This is the space to tell us how you would answer the writing prompt that appears in CrimeBits on page 85.
I wasn’t there the moment Ella died. I didn’t see what he did.
I didn’t know.
Not that it mattered to anyone out there. The gossips and the critics. They made their judgement of me the moment my name appeared on the front of the newspapers. Trending on social media. People hiding behind anonymity, saying what they thought should happen to me now.
I wasn’t even there.
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If I was, maybe Ella would still be alive. But I was in the outdoor enclosure, laying on my tire swing. Drifting off to sleep instead of being with Ella, and waking up to a world without her.
Now I am caged. I can’t tell the others it wasn’t me. They can’t understand me. ‘Please get interpreter’, I signed desperately to them. ‘ASL interpreter’. But something bit my arm and I fell asleep once again.
I cannot speak, but now too many are speaking of me. They want me to die. The TV screens, the newspapers, all say my name. “OLIVIA THE SIGN LANGUAGE GORILLA SLAYS HANDLER” They used to love me until they didn’t. Now I must maintain, and hope they bring an interpreter. I don’t even care if the humans never love me again, I just want to honor Ella. To help find him. The human who dressed like one of my humans, here at the animal laboratory, but smelled like the outside world.