‘The Girl Who Walked Out of The File’
Ella Wang picked up a camera two years ago and has fallen in love with photography since, no matter the genre: street, portrait, architecture, underwater, concert, and more. Still being a highschooler, she has learned to balance her academics with photography. During class, you might catch her debating how much grain to add to an image for that perfect amount of "vintage".
The Girl Who Walked Out of The File
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is not a traditional memoir.
It is written in fragments, case files, psychological evaluations, voice notes, and redacted records.
The form mirrors what it's like to survive systemic erasure, institutional trauma, and fractured memory.
These “files” are fictionalised reconstructions—rooted in lived experience.
Some scenes are written in the language of the system. Others reclaim the language of the soul.
There are redactions, strikeouts, classified headers—this is all intentional.
This memoir is about what happened, yes.
But more than that—it’s about how it is remembered.
Readers do not need to decode the entire system—the emotion will carry them through.
This is not a clean narrative. But it is a true one.
Every file here represents a girl who was never supposed to speak.
I am writing her back in.
— Gaby King
PROLOGUE
THE GIRL WHO WALKED OUT OF THE FILE
A Memoir in Fragments
Case Status: Closed
Subject Status: Alive
Content Warning: Me
A Reconstructed Case File of Survival
[This memoir includes references to child neglect, trauma, institutional violence, and psychological abuse. Please read with care.]
This isn’t a beginning. It’s a recovery.
Call it what you want:
testimony, archive,
case file,
poem.
I call it survival.
A page torn from someone else’s ending. A name mangled in a file no one bothered to read.
(I woke with porcelain dust in my lungs. Skin mapped in mildew.)
What follows isn’t a clean narrative. It isn’t a scar that healed pretty.
This is a document stitched together from forgetting—
a memoir suspended between paperwork and pulse.
Here, memory arrives in fragments—
not because it’s broken
but because that’s how it was handed to me.
I write inside the outline of institutions:
DNA tests, field notes, psychological evaluations,
each page trying to name me, explain me,
erase me.
But I am not paper.
I was there, too.
Inside the rot.
Inside the silence.
I remember what my body won’t forget.
This story is written in refusal—
to be classified, to be sterilised, to be shelved.
Each redaction, a wound.
Each footnote, a whisper I never learned to swallow.
If it’s hard to read—
good.
This isn’t written for comfort.
This is written
so I don’t vanish.
This is my voice.
And I’m leaving the door open
for anyone who needs to walk through it.
Let the file stay open.
Let her keep walking.
✦✦✦
CLASSIFIED: LEVEL 4 ACCESS ONLY
CASE FILE: 0001C-A
UNAUTHORISED ACCESS IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE
PROPERTY OF CHILD PROTECTION ARCHIVE // EVIDENCE DIVISION
CLASSIFIED UNDER HOME OFFICE DIRECTIVE 19.7.3
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█████████████████ she survived █████████████
████████████████████████████████████████████
████████ not a victim ██████████████████████
████████████████████████████████████████████
████████████████████████ still here ████████
██████████████ a name they didn’t ask for ██████████████
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NOTE: Portions of this document have been redacted
in accordance with Directive 19.7.3:
Memory Integrity, Subject Class: Resilient
FILE 0001A – BATHTUB ORPHANS
(Cross-reference: Subject 0001C-A | Partial Extract)
Subject ID: 0001C
Alias: [REDACTED]
Date of Extraction: **1981**
Status: Closed
Classification: Survived
✦ SYSTEM ENTRY — AGE: 1
✦ STATUS: Rescued / Unrepaired
✦ CORE THEME: Survival ≠ Safety
The door was smashed open, but no one stayed to hold it.
— • — • — • —
WARNING: This file contains content not approved for clinical comfort.
“Be not far from me, for trouble is near; there is none to help.”
— Psalm 22:11
— • — • — • —
FIELD NOTE – ENTRY LOG [UNVERIFIED]
Three brown babies.
One bathtub.
No adults.
No food.
No language.
No light.
No rescue,
not until the silence screamed loud enough.
Found.
✦✦✦
OBSERVATION LOG – INITIAL DISCOVERY
Skin ulcerated.
Faecal matter present.
Urine crystallised across bodies.
All three children non-verbal.
Youngest subject stared without blinking.
Further details withheld.
Witness statements inconclusive.
No charges filed.
— • — • — • —
UNCLASSIFIED HANDWRITTEN NOTE – FILED OUT OF SEQUENCE
Recovered from Subject’s personal effects. Not part of official record.
They say ash is what’s left after fire.
But no one tells you
how long it stays on your tongue.
I licked the air for days
trying to find the taste of her.
All I found was smoke.
Maybe that’s why I never learned how to speak.
My mouth was too full of what burned.
Note filed by Subject 0001C. Retained under Directive 19.7.3 – Memory Integrity Clause.
— • — • — • —
INTERNAL ANNOTATION DETECTED – UNAUTHORISED MEMORY RESIDUE
✖ STRIKEOUT REPORT #001
[Innocence + Body-Memory]
Subject Statement (Recovered from Memory Residue):
I was rescued.
I was safe.
I was too young to remember.
I was twelve months old.
And even now,
my ribs curl inward
like they remember the hunger.
✦✦✦
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT – SUBJECT 0001C (AGE UNKNOWN)
Voice Note (Reconstruction):
“The bathtub wasn’t just a place.
It was a coffin.
A cradle.
Porcelain and silence.
The kind of stillness that waits to be broken.”
“They left us.
And we waited.
Because that’s what children do.
We wait for love,
even when it never arrives.”
— • — • — • —
SUB-FILE: A LOVE THAT BURNED
Legal Summary (Redacted):
High-intensity parental bond
Documented domestic violence
Addictive behaviour: confirmed
Custodial failure: confirmed
Neglect: un – prosecutable
— • — • — • —
CASE FILE EXCERPT – UNREDACTED MEMORY
Their love was lava.
Molten and messy.
It didn’t just destroy the house.
It burned through the bones of everyone inside.
We were three witnesses.
Three survivors.
Three children
blessed
cursed
marked
by the kind of love
that names itself in bruises and calls it devotion.
— • — • — • —
WITNESS REPORT – NEIGHBOUR #5
“Night owls. Dancers. Locked doors.
Never saw kids.
But we heard… something. Or maybe it was the lack of sound.”
— • — • — • —
ENTRY RECORD – THE DOOR WAS SMASHED
The officers broke down the door.
But what they really cracked open
was the mythology of a family.
What they found:
Three bodies.
Soiled. Malnourished. Silent.
The smell of neglect baked into the wallpaper.
The echo of love, long since evaporated.
— • — • — • —
✖ STRIKEOUT REPORT #002
[Cynicism + Institutional Neglect]
Recovered from Subject’s reconstructed internal log.
They rescued us.
They saved us.
They remembered us.
They didn’t come for us.
They found us.
Like a statistic gathering dust in a file drawer.
They checked a box,
marked us “saved,”
and moved on.
I was more than a ticked box.
I was still breathing.
But nothing was resolved.
Not really.
✦✦✦
INVESTIGATION FINDINGS
No formal charges filed.
Children: Too young to testify.
Evidence: Circumstantial.
Flat: Uninhabitable.
Case: Closed.
— • — • — • —
GUARDIAN FILE: ENTRY OF REPLACEMENT CAREGIVER
Subject: [REDACTED]
Alias: Granny
Placement Type: Informal Kinship
— • — • — • —
VOICE SAMPLE – GRANDMOTHER (Recovered From Recollection)
“I don’t need to know what happened.
I see it in their eyes.
In their bones.
In the way they flinch at open doors.”
— • — • — • —
FIELD NOTE – FIRST WASH
(Spring crept into the cracks of winter when they gave us to her.)
Her hands smelled of lavender and steel.
She washed us like she was scrubbing away shame.
Not filth.
The water was warm.
For the first time.
The water lapped against the porcelain like a lullaby.
My brother blinked slowly—his first soft thing in days.
I didn’t cry. I just watched the steam rise.
It looked like ghosts escaping.
She kept her hands steady, even when mine weren’t.
I didn’t know what comfort was. But I knew it smelled like lavender.
— • — • — • —
UNFILED MEMORY FRAGMENT
She didn’t ask what had happened.
She didn’t scold.
She didn’t shrink.
She held us.
As if we hadn’t already been erased
by the system.
She whispered into my scalp:
“You're here now. That’s all that matters.”
I didn’t understand the words,
but my body listened.
— • — • — • —
PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT – EARLY SIGNS
Attachment Style: Disorganised
Aversion to locked doors: Documented
Language delay: Probable
Sensory imprint: Rot + silence
Recovery potential: Unknown
Therapist Recommendation:
“Subject may need to tell her story someday. Recommend space for narrative reconstruction.”
— • — • — • —
CASE CONCLUSION – SYSTEM OUTPUT
FINAL SYSTEM ENTRY:
Subject: Alive
Development: Stable
Emotional recovery: Assumed
No follow-up required.
Case closed.
— • — • — • —
✖ STRIKEOUT REPORT #003
[Reckoning + Truth]
Recovered from Subject’s unsanctioned memory annotation.
I was just a child.
They didn’t mean to abandon us.
They loved us in their way.
No.
They left.
And we were never the same.
I think I dreamed of a red blanket.
Or maybe it was real.
It smelled like biscuits and petrol.
And someone was humming off-key.
It stopped.
Everything else went quiet after that.
✦✦✦
ADDENDUM – UNCLASSIFIED
My grandmother didn’t save me with money,
or therapy,
or official paperwork.
She saved me with porridge.
With clean socks.
With a soft “shhh” that wrapped itself around my nightmares.
She taught me survival is a quiet kind of love.
One you don’t need to earn.
— • — • — • —
UNCLASSIFIED MEMORY ANNOTATION — FILED OUT OF SEQUENCE
Recovered from Subject’s internal archive.
Filed under Directive 19.7.3 – Sensory Recall: Guardian Imprint
Title: Almost Held
Her hands were wobbly, work-worn, unsure—
like she didn’t know how to hold a child
who came from fire.
She pulled me into her belly
but not all the way.
I pressed my face there anyway,
breathing in lavender
and the quiet shame of someone
trying to love without asking questions.
I didn’t get close enough.
But it was the closest I’d ever been.
— • — • — • —
END NOTE — UNCLASSIFIED
Filed by: SUBJECT 0001C
System Status: Incomplete
Emotional Status: Active / Ongoing
Narrative Status: Reclaimed
And still—
the file ends.
The system: CLOSED.
But my body kept it open.
Not with pages,
but with the way I flinch at footsteps,
the way lavender still makes me cry.
They wrote: “Subject Alive.”
As if that was the end.
But survival is only
the first line
of the real story.
One of the socks she gave me had a hole.
I kept it anyway.
Not for warmth.
Just to prove someone thought I was worth dressing.
Somewhere,
a girl still sits in that tub—
not drowning,
just waiting for someone
to say her name
like it matters.
(Waiting with cracked lips. Fingertips shrivelled into ghost-flowers.)
I am here
to say it.
* * *
[UNSANCTIONED IDENTIFICATION – SUBJECT CLAIMED]
I am the girl
who walked out of the file—
wet,
silent,
still burning
with the need to be known.
This is not the end.
> > > THIS IS HOW I BEGIN.
✦✦✦
[MEMORY DRIFT – TIMESTAMP: UNKNOWN]
Somewhere between the bathtub and the scar,
I must have learned to breathe.
Not because I was ready—
but because the next wound was already waiting.
✦
The silence wasn’t empty.
It was holding me.
Just long enough
to keep going.
Jade Mash is a British writer, educator, and care leaver whose work blurs the line between memoir, poetry, and archival testimony. Autistic and multiply neurodivergent, her voice reclaims what institutions erased: the right to feel, to speak, and to survive out loud. Her hybrid memoir, The Girl Who Walked Out of the File, draws from redacted case files, poetic fragments, and spiritual hauntings to confront childhood trauma, racial violence, and systemic neglect. Jade’s writing has been recognised for its lyric intensity, experimental form, and unflinching honesty. She is the founder of The Aftercare Project, supporting care-experienced youth through creative workshops, lived-experience mentoring, and artistic reclamation. She holds an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction and is currently preparing a PhD proposal exploring narrative disruption, voice, and postcolonial neurodivergence. She is a mother, a foster panel member, and a believer in storytelling as resistance and repair.
