Lisa (The beginning)
Hampton, Va.
42
The number of days since the 9 year old girl disappeared on her walk from school.
41
The number of days since the rapist first got what he wanted from her.
38
The number of days since he bashed her head in with a hammer so she wouldn’t tell….
37
The number of days since he put her in a hole underneath a bridge and threw shovels of cold dirt in her face.
12
The number of days since they found her there.
3
The number of hours since they had placed the girl back in the ground, and the woman had gotten the strength to move on.
Lisa
Hampton, Virginia
42
The number of days since the 9 year old girl disappeared on her walk from school.
41
The number of days since the rapist first got what he wanted from her.
38
The number of days since he bashed her head in with a hammer so she wouldn’t tell….
37
The number of days since he put her in a hole underneath an old, dilapadated bridge and threw shovels of cold dirt in her even colder face.
12
The number of days since they found her there.
3
The number of hours since they had placed the girl back in the ground,
1
The number of minutes since the woman had gotten the strength to move on.
___________________________
Lisa Grinesford stared up from the bottom of the stairs as if she was waiting for some sign that it was okay to change her mind to come bounding down towards her. Nothing came to save her. In her mind, she had been preparing for this since the fifth night that Michelle didn’t come home; trying to mentally perform a delicate balance of having the parent’s hope that their child would come home with the real world hopelessness of preparing if she didn’t. In the end though, it was all for nothing. Her strength waned and eventually, inevitably, she tumbled headlong into the pit of what had become her reality; one delivered to her as a late night present; adorned with flashing red and blue lights, wrapped in a blue uniform, and that mechanically recited, “I’m sorry, but…” on cue just to tie it all together.
"Lisa, you're being stupid." she scolded, still staring up at what seemed to her to be an endless staircase . "You know Michelle will never come down those stairs again." And with that thought, the bloody, oozy wound in her soul that had begun to scab over was ripped back open; exposing the nerves underneath to the cold, biting harshness of what she had to do...
"...clean the room. Just clean the freaking room and get on with my freaking life."
She placed one foot on the bottom step...then the other foot on the next one and slowly, methodically began to make her way up the stairs.
Lisa felt her head start to spin. She grabbed at the bannister to steady herself and closed her eyes against the world that was suddenly whirling out of control around her. It had seemed to her like only yesterday that she was teaching a wobbly Michelle how to use the handrail to help her come down the stairs...now she herself was using it to help pull herself up them.
She opened her eyes and forecefully made her way up the stairs; turned the knob to Michelle’s room and stepped inside. She left the door open behind her; a gaping escape route in case the spinning decided to return. As she made her way across the room, she noticed the dark space under the bed.
“Huh….I guess the REAL monsters weren’t under the bed.” she thought and cringed at the callous truth of it.
She sat on the edge of what used to be her daughter’s bed in what used to be her daughter’s room and looked out the window and into the cold, wintry day outside. She had barely found the strength to come into the room until now, much less actually make changes, so it had sat largely untouched since Michelle disappeared. Everything was just as she had left it, for the most part, untouched.
Lisa wasn’t sure if it was simply a trick of her weary mind, but it seemed as if she moved just right on the bed, she could catch whiffs of the overly sweet smelling scented lotions that Michelle would slather all over herself after her baths. Lisa allowed her head to hang slightly and closed her eyes; drinking the smells in; trying hard not to let her movements scare them away. Her dark curly hair draped her face in an unruly shroud of dark frills allowing only the tips of her to peek out.
She wasn’t alone.
The demons sat there on the bed next to her....and they began to scream in her ear again.
They had come to visit her sporadically in the days right after they found Michelle’s body; gently dripping their jaded opinions into her ears like warm, thick, honey that meandered its way into her mind. Their voices had become more desperate and louder each day since.
Now, they screamed at her almost constantly; their sweet, sticky words replaced with a venomous concoction of gall and vinegar; hate and regret; constantly buzzing in her ear like a cacophony of blow flies around a rotting corpse.
So, there sat Lisa; the pale faced, dark headed, frail, specter of a woman that she had become over the last month, surrounded by stuffed pink bunnies, giant teddy bears, Barbies, and unicorns. There was nothing that could have looked more out of place in that room than she did. Well, ...maybe nothing except the gun that she had taken out of her pocket and that rested on the bed next to her.
“Pick it up.” the choir in her mind sang.
She picked it up…and placed the cold metal between her teeth…