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I moaned as loudly as I could beneath the dirt, eyes closed, trying to move, but completely immobile. I was losing breath second by second. I managed to move one arm to claw at the dirt, but it’d been so packed down that it was impossible. My head still throbbed, and my eyes burned behind my eyelids. This was torture at its purest form and all I could wonder was how someone could do this to another human? How can you hurt someone so much, try to hide it, and still sleep at night? No one in their right mind is capable of such heinous things.
I can remember what it felt like drawing in what felt like my last breaths. But then I heard something. Grunting. Scraping. Thudding. Then I felt humid air hit my face and I could breathe through my mouth again. I sucked in a breath, swallowing dirt and grass. My hand twitched, my feet were shaking. A hand clutched my wrist and a person groaned as they tugged me out of my burial ground, their hands on my face, swiping. There was a familiar voice, but it was muted from the dirt in my ears. My eyes cracked open, and I saw two of the same woman. I knew her but couldn’t remember her name at the time. She sucked in a breath and her face was wet with tears as she wept. I wanted to smile at her, to hug her because it seemed like she needed it, but the darkness threatened to steal me away again.
“No, no, no. Brynn, please. Please,” the woman begged. “Open your eyes. You have to stay awake.”
My vision was blurred. I couldn’t see her face. She wiped my lips, removed some of the dirt. She resuscitated me and I could breathe. Barely.
She managed to get me inside a warm area. A car. It jostled and bumped along the grass until she hit even pavement. I was in and out on the backseat of the car, streetlights flashing across my face. I remember the sky though, inky and filled with blinking stars. Then I remembered blinding white light and seeing the woman from an upside-down angle as she peered around while standing next to the back door of the car. She was inside again, starting the engine and whispering the words, “Yes. Okay. I’m gonna get you to a hospital now, Brynn. Just had to get some gas. Stay with me.”
When the car came to its final stop, I closed my eyes for good. I’d made peace with God and was now ready to accept my fate.
FORTY-EIGHT
BRYNN
Ten days later
“We should go to the police.” Shavonne whispered the words to me but they were insanely loud. The room I was in was white and sterile, with blinding lights that forced me to close my eyes. I’d had surgery days ago due to a concussion that caused a subdural hematoma, or in common terms, bleeding between my skull and my brain.
The doctor and nurses constantly told me I was lucky to be alive, and even luckier that I was coherent so soon. Shavonne told the doctors I’d fallen down the stairs.
The doctors have tested my memory, asked me about colors, shapes—simple things kindergarteners would be asked. I recalled most of it. The only thing that’d stumped me was figuring out the name of a cylinder and diamond.
However, I remembered some things, despite the head trauma. I recalled the scent of coffee as it floated through the hallways of the hospital. I remembered the name Jell-O, as it jiggled in the bowl on my tray. I remembered milk, spoons, forks. But, for some odd reason, I couldn’t remember much of the night Shavonne was pressing me about. That’s another thing I could remember after spending time with her. Shavonne, my best friend. My confidante. The woman who saved my life.
She wants me to remember. I was fully functioning for the first time in days. Prior to that, I’d been in and out of consciousness because of the surgery, But on this day, I was alert. Bandages were still wrapped around my head, and a drip bag infused with morphine was connected to my arm.
“This whole thing is going to go cold, Brynn. I told you what I saw. What they did.” Someone walked past the room and Shavonne clamped her mouth shut. When they were gone, she focused on me again, gripping my hand.
“I can’t even remember what happened, Vonne,” I croaked.
“Yeah but look at you. The longer we wait, the worse it’ll be. They’ll get away with it, Brynn.” She removed her phone from her hoodie pocket, swiped through it, and showed me photos. There was an image of me, a selfie—and behind me was my ex-boyfriend, Dominic. “You don’t remember spending time with him?” she inquired.
I blinked, and for some odd reason, my heartbeat sped up a notch. Shavonne glanced at the heart monitor as it beeped at a faster pace but returned her attention to me. I stared at the phone so long the image became blurry. I blinked, and tears slipped down my cheeks.
That’s the thing about trauma. It festers, and it’s a relentless beast that doesn’t care how your life is going. It will attack you at any given moment without so much as a warning. There is always something to trigger you—to bring you back to what you think you’ve forgotten. The body remembers whether the mind wants to or not. And seeing the image of that man caused some of the memories to come back to me like grainy pictures.
The drinks. The laughter. The car ride and streetlights flashing across his face. The taste of apple juice. Hands clasped around my wrists, pinning me down. A slap.
My hand twitched when I remembered the slap. I’d never hit anyone like that before, but something told me he deserved it.
“It was Dominic, right?” I whisper and Shavonne’s eyes light up. “That was his name. Dominic Baker.”
“Yes! That’s him. Look, I took a picture of your body on the floor in that house, and also when they put you in a rug on a truck. We can show these photos to the police and have him arrested. All the proof is here.”
My head shook. “He’s probably long gone, Shavonne.”
“So what? Brynn, we have proof that he hurt you. Look, the police are going to show up again and ask what happened. I didn’t know what to say when I first brought you in, but they clearly found your situation strange and said they’d come back when you’re alert.”
“No, Vonne, all you have is a picture of me lying on the ground, a man holding the end of a rug, and a selfie of me with him in the background. It won’t prove anything.”
She faltered. “But you didn’t get hurt for no reason. They tried to bury you. Alive,” she reminds me.
“Imagine how it’ll sound if I say I was buried alive? Imagine what they’ll think if you tell them you followed some random man into the woods and saw him burying my body? No one would believe it, Shavonne,” I hissed. “For all we know, they’ll think you were in on it!”
“But I wasn’t!” she exclaimed.
“I know that, but it just . . . it won’t add up. And . . . I’m scared, Vonne. I—I can’t remember what all he did, but I don’t ever want to see him again.”
