Silence

Part five: searching

From her xx:
I want you to be afraid.

I am afraid. I'm afraid that it's too late. I'm afraid I'm going to lose her. I'm afraid I missed my chance to tell her how much I love her. I'm petrified.  I have to find her.

For the rest of that day and into the night I received picture after picture of what they were doing to her. She was so strong but they were breaking her. I could see it in her eyes. Those beautiful eyes. She was bruised and bloody. Her shirt torn and tattered. That was one of her favorite shirts. I knew just by looking at the pictures how cold she had to be. And I wanted nothing more than to just hold her in my arms and tell her that it would be okay.

My phone had been quiet for a bit and I was drifting in and out of terrified consciousness when it buzzed. They were killing her. The picture showed her practically naked body being held down tightly by two large arms and a knife being dragged across her stomach. She had cuts all over her body. The most heart wrenching piece of that picture was the fact that she was looking right at the camera. I felt as though she was pleading. She was asking me to help and I couldn't.

It was three a.m when I finally stopped looking at that picture and decided to leave and try to do something. I walked up the stairs and out my front door.

It was right then when I discovered what I was truly afraid of.

I walked for what felt like forever and wound up at a beautiful park. I had only been here once but it somehow felt different. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had received another picture. This one was similar to the last but I saw something I hadn't before. The room she was in looked familiar. I didn't know why but I had seen that room. I continued to look through the previous pictures. After looking through every picture a million times I remembered why I knew this room. She had taken me here. At the beginning of the year we had both skipped school and we had walked to this old factory near her house. This was the upstairs room that we laid on the floor of and watched the clouds through the sky light. That was one of the first times I realized how much I loved her.

I knew what had happened. But more importantly. I knew where she was. And I was going to get her back.