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

pans were piled in the sink. The man was sitting on a stool at the island, twisting his fork in a plate of pasta. He lifted it and closed his mouth around the food while he looked at me. I still remember those emotionless blue eyes, like a lizard’s.

After swallowing his food, he smiled at me and said, “Look what a mess you’ve caused. I’m afraid I didn’t save you any. The effort of cooking made me quite hungry.” I will never forget the way he looked at me, like I was pathetic, like he hoped I would cry. Then he told me to clean up the mess, and maybe after, he would give me something to eat.

But he didn’t. When I finished cleaning again, he grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the room where he was keeping me with Jessica. I was so angry that I tried to pull out of his grasp and run back to the kitchen, but when I saw the state she was in, I forgot all about my hunger. She was obviously incredibly sick, but he didn’t seem to care. I screamed at him that she needed a doctor, and he looked at me like I was an idiot. Because of course, he was trying to kill her, and he was going to kill me too.

Elle:

Was Jessica able to help you at all?

Nora:

No, she was very sick. It was perfect, really—his system. Break the first girl down and make her paralyzed with fear before you bring in the next one and start the process all over. It makes surviving, fighting back, feel impossible. You’re watching the life drain out of a person, knowing this is going to happen to you next. If TCK is good at anything, it’s knowing how to cause and intensify terror until it’s excruciating.

I kept trying to convince her she had to come with me, we had to find a way out, but she could barely move. He came and got her once, I think on my second morning there, but he brought her back only twenty minutes later. She was barely able to move. She told me he left really early in the morning for about an hour every day, drove off into the countryside. That was our chance, but the only way out of the room was through a window. It was so small and two stories up, so it didn’t have a lock. He had told us there were vicious dogs guarding the property, that we were thirty miles from the nearest town. During winter in Minnesota, with no coat or shoes, that was a death sentence itself. He made escape seem impossible. I think he’d also gotten a little cocky. No one had gotten away from him before—he assumed he had such a hold on us that we wouldn’t try.

On my third day, I knew we had run out of time. I didn’t know if he would kill Jessica before kidnapping another girl, or if the reason he left that morning was to stalk and abduct his next victim. Either way, I told Jessica, we had to go then or we never would. The girls before us had probably been too big, but both of us were small enough that we could squeeze through the window if we went headfirst. I thought if we stretched, we could reach the drainpipe and shimmy down. I had no idea if it would hold our weight, and once we got down, we would have to contend with dogs and snow in nothing but the pajamas he had given us, but it was the only way.

[Through tears.] I was wrong. I tried reaching for the drainpipe, but I couldn’t get hold of it before I lost my balance on the floor inside the room. There wasn’t enough space for me to get one leg over the windowsill to hold myself steady. Then, when I was reaching for about the tenth time, just as I started to fall forward, I felt a hand grab on to my clothes. Jessica was behind me, keeping me from falling onto the frozen ground below. I told her no, that we both had to go, but she just shook her head. She didn’t even say anything. All she did was hold my hand and nod toward the window.

With her holding me steady, I was able to reach far enough to grasp the drainpipe without losing my balance. She leaned out the window, bracing her shaking legs by putting her feet against the wall inside the cabin. She held me until I was able to grip the drainpipe with my feet, and then she let go.

I didn’t have time to think, time to cry. That would come later. I was already freezing when I hit the ground. As far as I know, the dogs were just another lie he told. I never saw or heard them, but I didn’t stick around. I ran as fast as I could in the early morning dark. Looking back, I think that’s the only reason I survived. If the sun had been up, I wouldn’t have seen the gas station lights. There was enough of a glow in the sky that I knew which direction to go, and it was only half a mile away. Just another one of TCK’s lies—and it saved my life.

Elle:

Why have you never appeared in the media before? Surely you could make a fortune by telling your story.

Nora:

I don’t want to profit off what happened to me. I want TCK to be caught. I want him to be punished for what he did to me, to Jessica—to all those other girls.

Elle:

What do you think people should know about TCK, based on your personal experience?

Nora:

There were two things that seemed to be important to him: control and fear. Everything he did, every move he made with the girls he kidnapped and every word he spoke to me when I was trembling in his cabin,