Creative Nonfiction

Mini Blinds Over an Open Window

It’s funny how the mind works once it’s been traumatized.

I can’t pinpoint exactly where I was, but I can recall that his eyes were so brown they were black. I can recall that I had convinced myself he didn’t have a soul. I can recall the first thing I saw once I opened my eyes.

Mini blinds over an open window.

I can’t remember how I got there, but I can still taste the bile rising in the back of my throat. I can still smell the alcohol on my breath.

I can’t tell you the sequence of events, but I can tell you what time it was. I can tell you the day and the year.

January 22, 2017. 10 AM.

I can’t remember what I did with the $40 in my pocket the night prior, but I can remember how uneasy I felt. I can still feel my heart racing. I can still feel the half a bottle of Vodka I drank marinating in my stomach.

I can’t tell you which antidepressant I was on, but I can tell you it wasn’t supposed to mix with alcohol. I can tell you that I blacked out.

I drugged myself. I suppose that made it easier for him.

I can’t recall how old he was, but I can recall how his hands felt when they touched my skin. A thousand showers have not erased the feel of his hands.

I can’t tell you exactly how many times I’ve relived it, but I can tell you that it gets worse with time. Each flashback brings new memories to light. Each new memory brings a greater feeling of shame.

I can’t remember how I expected to get home, but I can remember that he offered me breakfast. I can remember acting like everything was okay. I can remember him asking my age.

I was 13. I didn’t tell him that.

I can’t recall how he got my number, but I can recall him texting me. I can recall not knowing — or not wanting to admit — that I had been raped.

*Originally published on Medium in 2022.

Wake-Up Call

I’m standing in my driveway, facing the road, with my sister’s crumpled red Honda sitting a few feet in front of me. Gravel crunches underfoot as I shift my weight from one leg to the other. Drip, drip, drip, drip. Oil seeps out of the car’s destroyed front end, marring the pavement with ugly red-brown puddles. Birds are chirping somewhere overhead, and my hands are covered with a mixture of blood and the last of this Spring’s pollen. I look down at them, trembling and clutching a piece of glass from the windshield. 

I can’t help thinking that if the log truck that hit her had been full, she would be dead; likely impaled through the abdomen like in that scene out of A Thousand Ways to Die. If she had been turning left instead of right, she would be dead, likely crushed by the large truck tires instead of slightly bruised and concussed from where her head hit the window with enough force that it shattered. If she had been a few more feet into the road, she would be dead; the truck likely would have hit the driver’s side head-on instead of clipping the front tire, killing her immediately.

None of that happened, though. She is alive and standing right beside me with a slight wobble in her legs. I see her eyes roam the jagged metal contraption that she almost died in, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Surely, she sees how lucky she was? 

“What am I going to do, now?” I can tell by the aggravated expression on her face that she means, ‘How am I going to get away with skipping school to go get drunk and smoke pot with my friends?’ 

I let the glass in my hand fall and tried to keep the hope out of my voice. “I don’t know.”

*Originally produced for and submitted to Arkansas Tech University in 2025.