A Flicker in the Dark

by Stacy Willingham

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I didn’t know how to describe the feeling, but I just knew they were there, somehow.

No, the real monsters move in plain sight.

And there was one monster, in particular, I learned to fear above all the rest.

I’m around people all day.

Ew

I look up at the patient before me,

Therapist?

She looks down at her arms, fans her hands. There are tiny cuts everywhere,

They’re clichés, but they’re true. And it’s okay for me to say that, because I’m a cliché, too.

Those four-drawer metal lockboxes symbolized the possibility of me somehow being able to express my pain one day

I am always on, always ready, a twenty-four-hour convenience store with a neon Open sign flickering in the darkness, trying its hardest not to die.

Daniel Briggs—D-a-n-i-e-l B-r-i-g-g-s—date of birth May 2, 1982. Xanax, 4 milligrams daily.

Aaron Jansen,” he says. “I’m a reporter for The New York Times.

“I’m writing a story about your father,

“It’s been twenty years and nothing has changed. Those girls are still dead, and my father is still in prison.

Oop

brother.

I stop at a red light and glance in my rearview mirror—habit, I suppose

In Louisiana, though. A tiny little town called Breaux Bridge—the Crawfish Capital of the World.

Breaux Bridge also has a population of less than ten thousand, which means that everybody knows everybody. And more specifically, everybody knows me.

twisting the fabric between my fingers, a nervous tic,

town, was forbidden to be outside after dark. Even in the daytime, I felt the evil lurking just behind every corner.

“An engagement party.”

twelve months ago

Ugh too soon to be engaged

I don’t really have anyone to help me plan that kind of stuff,”

and my mom

Is cray now? Rightfully so

She was such a sweetheart. But it is amazing how the second they become teenagers, it all changes. They turn into monsters.”

Baton Rouge General had been my first job; my only job. My coworker, Shannon, had become my closest friend.

“I just think it’s fast,”

Same

Are you really going to judge him by his family? You of all people should know better than that. Families suck.”

He doesn’t know you, Chloe. And you don’t know him.”

“All I’m saying is we’re different from them, Chloe. You and I are different. We’ve been through some shit.”

“Yes, of course he knows, Cooper. Of course I told him.”

Probably not lol

the image I project out into the world isn’t actually real, but carefully crafted. That I’m one small stumble away from shattering into a million pieces, revealing who I really am.

our world stopped spinning twenty years ago. We were left stranded in time, forever young. Just like those girls.

You don’t remember any of this?” My heart lurches in my chest. No, I think. I don’t remember any of this.

Is he gaslighting?

“Did he say why he thinks that?”

He's right!

we booked our wedding in July—twenty years to the month from

when the girls first went missing

Why would you do that lmao

completely irrational reason why the month of July morphed my anxiety

Girlie it's rational!!

I became a psychologist because I understand trauma; I understand it in a way that no amount of schooling could ever teach.

The two of us together were childhood trauma wrapped in a bow and placed delicately on the doorsteps of every doctor in Louisiana. Everybody knew who we were; everybody knew what was wrong with us. Everybody knew, but nobody could fix it. So I decided to fix it myself.

he refuses to send an invitation to his parents,

One moment sticks out in particular, though. One moment with Lena. A moment that I will never forget, no matter how hard I try. After all, that was the moment that sent my father to prison.

My father was arrested at the end of September, almost three full months after his reign of terror began.

Lena, Robin, Margaret, Carrie, Susan, Jill.

those girls are still out there, somewhere,

It’s the realization of how many hidden bodies could be buried beneath my feet at any point in time, the world above them completely oblivious to their existence.

especially that little firefly dangling from her belly button,

And that’s why I remembered it so vividly when I saw it again, four months later, hidden in the back of my father’s closet.

!!!!!

I could feel eyes on my back until the moment I got into my car and drove away, and even then, I still felt like I was being watched.

Where's Dave? He's copying her dad's crimes?!

open my bottom drawer.

Bad place to keep pills lol