no body, no crime

TRIGGER WARNINGS: sexual abuse, mental health, gore, graphic violence, kidnapping, death, suicide, substance abuse

Most people will never witness a heinous tragedy in their lifetime. Cara had witnessed three.

As she stared blankly out of the plane window, watching the clouds drift past without a care, she felt more numb than the past two times this had happened. She’d held the false sense of security that getting older would mean she felt it less. Or, at the very least, she would muster up the strength to go to law enforcement instead of cowering. 

“Ma’am?” 

The flight attendant snapped Cara out of her thoughts with a jolt, and she glanced across the aisle. On her left, the arm of a large, hairy man threatened to squish her into the side of the plane. He’d fallen asleep an hour ago, and she kept having to gently push him away or be crushed. Next to him, a woman in a navy business suit and a tight bun hadn’t looked up once the entire hour, engrossed in her laptop. Even now that the flight attendant was standing at the end of the aisle, the woman didn’t look up. 

Cara shifted to lean forward. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” 

“I asked if you wanted something to drink,” the attendant repeated. She looked around Cara’s age, and Cara wondered how different her life could have been. Maybe she could have done this job in another universe. 

Cara shook her head. “No, thank you.” 

“Anything to eat?”

“No.” 

The attendant moved on as Cara sat back in the stiff chair, resuming her window watching. It was another hour and a half before she touched down in Belgium. After the third horrible incident, she decided she was done with the United States. Sure, terrible things happened everywhere, but Cara was sick of feeling trapped, no matter which state she moved to. It followed her everywhere.

She was only fourteen, after all. She’d been walking home from school when she heard a woman screaming in the woods, and she didn’t get far before clear, loud words stopped her in her tracks.

“Help me!”

The response from a gruff male voice had been unintelligible. Cara’s heart had been thundering so viciously she was afraid her chest would burst. Quietly, she’d stepped farther into the trees by the trail - the scenic route she typically took - and peeked through the branches. 

She had seen him. Dark brown hair, glinting blue eyes, and a wicked grin that still haunted her dreams every single night. He’d held a knife, dark with blood. Someone writhed on the ground in pain, but was no longer screaming. Later the news would confirm the details of the duct tape over her mouth, and how the area was perfectly secluded - almost no chance for a witness.

Blood splattered as he brought the knife down again, the blade plunging in almost to the hilt. She sobbed, but he was too busy laughing to hear her. She knew this boy - a sophomore in her school. Her blood was roaring in her ears, her heart threatening to jump out of her mouth. She had to do something. She knew she did, but her legs wouldn’t respond to her brain begging them to move. Her hands shook viciously and her vision blurred with panic and tears. 

She finally convinced herself to move, to get anywhere but there. Her legs pumped as she beelined home, still crying between her gasps of breath. She’d flown in the door and up the stairs so fast that her mother had no chance to ask her what was wrong. Cara was up all night heaving over the toilet. Every time she reached for the phone to call 911, to tell someone - she froze. 

The next morning, it was in the news. The girl was found sexually assaulted and dead, right where Cara had seen her. 

They had no leads on suspects. 

She never said a word.

The hot tears ran down her face and landed on her sleeves, darkening the gray fabric. She refused to look away from the window. She refused to let anyone on this plane see her suffering. That was the first time she’d witnessed something so horrible. She wished it had been the last time she’d stayed quiet. 

“Do you need a tissue?” 

The woman sitting on the outside of the row was leaning around the large man between them, holding out a small pack of tissues. Cara blinked as she took them, embarrassed. 

“Thank you. I’m sorry if I bothered you.” Her voice sounded foreign to her; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to someone outside of necessity. 

The woman gave her a small smile as she sat back in her chair, resuming her work. Cara fiddled with the plastic holding the small tissues in her hand, finally pulling one out to wipe her face. The plane had hit turbulence now, and the seatbelt light flashed on as the plane jerked. 

After her first incident, she’d only been a freshman in high school. It had traumatized her so terribly that she begged her parents not to make her go back to high school. When she’d heard the story on the news, her stomach contents had decided to empty themselves onto the living room carpet, and her mother had spent an hour trying to get it out. They pulled her out the next week, and she stayed home from that point on. 

The one time she did go out again, she knew she would regret it for the rest of her life. 

She’d agreed to leave the house on the one condition she could stay in the car. Her dad had begged her to step into the grocery store, just once, but Cara knew she couldn’t handle it - or didn’t want to. She stayed hunkered down in the passenger seat as her dad’s back disappeared into the sliding glass doors. 

The rain drummed steadily on the roof, and Cara closed her eyes, letting herself get lost in the sound. All she ever seemed to do was let herself get lost, especially in the past four years. Her parents had tried every method they could think of to help her open up. Cara resisted each and every one. She didn’t mean to be stubborn; she just couldn’t seem to make the words come out of her throat. The shame from four years ago had sat heavy in her stomach and had never left. 

When Cara opened her eyes again, a young mother and a little girl were coming out of the grocery store doors. The girl couldn’t be more than three or four, and she struggled to keep up with her mom’s large strides. Balancing grocery bags on her arms, the mom kept looking back at her daughter. Cara couldn’t hear what she was shouting, but she assumed it was to keep up. The little girl was trying her best, her puffy pink jacket making her arms stick out straight. 

As the mother struggled with the trunk, the little girl seemed to lose interest, beginning to look around the parking lot. A blue sedan was creeping along the aisle in front of her dad’s car, seemingly looking for a parking spot. Cara glanced at the back of it as it passed. JL2 987. The license plate read Florida, and Cara wondered briefly what they were doing in Ohio in the middle of the rainy month of April. 

The car slowed to a stop as the mother shoved plastic bags into the back of their beaten-up SUV. As Cara watched, the blue sedan door opened, and a black-clad figure stepped out. Before she could register, he’d grabbed the young girl in the pink jacket, and they both disappeared back into the sedan. Cara’s heart dropped as the sedan quickly sped off, leaving nothing to show the little girl had even existed.

The mother turned around, and, after frantically glancing around, began to scream. Cara knew she needed to get out and help her, to tell her the license plate, to call the police - but invisible cement blocks held her in place. Her heart thundered, and her breathing hollowed as the mother began to race around the lot, clearly hysterical as she fumbled for her phone. As she put it to her ear, she sunk down to the ground, hugging herself.

Cara needed to get up. 

But the woman was up again and out of sight around the corner, lost in a line of cars. Cara’s stomach rumbled unpleasantly, and she wished she could cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. 

Her dad came back a few minutes later. That night, she sat on her bed, staring at the wall. She didn’t move for six hours, even when the news from downstairs blasted about an Amber Alert for Silvia Pratt, age five, last seen wearing a pink coat. 

She never said a word.

Every girl she saw could be Silvia. She had been too far away to see the girl’s face at the time, but her brain still convinced her that every nine year old was the girl she’d watched be abducted four years ago. 

Cara shivered involuntarily. Realizing her fan was on, she reached up to turn it off. The cold air slowly dissipated, although it did nothing to warm her frozen insides at the resurfaced memory.

Nobody had any leads on the case. She knew because she scoured the internet every single day, including the page Silvia’s parents had started as a dedication to their daughter. Sometimes she would spend hours reading through every single comment. There were hundreds; none of them were her.

Cara leaned her forehead against the window, and although she’d been cold, she relished the icy touch of the glass on her forehead. After all of the horrible, awful things she’d done, Cara was fully expecting her comeuppance. She’d been anticipating it for ten years now. Every turn she took, she was ready for karma to be a bitch. She deserved that. If she’d had the follow through - which clearly, she had none of, as seen in all of her past atrocities - she would have ended her own life a long time ago. She was tired of living in what might as well be a prison and being her own horrible, unforgiving warden.

But she’d frozen, just like she always had. One time she tried pills, and she made herself puke them up immediately afterwards. One time she bought a rope, but couldn’t get the knot right and gave up. Once she climbed the ladder to the roof, and her feet would not step off of the paneling. She never followed through.

At twenty-three, Cara was living in a husk of her old self. Her parents were her only friends, and even they had given up on her. She harbored no resentment; she would have given up on her, too. Every day was the same. Get up. Brush her teeth, because there was no way in hell she was going to the dentist. Eat bran flakes, because she hated bran flakes, and it was the only thing she had balls to punish herself with. Log onto her tech support portal and work for eight hours, no lunch break. Log off, eat supper, kiss her parents on the cheek, and lay in bed all night. She’d given up trying to make herself sleep; she just stared at the ceiling until her body finally gave in to the exhaustion. 

Her parents had begged her to go to counseling, even offering a virtual option. Cara had gone once to humor them, but seeing how miserable it made her, they stopped. Eventually, they stopped trying to cheer her up and just went about their lives. Cara loved her parents very, very much, and she told them so every day. She just couldn’t make herself get better for them. 

She couldn’t even get better for herself.

The doctor prescribed her depression pills over the phone. That’s what she called them, because she couldn’t bother to remember the name. They would get switched out every few months, anyway, when her parents saw no improvement. Cara didn’t know how to explain what was the real problem. She might as well have caused two deaths - two deaths of not only the victims, but their families, never knowing what happened. It made her hate herself. 

It was a Tuesday when she was laying in bed, staring at her ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling had dimmed over the years, just like she had. She lay with her hands folded on her stomach, the blanket her grandma had knitted covering her up to her chest. If someone had asked her what she was thinking about, she wouldn’t be able to answer. Nothing and everything, she’d want to say. It made no sense. 

At some point, she must have drifted off to sleep. When she woke up, she immediately rolled over, coughing violently into her blankets. Her eyes stung, and it took her a moment to register the smell sticking to the inside of her nose. Smoke. 

Something was on fire. She couldn’t tell what it was, or where it was coming from, but her room was hazy and she couldn’t breathe. Throwing the blanket off of her, she pushed herself onto her feet. Immediately she swayed, lightheadedness hitting her like a brick wall. She had to get out of here. She wouldn’t freeze again. 

As she stumbled to the door of her room, she continued to repeat the mantra to herself. I won’t freeze again. I won’t freeze again. She wrenched the door open, and later she would realize how lucky she was; if the fire had been outside, it would have engulfed her in flames. Her head spun as she felt for the railing, stumbling down the steps. 

“Mom!” Her voice was hoarse. “Dad! Get up!” 

There was no answer. She squinted down the first floor hallway towards her parents’ room, interrupted by another coughing fit. Doubling over, she dropped to her knees as her body heaved and shook. I won’t freeze. I have to get out. It took all of her willpower to force herself back to her feet.

“Cara!”

It was her mom’s voice from down the hallway. Cara’s vision swam, and she could barely make out the dark figure of her mom at the end of the hall. “Go! Go, we’re coming!” 

Cara listened, pivoting towards the door. She burst out with such force she tripped down the porch stairs, slamming her elbow against the pavement. She cried out in pain, but scrambled to her feet, half-running, half-dragging herself away from the house. The dewy lawn soaked her bare feet immediately, and Cara began to shiver. She didn’t look back until she was almost by the road. 

She took big, gasping breaths, her head beginning to clear. She had to call the fire department. They had no neighbors for a mile each way; nobody would see this but her. Frantically, she patted her pockets, and stopped when she realized she was wearing her pajamas. Grabbing her phone hadn’t even crossed her mind. 

Cara felt herself freezing again. Her body locked up, her breathing became shallow, and her mind started to go blank. She was so scared, like she had been eight years ago, like she had been four years ago - like she had been every single day since the first time she’d failed to act. Nothing but a coward, she thought, and before she could turn to start running down the road, their house exploded. 

The heat from the blast stole the breath directly out of Cara’s lungs, and she turned away on instinct. When she looked back, the house was engulfed in flames, shining like the sun had fallen down from the sky. Cara could do nothing, feel nothing, as she watched her house burn, and her parents burn with it. 

Later, they’d tell her the stove was left on. They’d say it was a freak accident; they’d say it happened too often; they’d say they were sorry for her loss. Nobody thought to question her - the poor traumatized girl who’d just lost her whole family. 

She never told anybody what happened. She never told anybody that, in an attempt to help her parents, she’d helped them cook supper. She never mentioned that she hadn’t used a stove in so long, she’d forgotten to turn it off. 

She never said a word. 

The plane touched down an hour later, and Cara filed off with the rest of the passengers. She’d always wanted to travel, and the ghost of a smile crossed her lips for the first time as she stepped out of the airport and into the Belgian sun. Raising her pale hand, she hailed a cab, ducking in with a request to head to the cheapest hotel she could find. 

When the lock of the hotel room door clicked behind her, Cara let her shoulders droop. Walking over to the window, she pulled it open, letting the cool air tickle her face. This was a good place to finally rest, she thought. After all of this time, it was time to rest. 

Cara sat on the edge of the bed, crinkling the white linen sheets, and picked up the hotel phone. She pulled the crumpled piece of paper from her pocket, smoothing out the lined notebook paper, and copied the number she’d written there a week before. She pressed the phone to her ear, listening to the rings. The tightness in her chest had started to dissipate. It was almost over now, she told herself. 

A woman picked up. “U.S. Embassy Brussels. How can I help you?” 

Cara breathed deeply. Finally, she was able to speak. To say something.

“I would like to apply for medical euthanasia.”