Flashback: The Voicemail

I thought starting this would help with the flashbacks. I thought it would be a way to release all the thoughts I kept inside and then the flashbacks would eventually stop happening so much. But I feel like I have more now. It’s like unclogging a drain and little pieces keep coming out.

The flashbacks suck because you don’t know when they’re coming. I mean sometimes you know, like once someone tossed me a pack of gum and boom. Flashback. But the random times are the worst.

I’m just driving along, on my way to my grandma’s for dinner, thinking about how a few summers ago my boyfriend and I made a pact to go to the beach every weekend we could and how I wish we had done that this summer and then boom, out of no where, Flashback.

The voicemail started replaying in my head over and over and over. The voicemail left on my phone on The Night.

I tried two other nearby houses to try to find help, but it was the neighbors down the street, my guardian angels, the ones who heard a wild woman banging on their door at 4:00 AM screaming for help, who answered, who let me in, and called 911 for me.

Why didn’t I just stay hidden and call 911 myself? Because I didn’t have my phone. I don’t know where it was but I didn’t have it on me and I was not going back into that Hell house to risk my life for a damn phone.

The emergency response units arrived, and a police office let me use his phone so I could call my mom to tell her what happened. From there, I was taken to the hospital via ambulance, my mom waiting at the door, and as I was being pushed inside on the stretcher, one of the officers hands me my phone.

And there was the alert on my phone, that little red notification warning me I had a voicemail. It was from him.

The Voicemail:

“YOU PIECE OF SHIT……YOU FAT PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT……YOU SLUT……I SAW YOU GO INTO THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE, I KNOW YOU’RE FUCKING HIM…..I KNEW IT, YOU STUPID SLUT………YOU WORTHLESS FAT BITCH……..YOU CALLED THE COPS?!?!?!……hello?”

I should have listened to that voicemail in the hospital. I should have played it for the police officer guarding my hospital room for the night, let him hear it, let him add to the report. But I didn’t. I didn’t hear The Voicemail for two days. I wanted to hear it while I was alone. For some stupid reason, I was expecting something nice, something remorseful, something that would humanize him but the closest it came to any of that was the “hello?” at the end.

The “hello?” at the end is what brought me to tears. Not the yelling, the slander, the name calling, just the one worded question: “hello?” He sounded so scared, so pathetic, like he just realized he’d done something fucked up..

I never deleted The Voicemail. I’ve had two new phones since then, but I kept that phone. That phone that holds all the pictures that were submitted as evidence from The Night, and The Voicemail that only I have ever listened to. I kept that phone as a reminder that that man is mentally unstable, what happened to me was not my fault, and to never let a one worded question (“hello?”) manipulate the reality of a situation ever again.