The following short story is my second entry for the Gibberish Writing Competition hosted by
With a final word count of 2496.This tale comes with a trigger warning. (Honestly, they all do.) The following content covers themes of suicide, familial violence, and murder that may be harmful to some audiences. Please continue reading at your own risk as you are solely responsible for your own content consumption. You have been warned.
There’s so much white in here it’s almost blinding.
White walls, white lights, and a man sitting directly opposite me in a crisp button up that is so bright it almost blends with the background.
“Please state your name for the record.” The man in white doesn’t look at me as he says this. Instead he pushes a red button on the small black box between us. I stare at the screen blinking REC as I try to find my name in the fog of my thoughts.
“Corinne Leigh Warren.” My voice doesn’t even sound like mine. It’s different somehow, farther away.
“Thank you, Mrs. Warren. My name’s Alister, but you can call me Al. I appreciate you talking with me today.” I’m silent in response. I don’t remember agreeing to anything. “Do you know why you’re here?”
I search my memory for the answer. Images flash before me, not fully fleshed out. Just the skeletal remnants of memories. The bathroom door in my home. There’s water on the floor. So much water. And something else…
“Because of what I did, I guess.” He scribbles on a notepad in front of him as I speak, then looks to his right. That’s when I notice there are more people sitting at the table. I don’t know why I didn’t see them before. The one he’s looking at is a woman. A cop. I know this because her brown hair is pulled into a low ponytail revealing a badge hanging from her neck. I can just make out the name J. Ventura embroidered into her collared shirt. She reads the notepad and nods toward the other end of the table.
My heart twists when I see my husband sitting at the other end. I want to run to him and throw my arms around him; to be surrounded by someone warm and familiar. But something about his body language gives me pause. He won’t look at me either. Why isn’t anyone looking at me?
“I’d like to start from the beginning if that’s okay. Why don’t you start with when you woke up yesterday.”
I feel like I could devour an entire pot of coffee by myself and it wouldn’t even touch the fog I feel yet somehow I manage to pull moments, little facts, from the haze. “I woke up around six a.m. I cooked breakfast for my family, pancakes and eggs. French toast for Sam. It’s his favorite.” I look at my husband hoping that at the mention of his name he would spare me a glance in my direction. An acknowledgment that I’m not in this alone. He doesn’t. His eyes remain fixed on the table in front of us.
“And then what happened?” This time it’s Officer Ventura that speaks.
“Sam left for work. We live about an hour from the college so we don’t see much of each other during the week.”
“I bet that puts a lot of stress on you, him being gone so much.” I glance over at Sam who offers nothing in terms of how I should answer. I’m raising three children alone most of the time while he’s off spending his time with bright twenty something year old women. Of course, it’s stressful. But I’m not about to air out my marital frustrations to a room full of strangers.
“Corinne?” Al says pulling me from my thoughts. “I understand it’s going to be hard for you to talk about some of these things with us but it’s very important that we understand what happened.” What happened?
His voice is distorted and far away even though we’re sitting mere feet from each other. The light in the mirror behind him dances like refracted light at the bottom of our pool in the summer. A chill ripples through me. It’s so cold in here. A puff of air floats from my lips into the space between us but no one looks up. I want to ask them to turn the heat up but I don’t want to seem selfish.
“Sam.” I say turning to him. “I don’t want to do this anymore. Can you take me home.”
He doesn’t look at me but down at the pad that Al is scribbling on. They exchange a look I don’t understand. Ventura sits up in her seat to read it as well.
“We can’t go home.” Sam says. I try to catch his gaze but it’s like he’s looking straight through me.
“What do you mean? Sam! Will you look at me, please. We need to get home to the kids.” His expression changes to something that gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. How long has it been since I last saw them? I made them breakfast yesterday and then the fog rolled in, blanketing everything else.
“You say your children are at home, Corinne?” Al asks.
“Of course. Where else would they be?” I suddenly feel crowded in this tiny white room. I need to get some air but when I try to stand I find myself unable to move.
“Am I—restrained?” I ask pulling at my body. It remains fused to the chair.
“I’m afraid we have to for now.”
Ventura leans into Al and whispers something with a worried expression. I turn to Sam whose face remains stoic. The temperature has dropped twenty degrees in the last ten minutes. I shiver in my seat running my fingers along my arms to warm them.
I’ve seen plenty of police interrogations on TV. Some of them use restraints, sure, but those were for dangerous criminals. I’m a God fearing wife and mother of three. What harm could I do?
“I’m already breaking every rule there is just by allowing you to do this here.” Ventura says. She’s looking at Sam now. I hadn’t even realized they’d been talking.
“What other choice did you have? It’s not like your department has made any progress!”
“Mr. Warren, for your sake I hope this works. Anything we hear in this room is inadmissible, and frankly, a waste of my time if we don’t find them.”
“Find who?” I ask.
Al looks in my direction for the first time. “Your children, Corinne.”
“My children…my children are at home!” My voice cracks as I speak.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Sam?” I reach my hand out for him. It’s something we always did when we needed comfort in public. I barely have time to register he’s left my palm open and empty when I feel my fingers brush along something. I look down at the table to find a large vanilla envelope. Had it been sitting there the entire time?
As if reading my mind, Al opens the envelope and pulls out it’s contents, laying the images out along the table carefully. They’re photographs. Photographs of my home. My home but it’s different. Unfamiliar. With each image he lays out in front of me my mind struggles against what it’s seeing. It can’t be real.
“What is this?” I ask Al. I peer into one of the photos, the one of my bathroom floor. The red wash over the white linoleum turns my blood to ice. “What am I looking at?”
“You know what this is, Corinne.” His voice is calm, composed. Everything I’m not in this moment. “We need you to remember.”
“Remember what? Where are my children? Are they okay?”
“Just try and tell us what happened after Sam left for work.”
Each word feels like a hot coal in my chest. “What is all this! What are you talking about?” Anger rises in my gut. I swipe the photos off the table and they go flying to the floor. “Where are they? What happened to them?”
“For God’s sake, Cory, just tell us what you did with their bodies?” Sam screams louder, cutting me off. He’s never so much as raised his voice to me.
“What are you saying? Sam, I would never—“ I can’t even bring myself to say it. Tears fall freely down my cheeks. I try again to stand but I’m rooted to the seat. Sam has been my husband for over a decade. We’ve been together since we were in high school. Surely he knows that I would never do anything to hurt our children. But the look on his face says otherwise. It’s the look I haven’t been able to place until now. Now it all makes sense. It’s the look of a man who has lost everything. And he blames me.
“Just tell us what you did with them.”
“Bodies?” I repeat that awful word he used. “Our children aren’t dead, Sam.”
Sam, Al, and Ventura all share a look that I am not included in. A look of pity and frustration.
“Our children aren’t dead!” I repeat louder. “Let me go! I have to get back to them!” I begin kicking and fighting to get out of my seat, a stark difference from my normal demeanor. The table and chair rattles beneath me as I fight against it to get free.
“That’s it. I’m done with this shit.” Ventura says rising from the table even as it quakes.
“No!” Al screams. “If you open the door our connection with her will break. There’s only a small window we have to pull her back. If we miss it we’ll never get the answers we need. She’s just angry and in denial. It’s normal.”
“Normal? Nothing about this shit is normal!” She protests. But she returns to her seat.
“Please.” Sam’s talking to Ventura. “I’ll talk to her. Just please stay.” Ventura looks like she’d like to do anything but. I run out of fight. I fall back in my seat breathing heavily, every ounce of energy I have is gone.
“Corinne.” Al says turning back to me. “It’s normal for you to want to block out a memory like this. But Sam needs closure. As his wife and the mother of those children, you owe him that.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening.” I whimper into my hands.
“I’ll tell you what we know. Sam came home early because he couldn’t get in touch with you. When he got home water was pouring down the front steps from inside the house.”
“I must have left it running.” I say. I still feel the damp wood beneath my bare feet.
“He found you in the upstairs bathtub.”
“Found me?” I say it like a question but the fog is gently lifting, revealing the memory beneath it. The sting of the razor along my wrists. The water slowly rising until I disappear beneath it. I look down at my wrists. There are two vertical incisions along the veins. I suck in a breath.
“You killed yourself, Cory.” Sam says, tears choking his words as they try to escape. “You killed yourself and we can’t find the kids. Please, just tell me where they are.”
Something cold brushes my bare feet. I look down and the floor of the interrogation room is filled to my ankles in water.
“What is this, Sam?” I shiver but I understand now that they won’t have an answer. They seem oblivious to the water that has now slowly risen to my knees. They are oblivious because they can’t see what I see. That’s when I notice the item on the table.
A lock of brown hair tied with a yellow ribbon. I recognize it. It’s my daughter, Kristen’s. It’s from her very first haircut. I run a finger along the woven strands.
“It’s an anchor. A tie from the living world to you.” Al says in response to a question I don’t remember asking. “It’s how we called you back. It’s how we know Kristen may still be alive.”
“Damn it, Cory! Just tell us where they are!” His voice echoes off the walls causing the surface of the water, ever rising, to shake as it splashes onto the surface of the table. The lights flicker but no one at the table notices. Sam is unrecognizable like this. He’s normally formal, ever the austere professor. It’s what makes him such a good liar. I wondered what his face would look like when he found out what I’d done. I knew I wouldn’t be around to see it so I fantasized about it. I never imagined I’d actually be able to witness it firsthand. I have to admit it’s better than anything I could have imagined. It mirrors my own loss. He lost his entire family yesterday. So did I.
“If they die their blood is on your hands!” Sam screams, filling the space surrounding us with something heavy.
“Their blood isn’t on my hands, Sam. It’s on yours.” The water is up to my chin now but I manage to spit the words out like daggers.
“What are you talking about?”
I can’t help but smile as I continue. “She came to the house looking for you. She’s pretty, barely a day above twenty. She’s everything you used to love about me. That’s when I knew I wasn’t enough. Our family wasn’t enough for you and I knew what I needed to do.”
“Cory! I don’t—“
“Even now I can see the lie forming on your tongue.”
“Cory! I love you, okay! I love our family! Please just tel-“
I don’t get to hear the rest before the water pulls me under.
“Corinne? Corinne are you still with us?”After a moment he removes the headphones from his head and places them on the table. Sam is standing with his hands pressed firmly on the table staring at the braid of hair in front of him.
“Is she gone?” Sam asks.
“I’m afraid the link is broken, Mr. Warren.” The heaviness of what that means rests like a weight between the men.
“Well fix it!” Sam spits through gritted teeth.
“You know that’s not how this works—”
“I don’t give a damn how it works! Get her back here!” He yells slamming his fists down on the table.
“I’m going to have to ask you to calm down, Mr. Warren.” Officer Ventura says rising from her own chair.
“I hired you to find out what happened! I hired you to get the truth out of her!”
“The relationship with the living and the dead is delicate, Mr. Warren. There’s a small window of time between death and life that a link can be established. Kristen’s hair was Corinne’s link. Now that the link is—“
“You’re saying that Kristen’s gone?”
“I’m saying that the link your daughter was providing is—“
“You’re telling me my daughter is dead!”
“It appears so. Yes.”
Sam picks up the lock of hair running a thumb along the delicate ribbon then slams it down in front of Al.
“Use this.”
“I told you, Mr. Warren. We can’t contact Corinne again—“
“Not Corinne. My daughter. I want to talk to my daughter.”
More by the author here. And don’t forget to follow this link to check out stories by the other contestants!
😱😱😱😱😱 is all I can say. Didn’t see that coming. Wow.
Oof, Christina, this was hard. Really well done.