A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

By: Jenna DiStefano

"I don't need you, I don't need a therapist. Why am I even here?!" I crossed my arms
and slammed my back against the beige colored sofa. By the way the therapist looked, I could
tell that she wanted me out. What was her name again? Megan? Lauren? It doesn't matter, I
could careless. The therapist room was cold and covered in decorations to make the room feel
"calming", it wasn't working.
"Evelyn. You need to calm down" she said in a hushed tone.
"No I will not calm down! Can I leave now?" I shouted while looking into her grey eyes.
"Just please try to cope with me. I'm here to help you, not to make you even more
angry. You didn't even tell me why you're here yet, tell me that, then you can leave." Her voice
seemed almost soothing as she said that, something in my mind said to calm down and just talk
to her.
"Fine. To start, I never exactly knew my parents, they got murdered when I was about a
year old. Well that's what my grandmother told me. I've been told that they both got abducted
and brutally murdered, but I don't know much about their death. Since I don't have any siblings
or anyone that was able to care for me, I was forced to live with my grandmother who just so
happens to have Alzheimer's disease." I paused for a moment and swallowed hard, trying not to
choke up.
"My grandmother really hasn't got over their death, probably because she was there at
the murder scene. A lot of times she starts freaking out, I can't take it most of the time so I just
run away from home."
The therapist doesn't lose eye contact with me even when I pause to breathe. She
slowly sits up in her chair and grabs my hands, I flinch at the touch of her cold, clammy hands. I
am confused as to why she does this, but I feel like it's some sort of comforting.
"I know life has been difficult for you in the past years. But I'm here to help you. I will go
to every length to try to help solve some of your issues." She still hasn't lost eye contact with
me, I'm surprised her eyes aren't blood shot yet.
"Thanks but I don't have issues okay. I'm fine I swear" this whole sentence is a lie,
even though I thought I could trust her I didn't feel comfortable. Therapists never helped me. So
I slowly got up, shook her hand, and walked out of the building without any regrets.
When I arrive outside I stand there, I have no idea where to go. It's only 11 am, it's way too early
to deal with my grandmother. I just stand there and watch the snow float down to the pavement.
The sky looks like a grey blanket of felt, making the world seem foggy and depressing. I take a
big breathe in, and let it out, I can see my breathe in the air in front of me. I feel very awkward
just standing there as people pass me by, so I start walking, to where? Who knows.
The only real thing that makes me some what happy is photography. I got into it about 4
years ago when I found my mother's old camera in a box in the attic. Snowy days like these I
would spend the whole day taking shots of everything I saw. I love photography more and more
each day. Sadly a month ago, the camera broke. My grandmother had one of her tantrums and
completely shattered it to pieces. I was so upset, that was the only thing that could bring my joy

in my messed up life. I was determined to get a camera today because I finally saved up a good
amount of money to buy one.
By now the snow was coming down pretty hard, making about an inch of snow
accumulate on the ground. As I walked up the Main Street of my town, I passed by the used
electronics shop. I peered in the window trying to spot any cameras that looked useful. Mine as
we'll check it out, I thought to myself. Right as I stepped inside I felt sudden warmth from the
heaters. A tall, lanky man who was wearing jeans, converse and a red polo shirt approached me
and said "do you need any help? Whatcha looking for today?" I bit my lip and stood on my toes,
I was always on the short side. "Those cameras over there! Got any good ones?" I said pointing
over his shoulder.
"We have one really good one" he said walking over to the display case, I swiftly
followed his footsteps. "This one is a beauty. We got it in about 15 years ago, I dunno why
people haven't bought this one, anyone would be lucky to have this in their hands." The man
said while unlocking the glass case.
"How much do you want for it? I really need a camera." I said eagerly while admiring the
beautiful camera in his hands.
"Since no one really wants it, I'll give it to ya for 20 bucks. Sounds good?" I can feel a
smile spread from ear to ear. I haven't had this feeling in a while.
"Yes! Perfect!" I said just a little bit too excited. I ruffled through my pockets and retrieved
a twenty dollar bill, I don't even care that this is all my savings, it's worth it. The man put his
hand and I placed the bill in exchange for the camera.
I nodded a 'thank you' to him and I trotted out of the store. "Finally!" I said to myself. I
think I said that a little bit too loud and with a little bit too much enthusiasm. I started to swiftly
walk in the direction of my house. Right when i got up to the street leading towards it I noticed
that my grandmother would probably destroy this one too since she thinks photography is a
waste of time, and money.
I had to hide this camera, once she sees it she is going to freak out like always. The
snow had now stopped falling created a misty feeling in the air. I started down the street to my
house taking in each breathe slowly. The thought of seeing my grandmother made me nervous.
I arrived at the front stoop of my house and looked up. My house was an average looking
suburban house. Snow covered the roof and the chimney like a white blanket.
I finally found the guts to walk inside the house. The door made a large creaking sound as I
pulled it open. It does this every day when I come home from school, and as usual my grandma
scolds me for "making so much noise" . This time she doesn't, so I can walk through the house
without hearing her high-pitched voice. I don't bother looking for her or even greeting her, so I
just run up the stairs to my room. I throw myself onto the bed making my body bounce a few
times.
The first thing I do is turn on the shiny, black camera. There's so many buttons, more
than I can count. I finally found the power button and I watch as the screen lights up with the
word Canon. The first thing I do is look through the camera for any old pictures, I could get
some inspiration from someone's ideas. I clicked the 'gallery' button and start scrolling through
the pictures.
I notice that the first one is of a house, it has brown sides and shackles, a white door and

awnings. There's a pathway to the front door of the house covered with flowers and little
statues. I also see that there's two large pine trees on either side of the walkway. Something
about this picture seems so familiar. It looks much like a house around the my town. I pout my
lips and shrug my shoulders, it seems interesting, but I'm not gonna worry about it.
The next picture is of a tall, thin women with light brown hair, she's holding hands with a
small child with brown, short hair in a park. The picture is taken from far away but I can make
out some of the structures of their faces. This picture looks extremely familiar because I feel like
I know the women in the picture. I click the zoom in button so I can analyze the picture even
better. The minute I zoom into the face of the women I notice that she has small, brown eyes, a
rounded nose, and small lips. For some reason I get a chill from looking at this one. I zoom out,
then I zoom back into the small girl. She looks around the age of 1, maybe 2 years old. The girl
has short brown hair, with a chubby face and rounded nose. She looks exactly like women,
probably her daughter.
My eyes suddenly widen as I think about the picture. I jump up from my bed, and I go in
front of my mirror. I inspect my facial features and I notice that I have a rounded nose, small
brown eyes, and shoulder length hair. Everything about my face looks very similar to the
women's. Then I have a sudden shock, that women in the picture is my mother. I start to
recollect how she looked when she was alive. I vaguely remember how she looked but by
looking at the picture I start to remember how she would hold my hand and read me books and
play with my hair to make me fall asleep.
I couldn't help but shed a tear at the thought of it. To me, having a mother seems very
important, someone who you can relate to about girl problems and other things you just can't
talk to dads or even grandmothers to. I always wanted to have my mom in my life, I start to
silently sob at this point. The more and more I think of her, the more tears flow from my eyes
and the more sobs escape from my mouth. I have to be brave though , that's what she probably
would want me to do. So I wipe away the tears and take a few deep breathes to calm myself
down.
When I finally get myself together I start scrolling through the pictures again. The next
one is just of a sunset on a lake, boring. As I scroll through each picture I find that there's quit a
few of my mother and me, some are even of my father. This is becoming interesting I should
say. I scroll more fastly through each picture, they're all literally the same thing, my mother,
father and me. At first I thought maybe it's a friend of there's taking some family pictures of us,
now it doesn't seem like so.
Each picture seems to get more and more creepier. I come across a picture of a knife
and a gun. This scares me to the point where I start to shake. The next 6 pictures are of the
same thing but from different angles. I start to shake more now, forcing me to lay the camera
down on the bed so I don't drop it and brake another camera. "Why would someone take
pictures of this?" I thought to myself. My index finger hovers over the next button, I'm scared to
see what's next, deathly scared. I slowly click the button and turn my head to the right, avoiding
any haunting pictures.
I start to move my head back around towards the camera. You wouldn't even guess
what I saw on that screen. I gasped so loud that it almost sounding like a scream of horror. This
picture was of my mothers dead, bloody body. It looks like she was stabbed or shot or some

sort of horrible violent act. I felt like throwing up, I started to gag at the sight of the picture.
Looking at this made me feel lifeless, seeing my mother dead made me feel broken. I never
knew their murder was this bad. I couldn't look at this any longer so I started to move my hand
towards the button, but something made me think that the next picture would be something very
similar.
No matter how much I don't want to see the next picture, something makes my hand
click the button. The next picture is the same as the previous one except its of my dad. I gag
even more, I can feel vomit creeping up my throat, I swallow hard. By now, my hands and my
whole body are shaking, I can't take this anymore. My mind is telling me to shut off the camera
to prevent me from having an anxiety attack, but for some reason I keep going. Every picture
after that is all of their bodies, body bags, and weapons. These shots are horrific. Now I know
why no one has bought this camera in 15 years.
It's been about an hour of observing the camera, so I decide to stop and take a break,
it's much needed. For 10 minutes straight I stare at the wall, motionless. I don't blink nor do I
move a muscle. I am stunned and in complete uder shock of what's on that camera. I try my
best to push it out of my mind but I just can't. Then I start to think logically, obviously that
camera had to belong to my parents' killer, there's no doubt.
Then I remembered that the killer never got caught for committing that crime, or any
other crimes he's committed. So what if I can catch him by using the pictures to track him down?
It's dangerous but not impossible.
I will put my life on the line to get justice for my parents. This is what I'll need to do:
analyze each picture and trying to determine what area of the town he lives. That's basically it I
thought. Once I do that and corner him, I can call the cops and report him. I know it will be
easier just to go the police station and file a report, but I think that my parents would be very
proud of me.
I think I'll start my "mission" tomorrow so I can think out what I'm going to do. My room is
boring me so I go downstairs, I doubt that going downstairs would be anymore better with my
grand mom, but it's worth a shot. Each step I take down the wooden stairs creek. I don't hear my
grandmother, which is a great sign. I turn right towards the living room to find her sleeping on
the couch, or so I think she's sleeping. I doubt that there's any food in the kitchen, I'm starving.
Most of the time I have to fend for myself for meals, I mainly live on canned veggies and TV
dinners, it's very gourmet trust me.
After I cook my TV dinner that consists of macaroni and cheese and broccoli I settle
down in the living room. I turn on the tv and watch some random game show. Finally, I get some
peace from her. I spoke too soon.
My grandmother slowly rises from her slumber. She moans as she picks herself up off
the couch. The minute she wakes up she starts yelling at me.
"Evelyn! Why haven't you cooked me anything? You're very rude, you know that right."
Her voice pierces my ears, it sounds like a witches voice. I don't answer her, the more I talk, the
more she corrects or judges me. I try to ignore her and focus on the tv. She keeps babbling on
and on, I am oblivious as to what she's saying until I feel a slap across my face, literally.
My right cheek stings as she lifts her wrinkly hand up. This wasn't one of her bad ones,
thank god.

"What the hell did you do that for??" I said to her while rubbing my cheek. "Because you
didn't make me dinner and you weren't paying attention to me!!" Her voice sounded extra high
this time. I don't even bother to respond or put up a fight so I walk myself up stairs, and decide
to go to bed for the night, I have a busy day tomorrow.
I had my mind set on sleeping good that night, but I just couldn't. Each time I tried to
close my eyes the horrific vision of those pictures haunted me. Those terrible pictures were the
only thing that was in my mind. I finally felt myself starting to doze off. That was soon interrupted
by those visions again. I could hear myself screaming, my pajamas were soaked from my
sweat. My chest was rising and falling rapidly, I couldn't breathe. This is getting to be too much,
those awful visions of those pictures were giving me night terrors. I haven't had a night terror in
about 5 years.
I turn over to check my clock and I notice that it's only 3 am. While I laid on my back and
stared at the ceiling, I try to control my breathes so I can calm down. I need to do something
about these pictures, I most certainly cannot live with these pictures forever, I could barely live
with them for a day. I decide just to lay in bed until the morning, it didn't make much sense to go
back to sleep just to have another terror.
I probably only slept about an hour that night before, but it didn't matter because my
anxiety was taking over my body, making me feel anxious not tired. I sat up and rubbed my
eyes, they were crusty from all the crying and screaming I did last night.
It's only 7:25, I doubt my grandmother is even awake yet. My covers are still damp from
all my sweat, I take a deep breathe in and blow it out. I don't know where to start today, I want to
find the criminal who killed my parents but that's not an easy job for a 16 year old girl like me.
Most people would just say to call the cops and be done with it, but I want to make my
parents proud, they would be crying tears of joy if they saw me do something like that. I need to
do this myself.
I charged the camera over night so it would be ready for today. To prepare myself I
grabbed my school bag, put the camera, a water bottle, a sandwich and my dad's pocket knife
for protection, you never know what's going to happen. The first thing I must do before I leave
the house is observe the picture of the house that's on the camera. The house looks exactly like
all the other house on the street or in the area. I take in every single detail of the house so I
know exactly where to go.
I know to look for a house that looks like mine, two pine trees, and a pathway with
flowers. I'm very scared to go over there, I'll be facing a murderer who killed my parents. How
wonderful my day is going to be.
Without any hesitation I walk downstairs and start my journey. I don't care if my
grandmom is up or not. I open the wooden front door and lock it behind me. The air is cold as
always, but it isn't snowing which is great.
I don't know which direction to start walking in so I just go left because most of the house
are down that way. I stop at each house to inspect how it looks, it's been 10 minutes and no
luck, I'll keep walking.
Then I spot the house. My heart stops beating for a few moments as I look up at it.
Everything is exactly the same in the picture and the building in front of me. The only thing is I
don't know how to approach the house. Should I knock at the door? No not that. Sneak in the

back? Too obvious. I finally think of how I will approach this. I'll make pretend I'm taking pictures
of his house, or in his backyard until he comes out.
I instantly start taking pictures, I stop every few minutes to see if he comes out. Thirty
minutes pass and nothing yet. I make my way to the back yard and I don't even need to pretend
to take pictures because he's sitting in a lawn chair, smoking a cigar. He doesn't see me at first,
the man is too into his cigar. I feel myself breathing very heavily and I start to sweat even
though its 40 degrees outside.
Then his head turns towards me. He looks me dead in the eyes. The man has grey hair,
a thin face with a mustache and sunglasses. He gets up in one fast movement and starts to
walk towards me. I don't know whether to run or just stay still, my feet feel like cement and don't
move.
I was expecting him to attack me or something, but he says "hey, what do you think
you're doing here little girl" he emphasizes the words little girl.
"I am not a little girl" I have no clue why I said that. I'm probably provoking a battle of
some sort.
"Oh really, then who are you?" He says walking closer and sliding his sunglasses down
his nose. I gulp loudly and say
"Why should I tell a murderer my name?" I crossed my arms trying to look threatening.
He started too look more serious this time, his lips started to frown.
"Putting labels on people right when you meet them isn't nice, now is it?" I smiled an evil
smile.
"I'm not labeling you, I'm convicting you for a crime." I said looking straight into his eyes.
He doesn't look intimidated to me. I'm trying to make him though. I grasp the knife and
pull it out of my bag, I'm not going to stab him, I just want him to know that I can fight back. In
one fast movement he grabs my wrist and starts to pull me across the yard. My heart pounds
and I start screaming.
"Shut up or I'll shoot you!!!" The man screams while struggling to hold me down.
"Get off me!" My voice is more high pitched than usual. I try running the other direction to
pull from his grip but he's way too strong for me to handle.
I don't care if he told me to shut up, I keep screaming even louder than before. He stops
dead in his steps, puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a shotgun. I feel like my heart is
going to explode at this point. He puts the gun up to my head and whispers "say one more word
and I'll put you up there with your mama and papa. " these words make me shudder. He's
basically admitting to killing my parents, rather idiotic of him. What am I getting myself into? I
nodded my head in agreement for now. He put down the gun and started to pull me towards his
back door.
I am still scared out of my mind, but I can't be scared or panic in this type of situation. He
brings me into his house which is a complete mess. It's all covered in cigarette butts, old food,
trash and other various items.
"Where do you think you're taking me?!" I said while struggling to walk.
"Don't worry about that" he said not too enthusiastic. The man started to pull me
towards a door that I was supposing would be the basement door.
This won't turn out good, what if he ties me up or something? What will I do then? I have

to make a run for it soon. He drags me down the stairs and practically throws me down the last
few steps. When both of us are in the basement he grabs me by my shoulders. I feel like my
arms are going to break from his powerful hands. He yanks me into a small room covered with
cement walls. I have to make a break for it before anything too serious happens to me.
The man lets go for a split second to grab something behind him. During those few
seconds I slap him across the face, knee him in the abdomen and sneak past him. I hear
moaning and a thud drop to the floor as I run up the stairs. I turn and lock the door behind me so
he can't get back up. I ransack the house trying to find a phone so I could call the cops.
"911 what's your emergency?" I hear the dispatcher say "a man, tried to abduct me, please
come to 378 pine road, please hurry" I was so out of breathe that I could hardly talk. "Okay we'll
send help. Are you okay right now?" She says. "Yeah I locked him in the basement, but he
could come back up. Just please hurry" I said nervously looking around the room. "Just stay
calm and make sure to put heavy objects in front of the door" the women's voice was so calm.
After she said that I already heard the cop sirens outside.
I ran as quick as I can to the door, I watched as 3 police vehicles spiral into the driveway.
The cops don't even hesitate to get out of their cars. "Where's the man?" One of the men say.
"He's in the basement, I locked him down there. He's the man that murdered both of my parents
14 years ago, then he tried to abduct me just today." I said all in one breathe. "Okay we'll go
lock up that guy. I'll talk to you more when we take care of him." I nod my head. All 6 of the cops
run inside of the house as I stand on the front step still in shock of what I just did.
I suddenly hear screams, I'm supposing it's because of the man and the cops. I run back
into the house, which really isn't a house, it's more like a drug house. My nostrils are instantly
filled with the scent of crack and heroine. Then I stop because I hear the sound of steps coming
up the wooden stairs. The door swings open, almost coming off its hinges.
"Stop moving and kicking or we'll have to sedate you!" The police screamed while holding the
man's wrists in handcuffs.
"Make me." Then the man kicked and spat on the cop with blonde hair and glasses. In
one swift movement the cop tasered the man, there was a sharp buzzing sound as the taser
connected with the man's stomach. He fell to the ground screaming. For some reason I gasped
at the sight of this. He laid there, clenching the spot where he'd been tased at.
"We're going to put him in one of the cop cars and bring him to the police station. We'll have two
of the other cops come in and question you about the incident. You did a great job at handling
this situation." The cop with the black hair said. He reached out and shook my hand.
"Okay, and thank you very much." I said shaking his hand back. They picked up the man by his
armpits and drug him outside to the cop cars. I stood in the entry way of the kitchen and the
dining room. My mind was racing faster than a freight train, I didn't know what thought to focus
on.
Then two women cops, one with red hair and green eyes, and the other with brown hair
and brown eyes. "Hello, we're just going to ask you a few questions! What's your name?" The
one with the brown hair said.
"I'm Evelyn." I said in a low voice.
She shook my hand and kept asking more questions about what happened today and
over the course my lifetime. This was all mainly a blur in my mind.

"Okay final question, did you do this all yourself?" Said the women with the red hair.
"Yes I did." I said looking at my feet then at the women.
"Wow, your parents must be very proud of you up there." Said the women pointing up at
the sky.
I finally got them justice after 15 years. Finally.