Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

living rooms, a big fireplace. There was a Bible on the coffee table in one of the living rooms, a few crosses on the walls. Other than that, the rest of the stuff was all hunting themed: taxidermied ducks in flight, a dozen antler plaques, a full buck’s head. It gave me the creeps.

He brought me downstairs to his kitchen and told me he would make me something to eat after I cleaned the whole room. “If you’re going to eat my food, you need to earn your keep,” he said. “The Bible says, ‘If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.’”

I had learned dozens of verses from memory by the time I was eleven, but I had never heard someone recite them with as much spite as that man did. Our pastor used to say the Bible was like a hammer; it can be used as a tool or a weapon—it just depends on who’s holding it. Evil men use it as an instrument of control, and it seemed like he liked to control us.

He didn’t look evil, though. I remember thinking that; I never would have gotten in the car with him otherwise. It’s been a huge source of frustration that I can’t remember anything specific about his face, but I think that’s partly because he looked so normal. Like he should have been nicer than he was.

Elle:

So, you don’t remember anything about his appearance?

Nora:

Not beyond what I was able to tell police when I was eleven. They tried a lot of things to help me remember more: hypnosis, therapy, forensic interviewing. But I just couldn’t. The psychiatrist who analyzed me said that I had repressed the memories of him, that my mind had been wiped clean by anxiety to protect itself. Sometimes I wonder if I would recognize him if I saw him on the street, but I’m not sure that I would. I’ve never had a good memory for faces; I don’t know if that’s because of what happened, or if I’m just one of those people. It’s not unusual for me to “meet” someone three or four times because I’ve forgotten our previous interactions.

Elle:

I see. What happened next?

Nora:

When he left the room, I searched for a way to escape, but there was no outside door from the kitchen and the windows wouldn’t open from the inside. It was getting dark, and all I could see was a thick cluster of trees and snow on the ground. Because I was unconscious when he drove me there, I had no idea how far away from home I was. I was desperate for food, but I had the feeling that he was watching me and would know if I stole any crackers from the pantry. So, I pulled the cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink and got to work.

I had cleaned before. My mother never spoiled me, even though she wasn’t the typical housewife herself. If cleaning was what I had to do to get a meal, I intended to make sure the kitchen was clean enough that I could eat that food off the floor. I washed the cabinets from top to bottom with soapy water, cleaned the crumbs out of the toaster, scrubbed at the grease in the oven, pulled all of the food out of the refrigerator and wiped down the inside. That was a special kind of torture, moving all that food without eating any of it. But I knew Jessica was hungry, too, and I thought if I did a good job, he might give me enough to share with her.

There were more Bible-ish things in the kitchen: cheesy quotes about faith and overcoming typed in cursive on floral postcards. The only thing that stood out was a handwritten card stuck with a magnet to the fridge. Exodus 34:21. “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.”

That was when I knew. I was young, but I had heard rumors about the Countdown Killer at school. We knew he would be coming for girls our age then, and the boys in school used to joke about it—that TCK would come for us if we didn’t kiss them behind the bleachers, like he was some kind of boogeyman. Jessica had told me she was twelve. I was eleven. I kept cleaning, but from then on, all I could think about was how we could get away.

It took me more than three hours to finish. After I mopped, I sat on the counter while the floor dried around me, and for a second, just a moment, I felt proud of what I’d done. Then the fear and longing for my mother came crashing back down, and I started to sob. I don’t know how long I cried before I heard the man come back in the room. I looked at him and said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

He reached out, and I knew better than to pull away, so I let him touch me, play with my hair. “Oh, Nora,” he said. “Nora, I chose you. You’re special. You should feel lucky.”

Then he told me to bring my cleaning supplies, and he took me down the hall to the bathroom. He had changed the rules; now, while I was waiting for him to cook, I needed to clean the bathroom too. I was furious, but I would have done anything to eat by that point. It didn’t take long, and when I finished, I could smell the tomato and basil coming down the hall. He was making me spaghetti. I still don’t know if he knew it was my favorite, or if it was just a coincidence. Either way, I had to force myself to walk at a normal pace to the kitchen. When I opened the door, I think I whimpered out loud at what I saw.

There was red sauce everywhere—streaking the counters, splattered across the cabinets, even dotted on the eggshell-colored ceiling. Dirty pots and