Over 365 Days of Silence

It was around sunset on a warm spring day when I was only fourteen. The car doors slammed outside of my house while I was watching some childish television show. I got up to go see what was happening. I ran out of my room and on to the front porch taking steps as light as a dancer's. Two women were screaming at two men in a foreign language. I tried to hide myself away from everyone else and watched the fight progress.

People walking by made comments about how I should have called the police. I didn't have a cell phone though. They looked back dozens of times at the people fighting, but they did nothing. I just walked towards the fight, crouched behind cars, and tried to figure out what they were saying. It was no use. Their language sounded unreal to me, and I spoke six languages and could recognise even more. I hid behind a tiny red car watching them get more physical. They all then got into a larger black car. One girl was then thrown out of the car and she hit the ground hard. I heard a crack. Before I could react, she was pulled back into the car and they drove off. I leapt out from behind the car and into the middle of the street. I memorised the license plate number as the car drove off and then looked down and the small pool of blood on the cement. I was scared, so I ran back inside.

Just a day later one of the men returned to the scene and he saw me. Some how he knew I was watching the day before and he approached me with an angry look on his face. He was about thirty centimetres taller than me and maybe ten centimetres away from me when he said it.

“If you tell anyone, I will find you and kill you.”

I didn't know what he meant. What was there to tell? As scared as I was I went home once again and turned the television on to the local news. That's when I found out the girl I saw the day before was missing, kidnapped. I could feel my throat close up. They gave a number to call if you had any information. I wrote it down, but I knew I wouldn't be calling any time soon.

After that news report I didn't speak. My parents took me to a therapist thinking that I had gone crazy from school work. The therapist never heard my voice during the three months I went to see her. I sat in her office though, drawing pictures of the car with the license plate number on the back. One day I drew the scene of the girl hitting the ground. It was the first drawing my therapist had seen. The next day I drew the girl.

“This girl is missing.” She stated. I nodded in reply. “You know who did it?” I nodded again and she asked me to draw a picture. I shook my head no.

But she had my parents take my sketchbook that night and there was a picture of the man in there. They gave it to my therapist who handed it off to the police. After that came a long stretch of legal work and being interrogated by several people. They gave up after a while realising I couldn't talk. By that time it had been six months since the girl was abducted.


I haven't spoken a word since that day. They never caught the man, but one day, a year later, an officer who was on the case came knocking at my door. I silently answered. He looked at me and took his hat off. I motioned for him to come in.

“We know what happened to the girl.”