"Thank you for coming over on such short notice Jessica. I didn't expect to be called into work tonight.", I say apologetically. Jessica is our babysitter. She's the best in the neighborhood, my son adores her. She is 18 years old, and about to graduate high school. With her light brown hair and dark brown eyes, she says with a smile, "Oh, Mrs. Sheffield, no worries. I am always up to look after Cody. He's an angel."
 I smile and say, "Well thank you, I appreciate it. Now, I probably won't be gone too long, but if you need anything, as always, do not hesitate to call me. Cody is sleeping, so this shouldn't be too hard", I laugh, "But help yourself to anything in the fridge and my number is on the table." I close the front door, locking it behind me, making sure to tug on it to check if it's locked. 
 After an hour at work, my phone started to buzz. "JESSICA", the screen read. My heartbeat grew faster and faster as I stared at the screen.
 "Hello? Hello? What's wrong Jessica? Is everything okay?", I say half panicked. I don't hear anything on the other end of the line. 
 "Jessica? What's wrong honey, you okay?", I say a little more panicked. I listen closer and start to hear muffled breathing. And then the phone hung up. 
 I call her again, and again, but still no answer. I take a deep breath.
"Maybe she butt-dialed me...or something.", I said to myself, trying to be reassuring. Instead of calling again, I leave her a text saying that she needs to answer me as soon as she can.
 Another hour passes at work and my phone buzzes again, this time from a text. When I see the name of the person who texted me, I unlock my phone and open the text as fast as I can.
 "Hi Mrs. Sheffield, I am sorry that I didn't answer, I fell asleep on the couch. I checked on Cody and he is still sleeping soundly. I see that I had a couple of missed calls from you, is there something that you needed?", Jessica texts.

 "Hello Jessica, I didn't need anything. I had gotten a call from you earlier but you must have called me by accident. Thank you for checking in on Cody, I should be home within the next hour or so.", I text back. My nerves ease and I can pay more attention to my work. 
 A man presented at the ER with chest pains and difficulty breathing, so he was sent to us for an X-ray. I go into the exam room to position the man correctly and make sure he is comfortable before I take the X-ray of his chest. 
 "Hello Mr. Fredricks, how are we feeling?", I asked cheerfully. He seemed to be asleep already, so I checked his pulse to make sure. "lub...dub...lub...dub...", I felt with my fingers. Well, I thought to myself, it's weak but it's there. 
 "Okay, Mr. Fredricks I am going to have to take your sunglasses off for the X-ray. I'm sorry I just have to follow protocol.", I advise him, not knowing if he could even hear me. After slipping his glasses off, I quietly drop my jaw and widen my eyes. 
 Two deep caves reside where this man's eyes used to be. Scars line the outside of the sunken tissue of his orbits. There were more fresh wounds deeper within the depressions.
 Suddenly, a cold and clammy hand latches to my wrist with a tight grip. I gasp.
 
 "Oh! Mr. Fredricks, you scared me. Are you okay, how are you feeling?", I say, startled. 

 The sides of Mr. Fredricks's mouth slowly creep upward revealing a mangled smile of rotted teeth. I look down at his hand which refuses to let go of my wrist and notice how sharp his fingernails are. How the veins on his hand bulge away from his wrinkled, dry skin. The incredibly cold touch of his skin against mine, as though it were a corpse's lifeless hand. 

 Still smiling he says in a raspy voice, "You shouldn't touch things that don't belong to you...", he laughs. Watching his jagged teeth as he speaks, "You're bound to make someone very angry that way...You don't wanna make me angry, do you?", he asks as he laughs a little louder.
 Ignoring what he said, I went back to the reading room and started the machine. After I sit down, the door leading to the X-ray machine slowly creaks ajar; and for a second I see a pale, veiny hand with sharp fingernails wrapped around the frame of the door. My heart jumps, but after blinking the hand vanishes. I think to myself, "C'mon Beth don't start losing your mind now."
 My head snaps to Mr. Fredricks who is sitting up outside of the machine. I watch as he looks in my direction, still smiling. He raises both of his thumbs. His fingernails are so long on his thumbs that I can see them from here. They're like knives.
 Suddenly he plunges his razor-sharp thumbs into his eye sockets, immediately drawing blood. Before I could even get to the door, he stabs his nails deeper. When removing his fingers from his eyes, blood sprays from his face and all over the room like a Jackson Pollock painting. As I get to him, he flings his arms around, trying to stop me from helping him. Covered in blood, I try to hold Mr. Fredrick's arms down to stop him from scratching or stabbing his eyes. 
 Help finally arrived and wheeled him out of the room on a gurney. Before exiting he yells, "This is what happens when you touch someone's things, Beth!"
 "How does he know my name?", I thought aloud. Looking down to where my name tag usually is. I forgot it in my dresser at home. 
 About 45 minutes pass until I'm finally able to leave work. After cleaning all of the blood off of myself and changing, I get into my car and buckle my seat belt when I get another call. "JESSICA", the screen read. I quickly answered.
 "Jessica, hi, what's wrong, is everything okay?", I say, a little irritated. But, again, nothing on the other end. 
 "Hello? Jessica, I am on my way home... can you hear me?", I say. And just as the last time, although faint, I hear someone breathing on the other line. They hang up again. 
 I get home and run to unlock the door. When I get inside Cody is sitting on the couch with tears in his eyes and Jessica is trying to calm him down. As soon as he realizes I'm home, he sprints over to me and hugs my legs tight. Cody is very sensitive for only being 5 years old. He's always making sure everyone is okay and he gets upset very easily. 

 "What's wrong buddy? What's-a-matter?", I say in a relieved tone. 

 "He woke up right before you got in the driveway, I'm not sure what is wrong, he won't tell me.", Jessica says, worried. 

 "Oh, it's okay Jess. He gets nightmares sometimes. I can take care of this. Here...", I hand her a 50 dollar bill, "you can head home now, it's getting late.", I say as I glance at the clock. 2:55 a.m.

 Jessica leaves and I take Cody's hands and say, "you okay little man?"

 "I'm scared, can I watch TV mommy?", he says looking around. 

 "No baby, we gotta get you back to bed. You have school in the morning and mommy just got off of work. I'm sleepy.", I say to him.

 He follows me to my room and watches me get ready for bed. I'm assuming that he wants to sleep in my room tonight. It happens a lot. After crawling into bed together he switches the TV on.

 "Honey, I said no TV tonight. You need to get some sleep.", I warned him.

 "But, I don't want to go to bed, the man with no eyes is waiting for me in the closet!", he says in a panicked state.

 My heart drops and I manage to ask, "w....what are you talking about Cody?"

 The closet door slowly starts to creak open. A pale, veiny hand with sharp fingernails covered in blood wraps around the side of the door.

 Although I couldn’t see, something told me that I definitely wasn’t alone in the cellar. Frozen, I stood in front of the dryer scared to make any sort of moment. They say your other senses heighten when one is useless. I never really noticed that until this moment. And I will never forget it. My ears located the tiniest of sounds and movements. Like a cat who cocks its head and twitches its ear after hearing the pitter-patter of tiny mouse feet through the wall. Noise people shouldn’t be able to hear. But I was hearing them. It’s like my body evolved thousands of years in mere seconds to maintain its safety.  

 But, against my better judgment, I turned the dryer on after throwing the soaking heap of clothes inside. Grabbing my guide cane, I swiftly move to the stairs trying to ignore the heavy energy I felt in the basement; and although it was involuntary, slamming the door. 

        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 


 A few days pass with no sounds or feelings of another presence in the house. And why would there be? Twenty years in this house and I have never felt this way before.

“I’m being ridiculous”, I say aloud to myself as I stare in the direction of the door leading to the cellar with a basket of laundry in my arms.

 I open the door, but slowly. Tapping my way down the stairs with my cane, even though I don’t need to, I feel a bead of sweat drip down my face. 

 I reach the floor and start tapping again. Floor. Floor. Floor. Floor. Flo….. what the hell is that? I know this house more than I know myself. If I move something, I immediately put it back after use. Nothing is ever out of place in this house. 

 I gasp quietly and stop myself with my hand from making any more sounds. 

“He…hello”, I say in a shaky voice. I wait a few seconds before I say again, “h…”, my voice breaks, “…ello?”

 I hear something. Just barely. I focus on this noise trying to understand what it is. It sounded like someone snoring, very quietly.... like breathing. It started to get louder, but only slightly. And then a small, but present, puff of warm air brushed my face like a hay broom. It smelled of cigarettes and bourbon. 

 I immediately drop the laundry basket and bolt up the stairs, miscounting the stairs on the way up and tripping into the kitchen. 

 “Fuck…”, I touch my nose and repeat the same word only louder, “fuck!”

I touch my shirt to be greeted by a warm liquid, only what I can assume to be blood. I lick my lips. Iron. 

 Suddenly, I feel a tight grip on my ankles and am violently dragged down the stairs by an unknown force. Thrashing my head on every stair as I plummet down, I start to scream but am stopped by the blood filling my mouth. Gurgling and bubbling like I was drowning. 

 I make it to the bottom. Turning my head to the side, I spit out the blood that was filling my mouth. A few minutes pass by while I’m on the cold, cement floor in front of the stairs. The temperature of the cement soothes my throbbing wounds, but only for a second. My body starts sliding on the cement towards the middle of the cellar, which, like a chain reaction, causes me to scream. 

 I am thrown up against the wall, head slamming back on the sharp brick. I feel more blood flowing down my back like a waterfall of molten lava. 

This person-if I can even call them that-grabs a fist full of my hair and thrusts my head back into the brick again. 

 A mixture of blood, sweat, tears, and snot covers my face. I manage to get the word, “p..please” out of my mouth, spitting blood. They bash my head against the brick again.

 I’m on the ground now, my entire body throbbing. I point my face to the ceiling. My mouth hangs open and then suddenly, things start to take shape. 

 The piping on the ceiling becomes more and more visible every second. I turn my head and squint at the window. Morning sunlight peaks through the little glass pane and onto my face. 

 I took a few seconds scanning the room, at how neat everything was. This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

 “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, I whisper, spitting blood when trying to form the ’p’ sound. I start to cry.

 My life was structured. Everything was neat. I was always on time and everything that I have done was supposed to happen. 

 “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, I spatter again.

 I felt a presence over my body and slowly turn my head up toward the ceiling to see who was standing over me. To see who did this to me. And to see who was most likely about to kill me. 

My eyes focus on the figure above me. But before my brain could make a connection, they kick me in the face. Two more times in the chest. I can no longer feel pain. I am completely and utterly numb. 

 Laying on the ground in the fetal position, I look across the cellar at what looks like a mattress. And I notice now that I am laying on some kind of tarp. I haven’t been alone for a while.

 I turn to lay on my back, using up the rest of my strength. My vision is blurred and my breathing is interrupted by phlegm and blood coating my throat. 

 The figure appears above me again, this time sitting down, straddling me. They get close to my ear. I hear the labored breathing of a smoker and a voice that whispers, “I’m sorry mom.”

I look above my son's head to see a knife, raised in his hands above him. My eyes widen and I gasp for air trying to find the strength to move. But I cannot.

 The knife swiftly falls toward my body and into my chest; tearing my flesh and cracking through bones. I let out a groan because that is all I can do. 

      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

 Standing over my fountain of a mother, I watch as the blood gushed from her chest. Her breathing gets more violent as she tries to gasp for just one more breath of air. And then, everything was still. Everything was quiet. 

 It was time to get to work. And I had to work fast. Running to the sink in the basement, I wash off my blood-soaked gloves and the knife stained by my mother. I walk over to the tarp she was on and drag it to the bucket.

 I made sure everything was ready. Every detail and every plan was followed. Nothing could go wrong. 

 The bucket of hydrofluoric acid sits in the farthest corner from the door and waits for my mother. I pop it open and without thinking, pick her up and drop her in.

 The reaction was immediate, and so was the smell. The acid bubbled and sizzled, letting off a vapor that smelled of burnt flesh. I maneuvered her limbs to fully fit inside the bucket and closed the lid. 

 After cleaning the cellar, I cleaned it again. And again. I cleaned the kitchen 3 times and every doorknob in the house 4 times. I made sure that my presence inside the house would be impossible to trace. 

 The house fell silent for days. I needed to wait until she was liquified to return. Until it was like she never existed. The way it should've been.

 "Get down from there right this second, you headache of a person!", the old guard said from below. "Stop wasting my fucking time! We both know you're too much of a pussy to jump.", he said while chuckling under his breath. I don't think I was supposed to hear that, but he did not make much of an effort to conceal it. As I look down at the people on the ground, I imagine them as itty, bitty ants. It's easier to kill something when it's that small. 
 Was I going to kill myself today? No, if I planned on killing myself it would be much more of an extravagant event; rather than jumping off of this prison they call a "residential institution for the mentally unstable". It sounds like a great place when you use pretty words as they do. But, in reality, this place is hell on earth. You get treated like shit, they feed you barely edible food, and you only get to go outside once a month. We are abused by the staff daily and to keep money flowing in, the institution makes it almost impossible to be discharged from this place...oh yeah I'm on a rooftop.
 Every month, on the day they let us outside, I slip away to the roof. And every month on that day, the guards find me, getting too scared to come and get me, then eventually call a firetruck to get me down. It's a routine now. But, it is the only time that I have any privacy. Just because I'm a little schizo doesn't mean I need a babysitter every second of every day. I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia for the last 19 years, and I feel pretty confident in saying that I could be living on my own. 
 I look down at the people again, but something was different about them. Something in their faces. They all looked slightly incorrect, distorted almost. Then, the ground underneath them breaks open with a loud, deep echo. The guards fall in, silent; their bodies being engulfed in flames. My body fills with adrenaline and I let out a piercing scream.
 My eyes creep open, blurry at first, but when they focused the guards and firemen were staring back. Staring at me with blank, bewildered faces, they stood on solid ground. 
 I start to laugh hysterically and say, "sorry y'all, I'm just crazy! Just had a vision of all of you dying, no biggie!" Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, they got me off of the roof and onto the ground.
 The pissed-off guards pushed me inside the building and back up to my room. They open the door to my room and push me inside causing me to trip, and fall to the ground.
 "Kill them....break the window on the door and stab them in their faces...slit their throats from ear to ear...rip their tracheas out of their throats, step on them...", says a very familiar voice.
 "No! Shut up! If you want them dead, kill them yourself!", I scream with my eyes closed and arms waving. The guards roll their eyes, turn around, and slam the door shut. Well, it was nice being outside while it lasted.
  "You had your chance to kill them and escape. The guard is right you are a pussy...", hysterical laughing fills my head. Louder and louder the laughter gets, echoing off the walls of my skull. Grabbing my head with both hands, I curl up on the floor screaming. To fight off the cackling voice, I imagine the view from the rooftop and being outside. That always seems to calm me down. The laughter eventually just stopped, without any warning. It's always so eerie, how it goes from being so very loud in my mind, to deathly quiet in the blink of an eye. Like whatever was making the noise in my head died, and is rotting away in my skull, or ceased to exist entirely. 
Hours pass by while sitting on my bed, staring at the beige walls that badly need repainting. 
 Picking at the rubbery grip on the bottom of my socks, I blankly stare at the boring wall but, out of the corner of my eye, a dark figure sprints across the room. My head snaps in the direction of the object, but nothing was to be seen. I look up at the camera, smirk, and say, "did you guys see that or am I just crazy?" I laugh at my own joke, even though I am fairly frightened. Something wasn't right.

                       . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 The guard on babysitting duty scoffs, droplets of coffee flinging off of his mustache. Rolling his eyes, he switches to another screen to watch someone else. The next tenant was 74-year-old Phyllis Robinson, she suffers from dissociative identity disorder, or DID. The guard guesses that Perry, a nine-year-old boy, is in control of her identity because she is coloring on the walls with a green crayon. A lack of motivation to stop her causes the guard to switch screens again.
 This time he switches to Timothy Wakefield, a 21-year-old boy. Timothy is a tenant here because he tried to kill himself last year, and his parents thought he should seek help. He behaves well but is not camera-shy when it comes to sleeping nude or pleasuring himself in his room. The guard switches the camera, back to Jayden.
 He stares at the screen for a second, confused. Where is he? A click on the keyboard shows a different view of the room, but still, no sign of Jayden. One more click of the keyboard shows the last angle available to the guard, and what he sees sends him into a panic.
 An hour later, Jayden is being rolled out of the institution on a gurney, in a body bag. Meanwhile, crime scene investigators analyze Jayden's bloody scene.
 The guard walks up to detective Henning and says, in a disappointed tone, "Yanno, I never thought he would actually do it. I never thought he would kill himself."
 Detective Henning turns to the guard and says, "What gives you the impression this was a suicide officer?"
 "Oh well...uh... I just figured...", the guard stammers.
 Henning states confidently, "I already have enough evidence to suggest that this was a homicide, sir. Someone else was in here with him. Someone angry."

Shaking, I lay in bed under my blankets staring at the bottomless pit of a ceiling. Every few minutes I glance at the digital clock across the room. 2:57 a.m. 2:58 a.m. 2:59 a.m. 3:00 a.m. Although I am literally watching the time pass, it feels as though I have been waiting for hours. But the clock finally changed to 3:00 a.m. and I quietly, but impetuously sprung out of bed and started gathering my things. I didn’t feel incredibly worried or rushed. When they fall asleep, they stay asleep. Unless an outside force, such as myself, startles them awake. I don’t plan on doing that tonight. I pack clothes, a toothbrush, my phone charger, the hair clippers we used for haircuts, some left over hair dye, and some food. I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I couldn’t stay here. I was very meticulous about my actions, not trying to disturb the sleeping beasts in their pit of a bedroom. Finally I was ready to leave. I walk to the door and stop about a foot away. It was sudden, and involuntary. Like my feet were instantly magnetized to the ground by an imperceptible force. And then I turned around. Although my entire life was a lie, every memory a shame, they are still my memories. There were plenty of great memories I had in this house. When they would read me bedtime stories by the fire during the colder seasons. When they would play hide and clap all throughout the house with me. Parties. “Family”. The swing set in the backyard. These all could still put a smile on my face. I hate these people, but they were at once, my people. As I got older, the memories got darker and more cloudy. I think my brain tried blocking a lot of those memories out. But they are all still so vivid. The times where he would get mad at her. The times where he would get mad at me. And sometimes, they were both mad at me. Those were the memories I try blocking out the most. I snap out of my dazed state when I hear the creaking of an opening door. One of the great things about this house is that door. That door is the only door in the entire house that creaks when it opens. That is their door. Almost immediately, I burst out of the front door like my life depended on it. And it did. I was running faster than I ever have in my life. Tears flying off of my face straight behind me as I sprint down the street. I didn’t even know I was crying. I ran for at least 15 minutes. Looking around I had no idea where I was. I wasn’t allowed out of the house much, so I’m not familiar with the area at all. A panic started to rush over my body. Strangely, all I wanted to do was go home. That was the one place on this planet that was familiar to me. But I didn’t know where home was anymore. I started shaking, scanning the area for something that might look familiar, hyperventilating. And then, nothing.

              . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

 Slowly regaining awareness, black faded into light. My eyes finally open completely and I’m surrounded by people I don’t know. I gasp and quickly shuffle backwards on the pavement. 

 “Are you okay, kid?”, a female bystander says.

 She’s dressed in business attire. A navy blue, tight, neat skirt that reached right below her knee and a white, thin blouse that is tucked into her skirt. She wears some kind of bluetooth phone clipped to her ear. Her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

 I nod, yes.

 “Should we call 911?”, the male bystander says, “I don’t want to just leave him here…”

 He was dressed informally. Jeans and a short sleeve t-shirt. He was about 5’9 with messy brown hair. His voice sounded nurturing. Hers sounded degrading. 


 “Yeah, okay.” She says to him before turning to me and saying, “hey kid, look, don’t worry we’re going to call for help. They’re gonna take good care of you.”

 I start to sign, “My name is Conner DeVault…”

 “Oh great…” the woman says under her breath. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I’m late for an incredibly important meeting.” She storms off, heels rapidly clicking down the pavement until they were just another memory. My mind was good at making memories, regardless if they were good or bad ones. 

 The man, turned and watched the woman hurry off. Then, looking at me with only his eyes, said, “Sorry about that, I don’t know what her problem was.” 
  I shrugged, feeling more and more calm by his presence. He seemed to genuinely care about my well being. 
 I sign again, “my name is Conner DeVault. I am 19 years old. I was abducted from my parents when I was two years old. I have been held captive for 17 years. Please help me.”
 I don’t know how long I had been mute, but it has been for as long as I can remember. They did not let me learn sign language. I took every chance I got to learn it on my own, any way that I could. I have been practicing that sentence everyday for 10 years. 

 The man stammers, “I…I got no clue what you’re saying kid. I’m sorry I don’t know sign language. Maybe someone from the ambulance will understand you when they get here.” 

 The ambulance finally arrives after what felt like eternity and my heart started racing. 

  This might be it. This might finally be the moment I am found. After 19 years of waiting. Three EMT’s pour out of the back of the ambulance with a gurney and rush over to us. 

 “Hey guys, so I found this guy just passed out on the sidewalk about 15 minutes ago. He doesn’t speak, any of you know sign language?”, the bystander says. 

 One of the EMTs half heartedly raised his hand and said, “uh…I think I remember a little from high school. Okay kid, tell me your name.”

 I start signing again, tears rolling down my face and heart bouncing off the wall of my chest cavity, “my name is Conner DeVault. I am 19 years old. I was abducted from my parents when I was two years old. I have been held captive for 17 years. Please help me.”

 The EMT’s mouth practically fell to the floor. “Holy shit. Guys we need to call someone right now.”, says the EMT. 

 The other EMTs and the bystander all look confused and slightly afraid of what he was going to say. 

“This is him…” he whispers.

“This is the presidents son.”

A loud, piercing scream. Suddenly I’ve regained consciousness. Looking around with slightly blurred vision, I try to recall what just happened.

 Fire. Smoke. Blood. Everywhere I turn I am forced to witness devastation. Everything that was happening around me was muffled to the point where the sounds were unrecognizable. People were mounds on the ground. Like roadkill on the side of a busy interstate. Some bodies didn’t look human. The people that were alive either fled the area immediately or are grieving over the body of someone they love. And then I remembered. 

                     . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 I started the day like I would any normal Saturday. I got out of bed, took my pills, and had a cup of coffee while I read the paper; making sure I check the obituaries as I do everyday. I’ve always had an unhealthy relationship with death. I don’t believe in a god, sometimes I don’t even think anything happens to us after we die. Our brains stop functioning, our body decays, and this unknown entity people call their “spirit”, don’t even get me started on that. So, with that ideology in practice, death is terrifying to me. After we decay, we are left to nothing but bones and after a while, not even a trace of DNA. We cease to exist. 

 After I read the paper, I undressed and went to the bathroom to take a shower. Today is my only day off in months and I wanted to take advantage of that as much as possible. 

I go to reach for my towel, only to find that I left it in my room. on my way to my room, the doorbell rings, making me flinch. I am completely nude so I run to my room and wrap the towel around my waist.

 Looking through the peep hole I see my colleague, detective Fisher.  I open up the door, only slightly, and smile awkwardly. Fisher is over six feet tall, built, with a sharp jawline and deep green eyes. He was dressed in the blue button up I’ve always liked and dress pants that hugged his body a little too much. He must have just left work.

 “Hey Fish, what can I do for you?”, I manage to say with an awkward laugh attached.

  “Hey…”, he laughs, “is… this a bad time?” 

I look down and say, “Oh, no I was just about to take a shower. But what’s up?”, as I open the door slightly more, smiling.

“So, boss wanted me to ask if you could come in…seems to be a lot going on down there today.”, he said. “but, I told him that you weren’t gonna be happy since this is your first day off in a while…” he says smiling. “I told him that I would take on some extra cases today to help out so you don’t have to come into the office.”

Trying to hold back the urge to kiss him right on his mouth I say, “oh jeez thank you so much Fish. I really needed a break”, I smile, “I really appreciate you man.”

Fisher looks down and smiles back, “Anytime, detective Cooper. See you Monday.” He looked down at my towel one more time before he walked back to his motorcycle.

  After my shower, I headed downtown to run a few errands and shop, if my bank account allowed it. Being a death investigator and hating death is an internal conflict that I struggle with daily. I mean, I see people die in the craziest of ways everyday. As I’m walking on the sidewalk through the city, I’m not thinking about what I’m gonna buy or window shopping. My brain is coming up with a million ways that I could be killed, right now. Of course none of them have ever happened. Yet. 

 I got all of my shopping done relatively quickly and started to head back to my car. That’s when the first attack happened. 

 It was at exactly 11:30 a.m. when the bomb exploded. It sounded like it was above the ground, so I look up at the tall building.

 Suddenly, a woman lets out a bloodcurdling scream and says, “Look out!”

 I quickly turn my head back toward the sky, and a huge piece of the building is hurdling towards the earth. I watch it fall down onto an unsuspecting vehicle, crushing it instantly. This event sparked the chaos. 

And then four more explosions happened. This was the day my life changed.