It all started with a short drive on a Monday evening. The same journey I took every Monday, taking myself from work to home, relying on muscle memory and habit to bypass the same junctions and traffic lights along the narrow British streets.
I was tired, of course, I’m always tired. But, that’s no excuse. It was always the same. I flipped the visor down to block out the lowering sun. The evening’s setting sun always seemed harsher and more powerful than the rest of the day, as if it was fighting against being pushed down past the horizon.
My lack of concentration saw one road blend into another, barely registering my location. That lazy robotic mood was stopped, suddenly, by a blur of colour. Time itself seemed to slow down to an almost dead stop.
My foot automatically hit the brake pedal whilst my hands gripped the steering wheel with a desperate tightness. My heart immediately went from a dim, slow pump to a frenetic pounding sending my senses into overdrive. I saw the glare of the blood orange sun silhouetting a shape; a shape that I immediately recognised.
We sit in within the confines of a ton of steel, rolling along at a steady 30 miles per hour, not concerned with the power under us. It’s ordinary, boring, to be in control of a massive device capable of crushing bones and destroying lives.
Adults are desensitised to the threat; children don’t really get the concept. To them, a talking anthropomorphic pig is as normal as being carried in a seat that moves you from A to B. It’s understandable when they might try to outrun the vehicles coming their way in order to get closer to their friends nearby. They probably never think about having body parts detach from their torso at the force of vehicle’s inertia. They’ve never seen the horror. I had never seen a dead body before either. I have now.
At the same time that my right foot hit the brake pedal, my solid, black bumper hit the little girl’s left leg, cracking it into an impossible shape. A few milliseconds later, that same leg detached from the hip socket and internal arteries ripped open. The little girl, around 4 years old, thin and blonde, started to fly faster as my car skidded slower.
The further away from me she got, the more I could see of her physical destruction. I watched, frozen, as my car continued to skid, my hands continued to grip, and my foot continued to put pressure on the pedal.
She was also skidding, but whilst my rubber tires could withstand the friction, her clothes and skin could not. I watched the black leggings disappear as they rubbed along the tarmac. Black cloth turned to pink skin, which then turned to blood and muscle, leaving a trail of minced leg meat sticking to the ground.
Whilst the skin was being stripped from her tiny torso, her head smacked into the solid road surface. Instead of stripped clothes, I saw hair and scalp flap away from the skull, opening up more blood to paint the road with.
When her body came to a stop, she looked like a broken toy. A broken toy, twisted into unnatural shapes, covered in rips and red. I didn’t know until then how much a head wound bleeds. When the protective surface has been ripped away, that bleeding is torrential.
The blood was so red. So much redder than I thought blood could be. Oxygenated, apparently. It was thick, bright, and almost bubbly, as it pooled around the girl’s previously unblemished face. I was aware of noise, but couldn’t really hear it. I was looking at the body – which is all it had become – but not really ‘seeing’ it. I forgot to breathe.
The next thing I remember is the crowd of people rushing to the body in the road; everyone stepped over the detached leg on their way to the bigger piece that they hoped was still breathing. It wasn’t. Then came the banging. People banging on my window with screaming, shouting, obscenities and even languages I can’t speak.
The door was opened and I felt their presence, but mostly just heard the noise. The police came, apparently, but I was whisked away to the hospital in an ambulance. I remember staring at the roof inside the rear of the vehicle as it sped through the streets. I wasn’t really looking at anything, despite having my eyes open; I was replaying the mental video in my mind of the girl.
My brain pressed rewind and forced me to watch pieces of her skin reattach themselves as she floated back towards my car. Blood disappeared, then reappeared as I pressed play again to relive the moment. I wanted to stop watching, but it wouldn’t stop – even if I closed my eyes; so I kept them open, staring at the sterile metal roof.
I’m no longer sure how much of that memory is true, and how much of it is being filled in by my own brain. I know I saw her before I pressed the brake pedal, but not sure how long I delayed. I know I saw and heard the first contact she made with my car – or, the contact my car made against her in truth. I know that I saw her body bend in a way that I knew would be impossible, even for a contortionist. I also knew that I saw the road stripping away her skin, clothes and hair as she skated across the surface.
I know there was blood; there was a lot of blood. That shade of red will never leave me. I think I can remember other images: bone sticking out of muscle, a leg metres away from its owner, a skull that no longer held the shape it should. I can’t be sure of those as they seem to get more vibrant and detailed the more often I think about it and, believe me, I think about it often. I think about it even more since the emails started arriving.
I hadn’t known the girl’s name, but I knew her face. I knew the face that appeared when my car hit her, but not so much the face I left behind. I don’t think it really counted as a face by then. She went to the same school as my daughter – a kindergarten attached to a local primary. She was my daughter’s friend. Thank God my daughter wasn’t in the car with me that day. She just knows that her friend isn’t coming back, but not really why. The person sending me emails knows exactly why, down to the most minute detail.
I didn’t go back to work for a week after the accident. I wasn’t physically injured, although I had a few bruises from the seatbelt. I had an injury to my psyche, and I had no confidence to get back in the car or even leave the house. I didn’t want to look at anyone.
Everyone I knew told me it wasn’t my fault and there’s nothing I could have done, but I kept rewatching the little girl have her life peeled away until all vitality drained out in bright red blood. I knew my reaction times weren’t the best. I was tired, I wasn’t concentrating, I didn’t press the brake as quickly as I knew I could. Just a few microseconds could have made a massive difference in terms of the impact. Maybe then, her leg would have remained attached and her head may not have cracked open. I don’t know.
The police took my blood at the hospital and tested it for alcohol. I had just finished work, and I rarely drink, so it was obviously zero. That doesn’t matter to my new digital friend though. They obviously just want me to suffer.
The first email arrived two weeks ago, around a month after the accident. It came to my work email address, which I suppose could have been guessed at if they knew my name. It’s a standard corporate email address: firstname.lastname@company.com so pretty easy to work out with trial and error.
The contents of the email were simply a photo of my car, damaged, and on the side of the road near where I work. I replied to ask who they were, but got no reply to that question.
A couple of days later, another email arrived. This time it was another photo of my car, but parked on the driveway outside my home. No words accompanied either photo and the email address was a generic yahoo address with numbers for the name.
My wife told me to report it to the police but I didn’t see any point. I didn’t think there was a crime and still felt pretty numb inside. I did not want to look at the police uniform again for a while.
Email number 3 came a week ago, and it immediately made my heart race. It was a picture of my car, whilst I was driving, taken from the side of the road near my home. That panicked me but I was still unsure what to do. Another email followed, without a photo but with words. It read:
“you think you’re blameless. You think you’re safe.”
I took my wife’s advice and reported it to the police. They took a statement, copies of the emails and said they would look into where it came from. There was no specific crime, aside from possibly harassment, at that stage, but they would try to put a stop to it.
They assumed it was a parent or relative of the girl, as did I, but a check on the email address showed nothing identifiable and it was apparently sent from a mobile phone app of some kind, not an IP address linked to a residential address. I was tasked with saving and updating them if anything else arrived.
I’ve had an email everyday since then, but I haven’t told the police about them. The first email came with another photo. It was my car again, but this time the focus was closer, on the passenger in the rear seat: my daughter. It also came with more text: “so beautiful. If you want her to stay that way don’t talk to the police again. I know you already have. What would you do to keep her safe?”
I didn’t even show my wife that one. I knew she’d panic, because I was panicking. I was, and am, fucking terrified. I called in sick to work, citing stress and got signed off by the doctor. I have barely slept. I have been looking at everyone with suspicion.
Yesterday, another email came, along with a set of photos. They all showed my daughter, playing in the school playground with her friends. They all clearly focused on her face, smiling, happy, blonde and beautiful. The words in the email were not beautiful.
“an eye for an eye. Redemption or revenge? What do you deserve?”
I saved the emails in a folder, removing them from my main inbox. I’ve kept it to myself so far, as I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to scare my daughter, panic my wife, or risk calling the police. I wanted to keep my daughter home today, but had no way of explaining why to my wife, so I did the usual kiss goodbye and watched her walk off with mummy to see her friends and have an ordinary day at school.
All I’ve been able to do is sit on the computer, googling ways to find out where the emails came from.
I’ve looked into the photos and see that they’re from an iPhone – that’s no use. The email address is totally generic. The police couldn’t help before and I’m not risking them again. What if the sender is a friend of the police and found out? What if they’re watching me now?
No. All I can do is wait for them to contact me again. That’s why I’m writing this really. I need ideas. I need a release for my pent up frustrations and fear. Maybe they want me to end myself as the ‘redemption’ they mentioned. I don’t really know what they want.
Stand by. Another email has arrived.