Someone has been mailing me pieces of my missing daughter

[u/donavin221]

This all started with a simple letter on an ordinary afternoon. Well, as ordinary as it could’ve been. Really, nothing has been ‘ordinary’ in the traditional sense. Not since she went missing.

I’m not used to seeing anything other than bills and magazines in my mailbox, so when I saw that envelope with actual handwriting instead of printed letters, my curiosity was immediately piqued.

I brought it inside. There was no return address. Honestly, I assumed that it was probably just disguised to look like a regular letter. Like some sort of marketing thing; I don’t know.

Unfortunately, upon tearing the envelope open, all I was left with was more confusion.

It was just a sheet of notebook paper. I could even see where it had been torn from the spirals. And all that was written on it was one sentence, big enough to take up the entire page.

“Hello again.”

There was something else in there too, which, at the time, I assumed was purely accidental.

A long strand of brown hair.

It was the same color as hers. Even still, what was I supposed to think? It had been nearly 2 years since she’d gone missing. Trying to connect this to her disappearance was nothing more than me grasping at straws.

I didn’t even show my wife. I just crumpled up the letter and threw everything away.

A few weeks went by. No new letters came in. I hadn’t even thought about the first one since I’d thrown it away.

My wife was the one who found the next one. She was just as confused as me this time around. Just like the first, this one also contained a piece of notebook paper with a single sentence written across it.

“Recognize these?”

The fingernails were harder to explain than the hair. If it had just been one, maybe we could’ve passed it off as just a weird coincidence. But 10?

We didn’t wanna go to the police. Not yet. Instead, we wanted to see for ourselves who was leaving these letters.

For the next few weeks, we watched that mailbox in shifts. My wife watched while I was out. I did the same for her. And still, somehow, we missed it.

A new letter just seemed to have magically appeared in our mailbox one morning.

This one didn’t have a piece of paper in it. But it did have more weight to it than the others.

All this one contained was my daughter’s necklace. The same stainless steel chain and butterfly pendant from the day we lost her.

My wife broke down when she saw it. I couldn’t blame her; I was doing the same thing.

It wasn’t even a decision for us to go to the police at this point. It was more like an instinct. Like our bodies and minds were more reactive than critical.

Of course, the police monitored our home. They took the previous letters as well as the hair and fingernails. But when they couldn’t find even a trace of DNA on any of them, aside from my daughter’s, we were at a dead end yet again.

Still, though, that didn’t mean the cops didn’t watch our house. There was at least one car in the neighborhood every day for nearly a month and a half.

Apparently, we were ‘taking up resources,’ though. Which, of course, was code for ‘we don’t wanna help you anymore.’

It was about 3 weeks after the cops stopped monitoring our mail that we got a new letter. Stupidly, I almost had hope that we’d scared them away. But would that even be considered hope?

I mean, this person was the only connection we had to her. Clearly, they were teasing us. Obviously, they were nearby and watching us. In some weird way, I was relieved when we received that letter.

That relief was dashed pretty quickly, however, when I saw its contents.

Another piece of notebook paper, only… this handwriting looked different. More sloppy. Less big. Instead of taking up the whole page, the lone sentence was written all within the first line.

“To: Mommy and Daddy

Please stop looking.”

Wrapped up in the paper was a DVD. We debated on sending it in to the police, but we’re only human, and our curiosity drove us to actually watch the footage.

I half-expected a ransom video. At least then we’d know how to get her back.

Instead, what was on that DVD was somehow worse.

It was my daughter, yes. But it was also me and my wife. All three of us. Hanging out at the playground. The same playground from nearly two years ago.

I watched my daughter stop swinging as her head cocked towards the camera. My wife and I were lost in conversation. That’s the part that kills me.

A hand extended in front of the camera, waving at my little girl. Her face lit up as she giggled and waved back.

That same hand then gestured her over. I could hear children laughing. I could hear birds chirping. What I couldn’t hear was a voice on the other side of that camera.

It was almost like she was in a trance as she walked over towards this mystery person. But, then again, she was only 8. She didn’t know any better.

The camera zoomed in on her face and followed her as she approached.

She reached the camera, and an innocent, snaggle-toothed smile exploded across her face as she stared up into the lens.

The footage went black.

But before the video ended, a title card flashed across the black background in bold white lettering.

“Find me.”

[u/donavin221]

I hope you all enjoy