The Dead Girl
By: Nick Lynn
Tags: Flash Fiction, Fiction, Writing, Fiction Writing, Ghosts

I see a girl standing by the woods every day.

She isn’t real. She can’t be. My mom doesn’t see her. My dad thought I was crazy when I pointed her out to him and my sister didn’t even bother looking; she just insisted I was insane.

But I see a girl standing by the woods. She has curly brown hair that hangs just over her shoulders, bright green eyes, and freckles all over her face. Her sweater is a faded red color and it’s ripped and stained along with her jeans. She stands by the woods outside my house every single day, and no matter where I go she’s always looking at me.

I want to ask why she watches me, but I’m too afraid. I know I’m the only one that can see her which makes it even creepier, but even if everyone else could see her I still wouldn’t want to be the one to go ask her.

I asked my mom if I could see her before my accident, but she said I never mentioned it. Perhaps if I did see her before my accident and my subsequent amnesia I would have an answer to why she watches me, or perhaps who she is, but I don’t.

More than once I’ve lied awake wondering if I knew her, but I’m still too afraid to ask. If I really am the only one who can see her it’s possible she’s from my memories, but if she is then I’m not sure I want to know how I knew her. The way she watches me makes me feel like I did something wrong.

One night my parents go out for a date night while my sister is off with her boyfriend, a man who I apparently liked before but I think I must have been lying. I walk into the kitchen to grab myself some food, but the girl is standing at my door. This is the first time I’ve seen her anywhere other than by the woods, but she’s standing outside our glass sliding door and I fall back in surprise, but she doesn’t flinch. She just watches me like she always does and I wonder why she’s come all the way to the door if she doesn’t intend to tell me who she is.

I march over to the door and throw it open, staring her down. “Who are you?” I ask with fake confidence, but she turns away from me and starts walking. That fake confidence of mine quickly wavers as I stutter to tell her to wait and fumble my way over to the kitchen to grab a flashlight and my jacket.

I don’t even close the door as I run after the girl who’s already reached the woods again. I’m still afraid of her, and I can feel myself shivering, but she’s come to my door this time and I want to know why.

“What’s your name?” I ask as I catch up to her, but she continues to walk as if she doesn’t hear me. She leads me into the woods, and I’m thankful I was smart enough to grab a flashlight as I carefully step over a broken log and follow her. I ask a few more unanswered questions before I decide to keep my mouth shut. I sound like a bumbling oaf trampling through the woods but she hardly makes a sound. She steps over every branch and logs perfectly, and I trip over all of them regardless of whether I know they’re there or not.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask after what must have been at least twenty minutes of just trampling through the woods, but she still doesn’t answer me. I stop walking at one point to see if she even knows I’m there, but the second I do she turns around and gives me a look like she’s threatening me to continue following her, so I do with shaking hands.

She brings me to a road I’ve never seen before, at least since I lost my memories, and continues walking alongside it. I’m thankful to be out of the woods, but I can’t say a dark and mysterious road is all that more comforting either.

We walk for another ten minutes before she stops walking, and instinctively so do I, but I realize she’s looking at something I can’t see from this far behind. I walk forward until I’m by her side and follow her gaze to a break in the rail guards lining the road. There are tire tracks in the dirt from a spin out, and scorch marks from what either had to be an explosion or a fire.

I was told I was pulled out of my car before it blew up from a gasoline leak. I was told I barely made it out alive, and I wonder if this was where that happened. The girl beside me keeps looking down at that spot, but I still don’t remember her.

“Were you…” I start to ask, but I don’t think she will answer my question anyways. When I stop speaking, she turns her head to face me, so I decide to ask anyways. “Were you in the car with me?”

The girl walks away from me, but I don’t think she is ignoring me this time. I follow her over to the railing. “I was told I was driving alone that night. The firemen got to the accident in time, if you were in the car they would have pulled you out,” I tell her, but I don’t know that for sure. All of this is only stuff I’ve been told, after all.

The girl stands beside the rail, and I look down at it wondering exactly what she expects from me.

“Remember me,” she tells me simply, placing her hand on the railing. I hesitate, but slowly I lower my hand to the railing as well. The metal is cool against my palm, but my memories do not return. I look up to ask her what she meant, but she is not there.

I pull my hand back and spin around to search for her, but before I can call out anything I have to jump out of the way as a car comes speeding at me, crashing into the rail guards and spinning out of control into the ditch. I can feel my heart beating in my chest as I stare down at the car, a grey one with a banana sticker on the side. My car. I’ve never seen that car before, not even in pictures, but I know it must have been mine.

Before I can stop myself I’m racing down the hill, dirt crumbling underneath my shoes as I run to the driver’s seat to confirm that it’s me in that car, but there’s nobody in the driver’s seat. I pull myself back up, already smelling the gasoline surrounding the car. I don’t see myself, but I hear a voice. The voice is muffled, yelling and screaming followed by bangs and sounds of metal beating against metal.

I find my eyes travelling towards the back of the car and when I walk towards it those cries for help get louder. The trunk is half crushed from the impact of the crash, but I pry my fingers under the button to unlock the trunk anyways. The cover barely opens, but what I can see through that tiny gap it creates is the girl that stands by the woods every day staring back at me, hands tied behind her back and duct tape covering her mouth.

That’s right. I do remember this girl.

I turn around to look behind me where I see the image of that dead girl standing now, watching me with a hateful look in her eyes. I smile at her, my memories flooding back to me in waves and droves, and suddenly she doesn’t look so scary.

“You’re the girl I kidnapped. I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t get the chance to introduce you to the rest.”