Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

Your body is weak, broken, and you can barely move for fear when you hear your captor approaching the door. This time, though, he’s bringing food. It’s a thick porridge that you would have turned your nose up at a couple weeks ago, but now you nearly knock the other girl over to get to it. He watches you eat. When you’re more than halfway through, you realize he hasn’t brought any for the other girl. Reluctantly, you offer to share, but he shakes his head. No, it’s only for you. He watches you finish it, every last spoonful, and then he takes the bowl away.

For a few hours, you lie on the dirty mattress, stomach full for the first time in what feels like forever. You drift off to sleep.

You awake when the burning starts. It hits your throat first, a stinging sensation like the time you had the flu and vomited six times in one day. Another hour, and your stomach has gone from satisfied to twisting with nausea and cramps. The other girl checks on you after you throw up the first time, but you can’t even speak, your throat hurts so badly.

The next day it’s worse, but he makes you work anyway. You clean the bathroom so you have easy access to the toilet, and you spend half the time bent over it in one way or another. Then it’s back to bed, where you collapse. You can barely move when you wake up and he comes for you again. The day after that, you can’t move at all. Not long ago, you would have done anything to get out of this tiny gray room. Even the hours spent in the rest of the house were a relief. Now you don’t have the strength to hope for escape.

You can feel your body shutting down, and you know that’s what he wanted. He wanted to watch all the strength drain out of you. He wanted you to fade, so it would be easier to wipe you out completely.

[THEME MUSIC + INTRO]

Elle voice-over:

This week’s podcast format is a little different. Rather than the usual blend of interviews, back-story, and monologue, I am dedicating the full episode to a special interview. I’ve got a stack of newspapers in front of me, all the words I could collect that were written about her the first time she entered the public consciousness. Although her name is now recognized by true crime aficionados the world over, when she first went missing, the Tribune’s headline didn’t even mention it. She was simply:

ANOTHER GIRL, 11, TAKEN BY TCK?

After much time, consideration, and gentle persuasion, Nora Watson has agreed to tell her story on Justice Delayed. As those familiar with the case may know, Nora is living under a new name and has avoided public interviews since she was a teenager. However, she has agreed to break her decades-long silence in the hopes that her memories will help contribute to finding the elusive serial killer who stole her childhood—and very nearly her life.

I have disguised her voice for this episode. The interview is unedited, but she also had a say in which questions she wanted to answer. Mostly, though, I wanted to let her tell her story without encumbering it with a bunch of interruptions and questions. Now, on to the interview.

Elle:

So, why don’t we start with this. What happened when you were kidnapped?

Nora:

You have already told the story about how I was tricked into TCK’s car at my friend’s house. That was all accurate. When I realized he wasn’t driving toward my house, I started screaming and kicking the back of his seat. He told me to shut up and threatened to smack me, but as soon as he slowed at a stoplight, I jumped out of the car and tried to run. I didn’t make it far. He caught me within seconds and threw me back in the car, then he jabbed something in my leg. It must have been some kind of sedative, because the next thing I remember, I was waking up in that room in the cabin. And Jessica was there.

She was fiercely protective right away, acting like my big sister. She yelled at the man while I cried until he left the room. She warned me how to behave with him, but I didn’t listen right away. When he came back later and called me to the door, I ignored him. Jessica hissed at me to get up and go to him, but I just closed my eyes and turned my head away. That’s when he opened the door and walked in. He sat on the bed next to me and looked down into my eyes. I don’t remember his face now, but I remember those hard, hateful eyes. He didn’t say anything for a while, which was worse than if he’d yelled. The silence while I waited to hear my punishment almost made me wet the bed. And then he slapped me hard across the face, just once. My parents never hit me, so I was too stunned to cry at first. He said, “Next time, come when I call you,” and then he got up and walked back out. I never ignored him again after that.

Elle:

What happened the next time he came for you?

Nora:

Jessica tried to convince him to take her, but she was vomiting almost constantly. Even though she said she thought the food he gave her had made her sick, by that point I had been there for more than a day with no food, and I felt like I was starving. He didn’t seem to mind letting me see everything when I walked out into the hallway. It was a nice place: big and airy, even though the room he kept us in was tiny. Looking back, I think it must have been a study. The rest of the place was nothing like it. I remember four bedrooms, two