I’d like to begin with a fact. I’m not insane. I don’t have a history of insanity in my family. No record of psychotic episodes or breakdowns. Nothing even close. Mentally, I am as clean a bill of health as they come. Well, maybe a depressive episode here or there, or some gnawing anxiety, but nothing close to what you would call “insane”.
Keep that in mind as you hear me out, and if that describes you too, put yourself in my shoes. I’ll admit I’m a bit more hardwired than most, or perhaps overly cautious. I’m known to have a healthy amount of paranoia. But that’s only to say that I’m safe. I’m mindful. I think things over a few times before I jump into them. Again, all within normal, human behavior. I am a normal human. If you are a normal human – I implore you: put yourself into my shoes. Think of how you might react in this situation. Consider the times in your life, as a normal human, where you were utterly shocked by something. Think of how you acted then. Think of the normal, human decisions you made. And offer that same credence to me. I realize in phrasing it all like this, I sound like some alien or robot trying to poorly convince you otherwise but, just, bear with me.
This all started two weeks ago, in the dead of night, as I was making a routine pizza delivery. You know, now that I think about it, maybe that’s the least “normal human” thing about me. I willingly work a job that legally pays me less than minimum wage, and I’m happy with it. Anyway, it was a delivery like any other. Show up to the place, give them the pizza, take their money, back to the car. I’ve done it a thousand times, and at this point, it’s an automatic function for me. Like clockwork.
But on my way back to my car, I noticed something a bit.. peculiar. That’s really the only way I can describe it. It wasn’t overly weird, but it wasn’t completely expected either. Just.. peculiar. Across the street, there was a car in a driveway, but it was on. The doors were open. All of them. However, there was no one inside, and no evidence that anyone was inside of the house either: no lights were on, no movement to be seen. It’s as if a car full of people pulled into the driveway, clearly not their own, and ditched it without a second thought. As I stared at the car, I half expected to hear sirens in the distance. Maybe some bank robbers decided to hedge their bets through the literal hedges of some white suburban neighborhood. But as I kept staring.. nothing.
Now, I don’t know about you, but other than those few, passing thoughts of what this could be, I didn’t think more of it than that. It was weird, to be sure, but nothing worth investigating. I was sure there was some logical explanation for it. So, like the normal human I am, I ignored it, got into my car, and drove back to work. A standard response, I would think. A reasonable one.
When I got back to the store, I noticed immediately that something was off. When I had left, things were bustling as they normally would on a busy Saturday night. The order screens were full, my coworkers were scurrying around as fast as their high schooler bodies could carry them, and the place was packed. However what I returned to was the complete opposite. The screens were still full, sure, but the place was empty. No co-workers, no customers, nothing. As I pulled behind the store to the driver area, I noticed the other driver’s cars were gone too. In fact, everyone’s cars were gone, save for one. A police car.
Seeing the police car there was a bit alarming, despite there being no lights or siren, so I decided to play it safe. I sat in my car and called my boss to make sure everything was okay. But no one answered. It went straight to voicemail, in fact. I called a couple of my coworkers and the same thing had happened. Just what happened here? Where was everyone?
I stepped out of my car and paused for a while. I wasn’t convinced that my best bet was to head into the store. My mind raced with possibilities. Was there a robbery? An assault? A shooting? What could’ve caused everyone but a lone police car to totally disappear? I walked around to the front of the building, slowly, making sure to keep my eyes and ears open. As I turned the corner to the front of the building, where the police car was, I discovered it empty. That’s when everything happened.
“ON THE GROUND, NOW!” I heard a man’s voice shout from behind me. I whipped around quickly to see a police officer emerging from the darkness with his gun drawn and pointed at me. I threw my hands into the air, terrified.
“I SAID ON THE GROUND!” he repeated, and after hesitating, I did as he complied, my hands still far into the air. It almost hurt with how high and stiff I held them. He approached me slowly, his gun still trained on my head. “LOCK YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!”
I did as he instructed, and after some more commands, I was eventually on the ground, my hands behind my back in cuffs. The officer didn’t bother to seat me or let me stand, just left me helpless and on the ground as he spoke into his radio. I didn’t hear most of what he said through the thumping of my heart and hyperventilation of my breath, but I did hear one phrase. “suspect in custody”.
The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I remember being in the back of a police car, I remember being in a cell, but I don’t remember a single word that anyone said to me after that. Not that it would have mattered anyway, as they refused to tell me what I was being arrested for. If I had to guess, it was a lot of “move here, stand here, sit here”, as that’s the majority of what I did. I spent the night in a cell with tears in my eyes and utter shock controlling my system.
The next day, an officer brought me into an interrogation room. He got right to the point. “Why did you do it?” I was taken aback, to say the least. “Do.. what?” I barely managed, having not uttered a single word to anyone for nearly 24 hours. “You’re really going to ask that question, with the evidence we have?”
I sat back in disbelief. What do I even say to that? What do I say to any of this? What was happening? After a long pause, I did the only thing I could think to do and asked to speak to a lawyer.
An indeterminable amount of time passed. It felt like hours to me, but it could’ve been mere minutes. Eventually, the same officer from before walked in with a serious face. “You’re free to go.” He said not wasting any breath beyond that before walking out of the room.
I was still completely shocked, but through the chaos, I guess I felt a little relieved? I still had no idea what had happened, why I was treated this way, or what I was accused of doing, but I was glad it seemed to be over. Like it had all been a bad dream.
As I waited in the lobby for them to return my things, I finally came to learn what had happened. I stared in silent fear at the tiny television screen in the high corner of the room.
“TRIPLE HOMICIDE–” I didn’t need to read any more. The visual was more than enough. On the screen was that exact car I saw that night surrounded by police tape. A quick cut to the inside of the car showed my name written on the windshield.. in blood. Not just my first name. My full first and last name.
In the following days, I would come to learn how everything had gone down. There were four people in the car when they were attacked. The fourth person who had survived was presumed dead by their attacker, since they took to writing their message before fleeing. That survivor fled and immediately called the police, gave them my name, and well.. the rest played out how I’ve written it, more or less.
The reason I was released was because other than my name, they had no evidence to lead them to believe I had committed the crime. There were fingerprints on the scene, but none of them were mine. For some reason or another, bureaucratic loopholes meant they couldn’t keep me there.
At least, that’s what I was told. I would come to learn there were other, more nefarious reasons for my release. But that’s not important right now.
Life.. weirdly went back to normal after that, for a while. I kept my job, though my co-workers wanted nothing to do with me. My boss believed that I didn’t do it and had too much faith in me to let me go. I was also the only driver who really put in any effort, so I guess she couldn’t afford to let profits dip. My family believed me, so they said, and were constantly checking up on me. Everyone was acting like nothing really happened.
I thought about taking some time off of work but.. I was flat broke and had bills to pay. Rent was coming up and I had already missed a payment last month. I couldn’t afford to do that again– it was a miracle I was still living there. So I went right back to the grind after one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and this horrible feeling that someone was after me. But my family, the police, my therapist.. they all convinced me it was merely chance. There was surely someone else with my name out there. As much as I wanted to be put into some kind of witness protection, they refused. I had no choice. All I could do was return to normal. This was what they wanted.
Not even a week later, at the dead of night, I found myself in a terrifyingly similar situation. Another car. Doors open. Still running.
For the longest time, I did nothing. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see it. And I also couldn’t pretend it was just a coincidence. I don’t know if it was before, but at that moment, the neighborhood around me got dead silent. The only thing I could hear was the motor of the engine purring in the night. No crickets. No other cars. Not a single other sound. My palms began to sweat and I could feel goosebumps beginning to crawl across my arms. I clenched my teeth as I began walking toward the car, not knowing what to expect. At least, that’s what I’d like to say, but I knew exactly what I might find. As I finally dragged my body across the street, my horrible thoughts manifested into a reality worse than I could imagine.
And that’s when I saw them.
I didn’t have time to think, I just knew I couldn’t be there. I knew the only rational thing I could do was leave. No one would believe me that I was the victim here. No one would believe something like this happened again and I wasn’t to blame. Not to mention there was far more than just a name this time.
I got into the car, held my breath to avoid the smell, and drove away. I don’t know how far I went, but I knew it must have been far, as eventually I didn’t recognize any of my surroundings. The police were fucking watching me. They were waiting for this to happen. They wanted evidence and they got more than enough. But I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t do this.
I didn’t hear any sirens, I didn’t see any lights, but I knew they were there, and I knew they had seen me. I’m sure they followed me, maybe even chased me, but my adrenaline was so high I didn’t notice a single thing around me as I sped away. I couldn’t tell you how many lights I must have blown through, how many accidents I must have nearly caused. I just drove. Eventually I wasn’t driving on the road anymore, and at some point I found myself in this forest. When I finally came to a stop, I got out of the car and puked out whatever didn’t drain out of my body when I first looked inside. It took a long time for me to bring myself back to the car, but I had to know. I had to figure this out.
I inspected the photos closely, but it was futile. A photoshop job could be obvious and I’d have no idea. I didn’t know what to look for. I decided to bury the pictures. It felt like a pointless gesture, but I didn’t know what else to do. I dug the hard ground with my hands until my nails bled and stabbed the photos into the earth before returning the dirt above them. That was all I could manage. As the harsh purr of the engine sputtered into the night, I laid my head next to the very ground I had just distrubed and drifted to sleep.
I don’t know how much time had passed after that. When I woke up, it was still dark out. I was unsure if it was the same night, or if I had missed an entire day. Maybe even multiple days. The engine was still running, and it was all I could hear. It took every bit of my strength to look inside of the car again. The smell had only gotten worse, and the sight was no easier to bear. I tried to decipher if I knew any of them, but their injuries made them all but impossible to identify. But the pattern was the same. Three lifeless corpses.
That’s when I realized something somehow more horrible. The driver seat was empty.
I didn’t know what to do with that information, especially out here. I had no idea how I had even managed to get here, so I certainly didn’t know how to return. Even if I did, what was the point? I’d be arrested on sight. Maybe even worse. But my thoughts began to spiral. Had they seen me? Had they followed me? I was being foolish. How would they have followed me? On foot? In the car?
In the car. My breath and my heart both sped up at once as my arms and legs operated on instinct. I scrambled to the driver side and slid my hands around the interior, covering them in even more blood as I searched until I finally found it. I pulled the lever with force, almost ripping it off as I made my way to the back of the car. I lifted the trunk and reality suddenly struck, and everything stopped.
It took me several days, according to the calendars I could find, but I finally made it back into town. I don’t know why, but I expected everything to be more on edge. I expected to see officers on every street, wooden barricades over doors, storefronts to be closed. Probably just my weird sense of paranoia. But everything was normal. Coffee was still brewed, mail was still run, and the streets were quiet. Not barren, but quiet.
I managed my way back to familiarity and even saw that the pizza place was still running as normal. The screens were full. The place was packed. My coworkers were buzzing around. My boss had a bit of a down look on her face, but that was to be expected.
I don’t know why, but when I walked in, I expected to be greeted like normal. “Welcome to Gio’s!” – but as I should’ve known, not a peep. No one even noticed. I stood in the lobby for a while and just took everything in. Eventually the place cleared out and the murmur died down, which allowed me to notice the news was on.
“Can someone turn that off, please?” my boss chimed in as if on queue. I could really hear the hurt in her voice. One of my coworkers came into the lobby to turn it off, but just before they did, I managed to hear what my boss was so upset about.
“While she was a suspect in the recent killing, her becoming a victim has police searching-”
I did everything right. I made normal, human decisions. I am left with one lingering thought though. Who drove us into the forest and buried the photos?
There will be a part two.