Victoria, don't really want this story to be true.
Dfg
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It was my sophomore year in college; any other time I would have been crammed to full capacity with so much homework that I wouldn't even notice other human beings around me, but she came at such a perfect time…right in the beginning of the semester, every student complete with a breath of fresh air and a 'fresh start', a clean slate to do better this time. Previous semesters had been quite lonely as I had always been the overachieving, study-all-the-time type, but I vowed to make this semester better - more uplifting, easier to handle. I guess it's safe to say she came at the perfect time.
Her name was Victoria and she was beautiful. She was a year younger than I and she sat at the desk right in front of mine, a cold stare with beautiful brown eyes, perfectly set eyebrows, the look of a model. She had black hair tied back and she was super quiet, with small firm pink lips that always wore a smile when she caught me taking a gaze at her.
It didn't take much for us to cling to one another.
I was running late to class one day and she sprinted to catch up to me, saying that she was also going to be late. We were headed to completely different buildings and yet she followed me all the way to class, basically missing her entire first period. We talked the entire time.
From there on out, it was lunch date after lunch date, turning into real dates after time. Soon I was giving her flowers, writing her love notes, watching movies with her after classes. We were spending all of our 'extracurricular time' in each other's arms, and I liked it that way. Everybody could tell that I was happier. And they said that something in her had spruced up and came to life, that she was a completely new person. My parents came to visit me at college one weekend with my little sister and she absolutely loved them, as they did her. It felt like home.
Her family was an unspoken topic until we really got to know each other better. I didn't purposely delve into her life; one day she just released it onto me like a heavy weight. She had been homeschooled her entire life. Her parents were avid hikers who traveled the land far and wide, going on many adventures even after her birth. She said she had seen the world. She told me that her mother passed away when she was in kindergarten. My condolences were too lengthy; they couldn't be explained, I felt the upmost of sorrow for this girl that I had fallen in love with. She said she had broken free from her father's care and they parted ways, and ever since she had been on her own.
My heart broke, maybe sunk into my stomach a bit, at the fact that I would never meet them. But if they couldn't be her family anymore, I knew that I could.
One night we were laying on a hill stargazing in the middle of a summer night, and as I turned to look into her eyes, almost unrealistic as the light from the stars hit them, a puff of air came out of my mouth and circled around her, like it would have had it been the middle of winter. I grabbed ahold of her face and asked if she was real, like some mystery that could never be solved. She assured me that she was there. But everything always felt so cold and unreal around her. It was like living with a ghost, that everybody seemed to know.
Victoria and I decided that we would hike the mountains nearby as an activity one weekend, something we could do with one another that would remind her of the amazing adventures she took as a child. We never let go of each other's hands as we hiked through the treacherous undergrowth and made our way through clearing after clearing, being alert to animals, and bird-watching along the way. She seemed to know the names of everything. I swear I fell even more in love with her in just that short amount of time.
It took us about five hours to get to a pretty thick spot in the forest where, off in the distance, you could just barely make out a cabin. I remember turning to Victoria and laughing, "Look at that rundown mess. Who would live out here, in the middle of the woods like that?"
She just shrugged, "A lot of people. You'd be surprised."
She was drawn to this cabin. She wanted to explore. It was as if she had been at this exact spot at one point in time, like there was some secret message to deliver, like she had the world to show to me. I played along with the little gag, unknowing of why she was so interested in this probably-abandoned, rundown shack in the middle of these woods I had never traveled. I had the eerie feeling in my gut…I wanted to go home. But she was relentless, usual Victoria.
As we made our trek up to the windows of the shack, I ducked immediately at the sight of some quick movement inside. A man tidying up the place. I brought a finger to my mouth and motioned for Victoria to join me, but she just replied, "He can't see me."
"You're standing right there in front of his window," I sighed, attempting to pull her down. What the hell was this chick doing?
"You stay here," she replied. "I'm going around to the other side."
No idea what was happening, my heart racing out of my chest at the thought of being caught outside the home of some creepy mountain man who could possibly rape and kill us, I attempted to pull my girlfriend back into my arms but her explorer took flight and she bolted off away from me. I couldn't call to her. I couldn't move. I was stricken in place, afraid of what we might possibly see that day. Afraid of the fact that maybe I wouldn't make it home. At least fifteen minutes passed and I heard nothing. I snuck around one side of the shack but saw nothing.
Around another side, and still nothing. I don't know what caused me to flee that day, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to take on anybody in that house, myself. I wondered where she had gotten to. Tears streamed down my face and I ran at a speed I never knew I was capable of until hours later, I ripped through the last set of trees, and collapsed out beside the road so close to home. I quickly fumbled my cell phone around and out of my pocket, and dialed 9-1-1 more quickly than ever.
Making our way back through those woods was the most tedious task of my life. It felt like decades, police and search crews by my side as we launched further into those woods, growing more increasingly dark outside, the rest of the world a blur around us. My mission was to get my girlfriend back at any cost, my beloved Victoria, the one who had saved my life.
The man inside the cabin was arrested on six murder charges. His cabin in the middle of the woods was ransacked and cleared, bodies uncovered.
They told me that his six children had been dead for ages, kept in his basement, locked up from the rest of the world. One of the six was a young girl named Victoria, who he confessed to raping and torturing since she six years old. Her body was now that of an adult and she had never had any schooling, barely ever saw the light of day. She had been dead for only months.
And only months it had been since I met her at college. Victoria, the girl that somehow nobody else remembered now. Victoria…the girl I described perfectly to the police, and they stared in bewilderment as they inquired how I knew her.
I never got the chance to visit or talk to her father when he was transferred to the mental institution, but I wanted to tell him so badly about all the lovely experiences I had with his beautiful daughter, and the impact that she had on my life, even though he had worthlessly degraded her and took her chance at a wonderful life away from her.
I know I'm not insane.
I just don't know how she ever contacted me, and why, of all people, she chose me to find her.
Her name was Victoria and she was beautiful. She was a year younger than I and she sat at the desk right in front of mine, a cold stare with beautiful brown eyes, perfectly set eyebrows, the look of a model. She had black hair tied back and she was super quiet, with small firm pink lips that always wore a smile when she caught me taking a gaze at her.
It didn't take much for us to cling to one another.
I was running late to class one day and she sprinted to catch up to me, saying that she was also going to be late. We were headed to completely different buildings and yet she followed me all the way to class, basically missing her entire first period. We talked the entire time.
From there on out, it was lunch date after lunch date, turning into real dates after time. Soon I was giving her flowers, writing her love notes, watching movies with her after classes. We were spending all of our 'extracurricular time' in each other's arms, and I liked it that way. Everybody could tell that I was happier. And they said that something in her had spruced up and came to life, that she was a completely new person. My parents came to visit me at college one weekend with my little sister and she absolutely loved them, as they did her. It felt like home.
Her family was an unspoken topic until we really got to know each other better. I didn't purposely delve into her life; one day she just released it onto me like a heavy weight. She had been homeschooled her entire life. Her parents were avid hikers who traveled the land far and wide, going on many adventures even after her birth. She said she had seen the world. She told me that her mother passed away when she was in kindergarten. My condolences were too lengthy; they couldn't be explained, I felt the upmost of sorrow for this girl that I had fallen in love with. She said she had broken free from her father's care and they parted ways, and ever since she had been on her own.
My heart broke, maybe sunk into my stomach a bit, at the fact that I would never meet them. But if they couldn't be her family anymore, I knew that I could.
One night we were laying on a hill stargazing in the middle of a summer night, and as I turned to look into her eyes, almost unrealistic as the light from the stars hit them, a puff of air came out of my mouth and circled around her, like it would have had it been the middle of winter. I grabbed ahold of her face and asked if she was real, like some mystery that could never be solved. She assured me that she was there. But everything always felt so cold and unreal around her. It was like living with a ghost, that everybody seemed to know.
Victoria and I decided that we would hike the mountains nearby as an activity one weekend, something we could do with one another that would remind her of the amazing adventures she took as a child. We never let go of each other's hands as we hiked through the treacherous undergrowth and made our way through clearing after clearing, being alert to animals, and bird-watching along the way. She seemed to know the names of everything. I swear I fell even more in love with her in just that short amount of time.
It took us about five hours to get to a pretty thick spot in the forest where, off in the distance, you could just barely make out a cabin. I remember turning to Victoria and laughing, "Look at that rundown mess. Who would live out here, in the middle of the woods like that?"
She just shrugged, "A lot of people. You'd be surprised."
She was drawn to this cabin. She wanted to explore. It was as if she had been at this exact spot at one point in time, like there was some secret message to deliver, like she had the world to show to me. I played along with the little gag, unknowing of why she was so interested in this probably-abandoned, rundown shack in the middle of these woods I had never traveled. I had the eerie feeling in my gut…I wanted to go home. But she was relentless, usual Victoria.
As we made our trek up to the windows of the shack, I ducked immediately at the sight of some quick movement inside. A man tidying up the place. I brought a finger to my mouth and motioned for Victoria to join me, but she just replied, "He can't see me."
"You're standing right there in front of his window," I sighed, attempting to pull her down. What the hell was this chick doing?
"You stay here," she replied. "I'm going around to the other side."
No idea what was happening, my heart racing out of my chest at the thought of being caught outside the home of some creepy mountain man who could possibly rape and kill us, I attempted to pull my girlfriend back into my arms but her explorer took flight and she bolted off away from me. I couldn't call to her. I couldn't move. I was stricken in place, afraid of what we might possibly see that day. Afraid of the fact that maybe I wouldn't make it home. At least fifteen minutes passed and I heard nothing. I snuck around one side of the shack but saw nothing.
Around another side, and still nothing. I don't know what caused me to flee that day, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to take on anybody in that house, myself. I wondered where she had gotten to. Tears streamed down my face and I ran at a speed I never knew I was capable of until hours later, I ripped through the last set of trees, and collapsed out beside the road so close to home. I quickly fumbled my cell phone around and out of my pocket, and dialed 9-1-1 more quickly than ever.
Making our way back through those woods was the most tedious task of my life. It felt like decades, police and search crews by my side as we launched further into those woods, growing more increasingly dark outside, the rest of the world a blur around us. My mission was to get my girlfriend back at any cost, my beloved Victoria, the one who had saved my life.
The man inside the cabin was arrested on six murder charges. His cabin in the middle of the woods was ransacked and cleared, bodies uncovered.
They told me that his six children had been dead for ages, kept in his basement, locked up from the rest of the world. One of the six was a young girl named Victoria, who he confessed to raping and torturing since she six years old. Her body was now that of an adult and she had never had any schooling, barely ever saw the light of day. She had been dead for only months.
And only months it had been since I met her at college. Victoria, the girl that somehow nobody else remembered now. Victoria…the girl I described perfectly to the police, and they stared in bewilderment as they inquired how I knew her.
I never got the chance to visit or talk to her father when he was transferred to the mental institution, but I wanted to tell him so badly about all the lovely experiences I had with his beautiful daughter, and the impact that she had on my life, even though he had worthlessly degraded her and took her chance at a wonderful life away from her.
I know I'm not insane.
I just don't know how she ever contacted me, and why, of all people, she chose me to find her.
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