Olivia Brown
WoB Short Story Contest Entry 11/11/2025
The girl in every face
Roman Mottet hadn’t meant to kill Elyse Robinson. He’d followed her home after the bar. She’d smiled at him that night. Kind, distracted, maybe a little drunk. That was enough. He told himself he just wanted to talk, to explain how people like her always thought they could ignore people like him.
But when she turned and said, “Leave me alone.” Something broke. He didn’t remember the knife, or the screaming. Just the sound of her body hitting the ground, the wet warmth of her blood on his hands. He buried her that night, in the woods, behind the old quarry. The ground there swallowed everything. Afterward he told himself it was done. Over. He could move on. But she didn’t stay gone.
The first time he saw her again was two weeks later, in line at a gas station. She was standing by the counter, buying some sour patch kids Same dark hair Same gray sweater Elyse Robinson. Roman froze, the coffee in his hand trembling. Her head turned just slightly, and she smiled.
“I know you know who I am. Why did you do it? I was innocent. Why?” she said. The world fell silent. His pulse roared in his ears. When he blinked she was closer, too close, whispering the same words, her breath hot against his neck. He didn’t remember following her into the parking lot. Didn’t remember grabbing the tire iron. When he came back to himself, she was on the ground, her skull cracked open against the asphalt. He dragged her to the woods. The same woods behind the old quarry. The same grave. The dirt felt soft, as if it had been waiting for him
“Stay gone this time.” he whispered as he covered her.
But she didn’t. A month later, at a grocery store, he saw her again. This time her hair was shorter, but it was her. He knew those eyes. Those lips. That voice.
“I know you know who I am. I was just trying to get home. I was innocent.” He dropped the basket, shaking his head, “No. You’re dead. I buried you.” The other shoppers turned, startled, but none of them looked at her. None of them seemed to see her at all.
Elyse laughed, “You can bury me a hundred times, Roman, you still know who I am” He lunged before he realized what he was doing. When he woke up, he was back in the woods behind the old quarry. The dirt was fresh again. His hands were raw, caked with blood and
soil. He looked down. Her face was different this time. Not Elyse. Some stranger. A young woman. Freckles. A nose ring. But as he stared, her features shifted, melting, until Elyse looked back at him
“I know you know who I am. Did you stop to think, maybe I had a family? Someone who loved me? I was innocent” Roman screamed
After that, it became a pattern. She was everywhere. A waitress at a diner. A jogger on the trail. A woman who smiled at him too long in traffic. Always the same face, the same voice. He stopped trying to explain.
Each time, she’d whisper the same thing, “I know you know who I am.” And each time, he’d kill her. Each time, he’d bring her back to the same woods behind the old quarry. Back to the same grave The same fresh soil The dirt never seemed disturbed The hole never quite filled. Sometimes, when he dug, he could swear the ground was breathing beneath him.
He started talking to her when no one was around.
At the diner, he’d mutter into his coffee, “You’re not real. You’re dead. I killed you.” The waitress would smile nervously and ask if he needed anything else. And when he looked up? There she’d be. The same gray sweater, now clean, now whole.
“I know you know who I am.” One night he tried to run. He packed a bag, left town, and drove until sunrise. But when he stopped for gas, she was there again, standing by the pump across from his truck, staring at him with those impossible eyes He laughed, a high, cracking sound, and whispered back, “Yeah. I know who you are.” He didn’t even wait for her to speak before he reached for the wrench
They found him three months later. He was sleeping in his truck near the old quarry, surrounded by empty bottles and the smell of rot. When the police followed the stench into the woods, they found a shallow pit. Then another. And another. Seven graves in total. Each one is filled with different women. All strangers. Only one of them was Elyse Robinson.
At his trial, Roman sat motionless, staring at the floor His face was gaunt, eyes hollow.
“I only killed one woman,” he said quietly when the judge asked for his plea, “Elyse Robinson. The rest…they weren’t real.” The prosecutor laid out the evidence. Fingerprints, blood, hair samples. Every victim had been a living, breathing woman before he killed her.
“Do you recognize any of them?” The prosecutor asked, pointing to the photos. Roman looked up. His mouth trembled.
“That’s her,” he whispered, pointing to the first photo. Then to the second. Then to all of them.
“Thats Elyse Every one of them She kept coming back” The courtroom went still The psychologist later explained it to the jury, survivor’s guilt taken to its extreme. His mind
forces him to relive the killing, again and again, through the faces of strangers. Every time he killed another woman, he believed he was killing Elyse, the one ghost he couldn’t bury.
When they read the verdict, Roman didn’t react. He only spoke when the bailiffs came to take him away
“She’s not done,” he said, his voice soft and sure. “She’ll be here soon.” They led him through the courtroom doors. But before he left, he froze. Someone was standing in the back. A woman with dark hair. A gray sweater.
She smiled, “I know you know who I am.” He screamed and lunged forward, but the guards held him down. The woman was gone.
They put him in a psychiatric ward instead of a prison He didn’t speak for weeks But sometimes, late at night, the nurses swore they heard him whispering through the door
“She’s here again,” he’d say. “She never stops.” And if you looked through the window at the right moment, you’d see him staring at the corner of his cell, nodding to someone invisible.
“I know you know who I am.” A voice would echo, soft mocking, real. And Roman Mottet would smile back.
“I do,” he’d whisper back. “God help me, I do.”