I was planning on going kayaking on Lake Emery this afternoon. I went at least once a week,  usually with my friends. But this time, my friends didn’t want to go with. Because . . . of the incident.

What was the incident? Let me explain. A young girl had gone missing last week, and I was awoken at 3:56 in the morning on a Friday by an Amber Alert. Impeccable timing, guys.

They described the girl as abeing 13-years-old with long black hair and brown eyes that had lighter flecks in them.

Her name was Idoya Sevilla.

I realized the girl’s name meant “pond” and here I was, planning to go on a pond. Whenever I heard an unusual name, I always liked to research it and find its origin and meaning.But now, I wished I hadn’t. The coincidence between her name’s meaning and my plans to go kayaking wasn’t in my favor.

Apparently, she was walking home from school and never showed up. I was almost scared to leave my dorm and go out.But come on, I’m a 20-year-old man, I shouldn’t be scared, right?

My day went on as normal and around four in the afternoon, I left my college campus and drove down to the lake.Things were perfectly normal, fortunately. But my brain kept going back to the missing girl. There were thick trees on both sides of where I was kayaking, and it had gotten foggy around 20 minutes after I had started rowing.

I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment, staying as calm as I could. A shiver down my spine was telling me I needed to go home. I would have to cut this day short and maybe just go to a restaurant to get some dinner.

I started whistling quietly, but it just made my surroundings seem more unpleasant. I stopped rowing for a moment and grabbed my phone. Thankfully, I had a signal, so I decided to call my friend to arrange a meet up for dinner.

At least this way, I wouldn’t feel as alone.…

I let out a sharp gasp of air when I spotted something floating in the lake.

It looked like a body. Curious, I rowed closer then stopped when I saw it was a person’s’ body. The face was torn, completely GONE. God, I was ready to vomit at the sight.

Was this real? I thought to myself. It was October, maybe this was just some stupid Halloween decoration…But the chills and goosebumps all over my body and the sickness it my stomach and throat made my brain think otherwise. Please… don’t let that be a real body.

I wasn’t about to get closer and poke it because if it was real, it was definitely dead. And if it was a person, I really hope it wasn’t that girl I had just heard about on the Amber alert.

My hands trembled as I slowly, fearfully called the police, my fingers trembling as I dialed. I had never called anyone faster in my life and when the person had answered, I put them on speaker.

“911, what’s your emergency?” said the dispatcher.

“Uh, hi,” my voice shook as I began explaining. “I-I’m kayaking on L-Lake Emery and I’m pretty sure I found a dead body floating. I-I don’t know if it’s some stupid Halloween decoration but it looks pretty real to me.”

The dispatcher lady confirmed my location and said she’d send a few officers over. I hung up and sat there, waiting, staring at a damn dead body.

I could see it was a girl, with torn clothes, tanned skin, tangled black hair. If her face didn’t look like a bear had slashed her twenty times, maybe I could’ve seen if she had the same brown eyes with flecks in it.

I can’t stand to think that this had happened to someone, and if someone had done this to this girl… I couldn’t even imagine something like that. And it made me angry thinking someone could have done this, and that some people do, in fact, do things like this.

Around ten minutes later or so, two officers showed up. One stayed at the edge of the lake while the other got in a small rowboat they had brought along wi of his own and moved closer to.

“You found the body floating here, yeah?” said the officer as he slowly rowed towards me and the body, stopping where the body’s head was floating above the water.

“Yeah, I always come out here to kayak and I saw it floating,” I explained. “I don’t know if it’s some stupid, spooky decoration, but it looks pretty real.”

The other cop called out from the grass: “Officer Joubert! There’s a pair of shoes in the bushes, covered in dirt.”

The officer on the boat, Officer Joubert, turned to his partner. Now I was really feeling sick.

I guess both officers noticed my anxiety and how I looked like I was going to puke, so the one on the boat told me it would be best if I went back home.

I nodded frantically, glad that I was allowed to leave and wouldn’t be questioned for anything.

I didn’t sleep that night, lying awake in my bed while my roommate was sleeping soundly. I had the blankets wrapped tightly around me like a shield; damn was I happy my roommate was here and I didn’t have to sit alone in my dorm room.

I couldn’t get the image of the girl’s maimed face out of my head. If someone had done that to her, what kind of psycho could do that?! And HOW?! Who could ever tear up some person’s face like an animal and live with themselves.

If I had EVER done that, I would never forgive myself. Hell, I would loathe myself beyond comprehension.

The news the next day confirmed it was that girl who had gone missing. She had been kidnapped and assaulted, then thrown in the river after being murdered.

“Can you believe someone would ever do something so awful to a young girl?” I heard a random girl in the dining hall say to her friend.

Unfortunately, I could imagine, since I had seen it in person, what an awful person is capable of doing to innocents.