If I Forget Her Then She Never Lived

From high school I wanted to be a police officer. I was encouraged to get a college degree first. I went for a Criminal Justice degree. In my junior year I went on a ride along with a detective. He received a call of a body found in a culvert. He offered to drop me off, but I insisted on going. A girl, twenty one, r**ed and m****red, left half naked in a culvert.

I played along, being professional. But I was not ok. I never finished my degree, got a job working at a brewery frequented by weekend Harley types. One of the regulars took me under his wing and kept the drunks away from me. I finished college with a marketing degree, my overall GPA was 2.3. I continued to work at the brewery.

My angel fellow was upset with me, he wanted me in a career, not a bar maid. One night after closing I told him about my ride along and the girl in the culvert. He arranged a psychologist for me. It's been years now, but at night I see her. I'm alive, I'm thirty. I married that guy on the Harley because he wouldn't leave me alone.

I look at myself in the mirror, sometimes when I'm naked. I see my body, what did that man who r**ed her see? Why did he kill her. He's never been caught, or identified, he's out there. I lay beside a man, a man who wants my body. When he has sex with me, I see the girl and wonder what her mind was the day she was r**ed, the day he killed her.