Brigitte

Female | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 3

EXTRACT: Warm weather. The dying days of summer that reluctantly drag into autumn. She had a school excursion, about two hours outside of the city. This was a few years before she was abducted. One of the teachers couldn’t go on the trip, this was a combined boys and girls school trip, so there were a lot of children. They told me what the ratio was, how many adults they needed to the children but I don’t… it didn’t stick. They had a list of the parents and they called me first. I wasn’t working, and most of these families... well, both parents worked. I didn’t have a job. They were grouped in these funny patterns, a large blob of plaid surrounded by a moat of maroon ties. They were nearly teenagers and the whole idea made me feel a little sick. She was growing up. I didn’t sit with her, I sat up the front with the teachers. Nobody spoke to me the whole way there. Ripples of laughter moving up and down the bus. So loud my ears would ring. The whole region was agricultural. Some cattle, farming, some vineyards. Rich soil. One of the property owners gave a speech just before lunch. The children squirmed and chattered and he yelled at them and woosh. The first drop of silence all day. He was white. In his forties. Late forties. He had this awful goatee that drooped down from his top lip and got lost in his chin. Scratchy voice and fingernails stained yellow. His business was goats. He had - he terrified them. The children. The teachers. I don’t know why but I couldn’t look away.

Serge

Male | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 18

EXTRACT: The legal parts are moving I guess, and they’ve arrested him and held him in remand, no bail for that that that - ahhh I’m so tired of hatred. A trial date is announced. That first year after she was gone. I had - this sounds so stupid - I had prepared for people trying to speak with me about it, I don’t know reporters or others that were interested. I purchased a cap - I don’t wear many hats, afraid of getting a tan line on my scalp. But uhh I bought one, a black baseball cap and black sunglasses and I left the house to go to the supermarket and I had forgotten them. So I sat in the underground carpark trying to know whether I should risk it or drive all the way back home and I I I could not - I just sat there like a lump, a festering lump in this obnoxious kia that I bought before I lost my job so that’s just… another… thing that I fucked. Fuck.