’ve been a very crude thing to do. Besides, he’s depending on me to continue doing what he loves. I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Oh! Hey, Justice. I was waiting for you,” he said as he looked over and simultaneously pulled the ear buds out of his ears. David wrapped the cord around his phone and stuffed it into his fancy-looking khakis. I set my purse down on the umber plush carpet as I took a seat on the sofa next to him. From my purse, I pulled out a notebook and a pen. I wrote “hello, David,” and showed it to him.
“Well, shall we go over what’s going to happen one more time? And remember, if it gets too emotional for you, just write it down, and I will play our way to the finish. Alright?” As he spoke, he gave me a polite and professional smile, and moved to turn on the laptop that sat at the coffee table. I simply nodded in response.
He re-capped the conversation we had already had the other day, basically. He was going to introduce me when they started filming. I was then going to tell my story. Or, at the least, let him read what I already had written down to save on time. After that, he was going to interview me, and then the video would be over. It seemed simple enough, yet I was still berating myself silently for letting myself get dragged into this. I didn’t want to share my story with the world, yet David says it would be inspiring. I would’ve scoffed if I could’ve. It’s a depressing tale. My story seems to have been the brain child of Edgar Allen Poe, except the main character actually survived. I shook my dark thoughts away as he started filming, and began speaking.
“Hey, guys! This is the Daily Grimm, and I’m here today with a special guest, Justice Pevensey.” He rambled on a couple more lines, talking about how I was the victim of a serial killer, and that I was going to share my story for others to hear. As his introduction came to a close, I turned the pages in my notebook to the first page in which I had described my experience, and handed it to him. As he read, I couldn’t help but to think about that night.
‘I was jogging through the park during the middle of the night. It was cold, but the movement kept me warm. I only had to cut through the park, and head over to my house. I had forgotten my phone charger, and the friend I was staying with did not have a spare.
At that moment, I was thinking about how the street lights were all off in the park, and complaining to myself about how I could barely see the path. But I knew I was almost to the main road, as I could see the streetlight outside my house off in the distance. Then, it had happened faster than my mind could have ever hoped to comprehend. I cried out in confusion, terror, and pain. Someone had rushed into me like a bull, and my shoulder came in contact with the asphalt of the path.
The aforementioned someone was huge, at least twice the size of my tiny, teenage frame, and they used that to their advantage. I was screaming my lungs out, but by the time I actually figured out I was getting attacked, he had my limbs pinned roughly to the ground. There was no escape, despite my frantic thrashing. Then, everything stilled after a glint of steel, and a cold, thin object pressed to my throat. My instincts demanded me to freeze.
“Don’t move, little lady. And shut up!” The voice was so deep, so chilling. I knew in that moment, that voice would haunt me for the rest of my days. My survival instincts commanded me to follow his orders.
He then proceeded to describe to me what was going to happen. He was going to haul me to my feet. If I made so much as a whimper, or a move to break free, he would slice my throat. So I went with him, so scared that I couldn’t even begin to put together a way to get out of this. How could I? He would’ve killed me right then and there. And so he pulled me up to my feet, and began to half-drag me away, the knife still held to my throat. He was heading towards the road.
We were half-way across the road when there were headlights coming from the direction of where my house was, but it wasn’t from my house. Events happened faster than what I could comprehend. I heard my captor curse, before there was a blinding pain in my throat. It was so sudden, and so agonizing, that I had blacked out right then and there.’
I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them, after David had finished reading. He had never read the details before, so his expression of surprise was genuine. He handed the notebook back. From there, I turned to the next blank page.
“How on Earth did you ever survive?” As he asked this, his head tilted slightly to the right in wonder.
I wrote “I don’t know. The guy, who was in car that had approached while the attacker was trying to drag me away, used to be an EMS. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve died. His name was William Edwards.” I handed him the notebook afterwards, so he could read my response aloud to the camera.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKEv84W1PDx
“And what was it like, to wake up in the hospital?”
“Horrid,” I wrote on the next line, after he had handed it back again. Yet in that one word, I thought more on what happened. A frown settled on my features.
‘My eyes opened, to see a white ceiling. I was immediately confused. It was a very weird feeling, like waking up and forgetting you fell asleep there. I tried to turn my head and look around, but there was an acute pain in my throat. I cried out, but instead an odd gargle came from my throat. That wasn't how a howl of pain sounded, was it?
What was going on? Why was I here? Where was here? All that thought in only a couple of moments. I felt confusion on a scale I had never felt before. I tried using my voice again, to call out for someone.
Gargle. I winced in pain. Why wouldn’t my voice work? Then a stranger crossed my view. It was the face of an old man, who appeared to be clean. Spectacles rested half-way down his nose.
“Hello, Mrs. Pevensey. I am Doctor Kenneth. Raise your right hand for yes, and your left for no. Okay?” I raised my right hand. So he knew I couldn’t speak… Of course he knew. He must’ve been the one who took care of me.
“Can you speak?” I raised my left hand in response.
“Did it hurt when you attempted to do so?” My right hand rose. It did hurt, a lot.
“Well. This is grave news indeed. The knife that was used to stab your throat, in which you miraculously survived, by the way, has rendered your vocal cords totally shredded. You have a very small chance of them healing properly, and being able to speak again. I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely sorry for me. At the mention of knife, I remembered what happened then.
I was almost killed. This idea blew my mind. Things like this didn’t happen to me! And when bad things happened, I always came out on top. Yet, theoretically, I did come out on top, didn’t I? What was worse to me? Death, or most likely never being able to speak again? The latter seemed to be the obvious answer. I would just have to hope I came out on top of this as well.
“Anyhow, your family is here. I will send them in.” Then the doctor left.’
“How so?"
I had tried to describe the experience to him, but I ended up just re-living the memory as a summary on a piece of paper. I let him read it.
"And do you still communicate with William Edwards?"
I wrote to him a quick, simple response. "No." He had moved on with his life, and so had I. What was I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my days giving him my eternal thanks? He got the message, so there was no need to push it past that.
"How did your parents respond when they finally saw you awake?"
I jotted down a slightly longer response. "They were extremely relieved, excited, and very glad to see me alive. They gave me a very long speech on how much they loved me, and some other things. It's fuzzy, really." It was really long. There's no other nice way to put that.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVA9ZH478rq
"And what really changed for you after you found you weren't going to be able to talk anymore?" This question stung a bit, as I quickly scrawled an answer.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLZWnwmrC5c
"A lot of things. But what was effected most was my passion. Not meaning to sound vain, but I was a really good singer. I signed up for quite a few talent shows back in high school and even won once." I smiled, hearing this answer read aloud by David. Even those times I had lost, I was in the top five. And that satisfied me at the time. Heck, it still does.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaE3rKLFEnm
"I bet you blew them away," he paused only to laugh, before continuing his questions. "What genres did you sing?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIErAT9Hr8V
"Well, I sang a little bit of everything except rap and metal. But my favorites were folk songs."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIQTXhr4UPy
David nodded slowly, again handing the notepad back for me to write down my next answer. "And do you have a favorite song?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTZjzb7vrBm
I nodded, and wrote down "The Parting Glass."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWCklywxwQ1
"Hey! That's the song at the end of Assassin's Creed Black Flag. You a fan?" I smiled, and held up my hand with my index and thumb only a couple centimeters apart. He knew what I was saying "a little bit." In reality, I love the series. Nobody can deny how epic it is to be able to be surrounding by like twenty guards and being able to take them all out. I also always love a good ol' Leap of Faith, despite their logic-defying mannerisms.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡix2l83b7V1
"We'll have to play Unity together sometime, Justice. Anyways, what do you do these days?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh3FYKl7b3G
I hesitated. There's a couple things I could tell him here. I write, I draw, I read, and then there's work as a photographer. I turned the page, since the last page was full, and wrote two words down.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCrxAIWtoer
"I write."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4lHfWso9yN
"About what?" He asked skeptically. 962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjE1HjIpu7g
"Historical Fiction," I wrote in response quickly.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMLkTrNyXp2
"Quite an interesting genre. What's your current project?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTTnldepfTJ
"A pirate story called a Tornado of Crimson."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZQ50w4omq3
David smiled. "Is it about a pirate who falls in love?" His tone suggested he was joking around. But seriously... Ew, no, it wasn't about a pirate falling in love. Pirates didn't worry about love. They worried about survival. In fact, that was the reason most men became pirates. They weren't "Misunderstood adventurers" or "lovey dovey" at all. If they needed "loving", they had plenty of brothels all about the late seventeenth and earlier eighteen hundredth centuries. Thanks to all these modern pirate movies though, people really don't understand how pirates actually were.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡftBxVHwllf
I wrote down, "no. Not at all. It's basically about a captain who gets himself out of quite a few sticky situations. I'm not exactly sure on the bigger picture myself yet, though. At least in a way that can be properly explained without spoilers."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ416etm9lCc
"Sticky situations?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFNBn98InTK
"The kind of situations in which involves a gun or a very sharp object pointed at his face."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡssC73Dlu0c
David made a small 'o' with his mouth of understanding. "Oh boy. Sounds like a fun story. You'll have to let me read it when you're done, yeah?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPCOx3J8vJW
I simply nodded.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW3bw6wx4BB
"Well. I have one more question for you, Justice... What ever happened to the man who attacked you?" His face was very suddenly dead serious. Hmph. I thought we were all done with the depressing questions. But, of course we have to end it on a grim note.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWPvZjDOzQA
"I never saw him again after he ran off. He wasn't even caught."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlujKfgcT4L
"Do you think he's out there still, Justice?"962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡljKSlclq5H
In that moment, a deep, primal hate resurfaced in the bottom of my chest. Without any hesitation, I scrawled a simple answer that could've spoke volumes.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Kp86qTZ6Y
"I don't care if he is, or if he isn't. I hope he suffered."962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOjRFGd8ppt
962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwFcShabK9K
962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7NQZMbmBiC
962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsmWKTgfRh9
962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4fsIgYGHvZ
A/N: Woot. Edited this and going to create a 3-page extension for my darling English teacher Mrs. K the day before it's due. Man, I really need to stop forgetting about these things. I hope this provides a much better ending than that crappy one I gave you all (And to Mrs. K. Somehow, I still got a hundred on that version.) Also, A Tornado of Crimson is an actual story I'm working on, and it's actually on Penana. It has absolutely no connection to this story besides me just using its name and concept for what Justice writes about. 962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7C0iLowiFy
P.S. I tried to figure out a way to include what EMS is, but no luck. So, an EMS is one of the guys or gals who work in an ambulance.962Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxJSyTzoTo6
