Liminal Silences

It’s midnight. You’ve just gotten off of work at your minimum wage job and now you have to walk across the dimly lit parking lot to your shitty 2007 trash can of a car. You’re so used to walking this route that you barely notice anything out of the ordinary. That is until you feel it. Someone is behind you. You can’t see them; you can’t hear them. But you know that they are there. You can feel the air around you moving differently. 

You try to walk faster, but it’s no use. He catches up to you as you’re grabbing your keys. He puts his hand over your mouth and his knife against your back. You try to break free, but it’s no use. 

You should have listened when your coworker said to wait, but you felt confident enough to walk alone. You’ve done it a hundred times; what could be different this time? He pulls you into the darkness towards a car you had seen a dozen times in the past week. You had assumed this car belonged to just another customer. You feel his sweat drip onto you as he throws you onto the seat. You can smell his dollar-store cologne. Your heartbeat is getting faster with each passing moment. 

How could you let this happen to you? Why didn’t you try harder to stop him? What could you have done to make him feel comfortable enough to pick you? Why you? Why now? Was it something you did? Was it something you said? Were you wearing something enticing? All of these questions run through your head as the car speeds off. You run the numbers. You are 

now one of the girls who is never seen again.

You’ll never be seen again. 

How could you let this happen to you? 

The report says that you got into his car willingly. He tells the cops that you were flirting with him. His lawyer suggests you were wearing something short and tight, something that would make any man want you. Your parents don’t believe you. Your coworkers say you did this to yourself. 

How could you let this happen to you? 

How did you let yourself get into this mess? You knew the statistics. You know what happens to girls who walk alone in parking lots. But that could never happen to you. You were a good person. Bad things happen to bad people. You were a good person. 

And you’re right. 

It wasn’t a masked man with a knife in a dark parking lot. He wasn’t a stranger. He was your boyfriend. It wasn’t a parking lot after work. It was his bedroom after you got out of the hospital. There was no knife. There were only his cold, rough hands. 

How do I know this? Because this isn’t your story. 

It’s mine. 

September 2018. My freshman year of college. 

This was going to be the best year of my life. Until he took it from me. 

I was 18 and already just another statistic. 

1 in 5.