Three Years Ago #2
The man lets out a strangled noise as he sits up to full height. He lifts his arm into the air. There's a knife in his hand, dark and dripping, then he brings it down hard.
A wet, rhythmic thud fills the small shop. Shh-thunk. Shh-thunk. Shh-thunk. The sound of metal tearing through flesh, over and over.
No. No. No. No. No.
This isn’t happening.
It’s a dream. A nightmare.
Every instinct I have is pulling in the opposite direction, screaming at me to run, to get out, to go back to the back room and lock the door and press myself against the wall and wait.
But my father said help mom.
I grip the shelving unit with one hand as I force my feet forward, then turn the corner and step into the last aisle.
The man is crouched over my mother's body, his back still to me, his arm moving in a short, terrible rhythm. He's grunting softly with the effort of it, low sounds that don't seem to belong to a person.
Beneath him, my mother isn’t moving. She's not making any sound at all anymore, and there is so much blood on the white linoleum that it doesn't look real.
It looks like paint, like something from a movie, not something that could possibly be coming from a person.
I stand at the end of the aisle, frozen in place, watching my mother's body absorb each blow.
And I feel nothing.
Maybe not really nothing.
But something so enormous and so far beyond anything I have words for that my body has simply switched off, gone somewhere quiet and very far away, leaving only my eyes working, recording every second with horrifying clarity.
Finally, the man stops stabbing her.
His shoulders rise and fall with heavy, ragged breathing, his head dropping forward like he's completely exhausted. The knife hangs loose in his hand, dripping.
He still hasn't noticed me standing at the end of the aisle.
Will he kill me too?
Will he rush me with that bloody knife and shove the blade deep into my chest?
Will I even feel it?
The man’s head lifts slowly, and he looks down at my mother's face.
A sharp, ragged gasp tears out of him, then he scrambles backward, his boots squeaking against the blood-soaked linoleum. He kicks his feet like he's trying to get away from what he's done.
The next sound that comes out of him is low and broken, as he hits the shelf behind him. It shakes slightly, making a few boxes of tissues fall forward, landing next to Mamá’s pale face.
"Fuck," the man grits out, and I swear it sounds like he's crying.
I watch as he tries to stand, his boots slipping in the blood, one hand grabbing at the shelf beside him for balance. He goes down on one knee before he gets upright, his movements slow and clumsy, dropping the knife in the process. There’s nothing coordinated about any of it.
He finally straightens up and sways slightly, his head turning as his blown-out eyes sweep the wreckage around him. The shelves. The floor. My mother.
Then he stills.
He looks down at something near his feet, then he bends down and picks it up.
A soda can?
Most of the red color has been scratched off, and it’s dented along one side.
His fingers curl around the metal, and the fluorescent light catches the exposed aluminum, throwing off a thin gleam across the ceiling, and I can’t look away from it.
I don’t see anything else.
Just the can.
The man’s bloody fingers wrap around it like it's something precious, something worth saving, and I watch as a single drop of blood forms at the tip of his pinky finger. It hangs there for a moment, trembling, catching the light the same way the can does.
Then it falls, sticky and wet, hitting the floor with a soft tap.
And I fall apart.
The scream tears out of me from somewhere so deep and so primal that I don't recognize the sound as mine, and the man lurches backward, his blown-out eyes finding me for one terrible second across the wreckage of my parents' pharmacy.
I expect him to attack me too, but instead he runs.
He hits the front door hard, shoulder first, and it swings open, letting in a blast of cold night air. He stops. Just for a moment—one foot in, one foot out—and when he looks back, his voice comes out wrong. High and thin.
"I'm sorry."
He pauses like he’s going to say something else, and for one horrible second I think he's coming back. Then the sirens echo in the distance. They’re faint and far away, but they’re growing. The man’s body jerks.
Tck. Tck. Tck.
Something on him rattles with the movement.
He runs and the door falls shut behind him, his boots slap fast on the pavement outside, and then there's nothing.
The silence is the loudest thing I've ever heard. It pounds in my ears with each step.
My legs are shaking so badly I can feel it in my teeth.
I come to a stop next to Mamá’s body, and my foot slides out from under me. The ground comes up, my knee connecting hard with the floor, but I don’t feel anything.
"Mamá?" I grab her hand. It's warm. "Mamá, please. Please look at me."
She doesn't move.
She just stares up at the ceiling with hollow, blank eyes.
Reaching out, I shift her weight toward me, pulling her into my lap. Her skin pulls open along her side, exposing the red, raw muscle beneath.
I break down completely, pressing my face into her hair, and I cry so hard I can't see, can't breathe, can't hear anything except the sound of my own voice saying her name over and over.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, the 911 operator voice is muffled, talking to no one.
I sob harder, my body shaking with a pain so intense it feels like my organs are being torn from my chest.