Meet Mickey Murder Preview Chapters

Please enjoy the revised preview chapters for the finally soon to be published thriller of the year, MEET MICKEY MURDER. Thank you.

copyright (c) 2018 Steven Orlowski and SO What? Publishing ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PROLOGUE

ANNETTE

Age 9

………………………………….

What was it that Mommy had said, exactly?

“Do not accept a ride in a car from anyone you do not know and trust”?

That was it, right?

“Someone you know and trust,” is what she said. Yes. She said that.

And I knew him. I did. A little. But I knew him.

I mean, I met him. At school. They brought him in to talk to us.

He was a doctor. Yes. They said he was a doctor. I think that’s what he said. Maybe he worked for a doctor…I’m not sure. But he was nice.

I remember that Mommy didn’t say “do not accept a ride from anyone you do not know” only, not just “do not know”, she said “do not accept a ride in a car with someone you do not know and trust” …

And I remembered she said that. That day. When he pulled up beside me and asked if I wanted a ride. At first, I had to think before I answered.

Did I know him? Yes. Sort of. I mean, I met him at school. That day when he was brought in to talk with us, the students, us children, about being healthy. Him and a policeman and a fireman. And to talk about safety. He was a doctor. I think I heard Principal Washington say that. And I know and trust Principal Washington!

So, if he was brought in by the school, by Principal Washington who I know and trust, to talk to us children about health and safety, important things to help us grow up happy and protected, then they must trust him, the doctor, so I thought I could trust him too and be safe!

Doctors are supposed to be people you can trust. Right? They take care of us. Don't they? That’s what I thought.

I guess Mommy should have explained that stuff better, what know and trust really mean, exactly.

I thought I knew what trust meant.

I thought it meant that people you trust would be nice to you…

That a person you trust wouldn’t hurt you…

That a person I trust and know, both of them, would bring me home safely, like he said he would when he opened his car door and asked if I had ever ridden in a sports car – in the front seat!

I said “No” because I hadn’t ever been in a sports car, in the front or back seat. And I wanted to ride in one. Especially in the front seat!

I wanted to sit in the front seat of a sports car and go fast! Really fast! Because sports cars can go really fast! And it looked like fun!

But at first, I said “No”. And he, the doctor, thought I meant “no” to going for a ride in his sports car, I think. But what I meant was “No, I have never ever ridden in a sports car in the front seat.”

But I still wasn’t sure if Mommy would get mad if I said “yes” and did go for a ride in the doctor’s sports car in the front seat.

I thought I wasn’t big enough to be in the front seat yet. But his car didn’t have a back seat, so if I wanted to ride in his sports car I’d have to sit in the front seat anyway.

And I still wasn’t sure if he would be someone Mommy would say I knew and could trust. But I kept thinking she’d have to agree. She’d have too. Because I did know him. A little.

I only met him that one day. But I did meet him.

And before you meet someone you don’t know that person at all. After you meet someone you can say “I know him”, or at least “I met him”. Either way, when he pulled over in his sports car I already knew him, because I had met him. And I knew his name. So, I really thought that meant I knew him.

And he was a doctor. And doctors are people we should be able to trust. Besides, the school liked him. They must have. Because they brought him in to talk to us students. Children. About health and safety. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t think we could trust him. So, I thought “They trust him, so I can too”.

And I wanted to, I really wanted to, so I could ride in his sports car. But my mind kept going in circles. He was very patient and nice, too, which made me like and trust him even more.

I kept thinking, over and over again as fast as I could so I wouldn’t get in trouble with Mommy by making the wrong choice, that if I met him that day, and I did, and if I knew his name, and I did, then I knew him. And if the school liked him and trusted him to talk to all the children about health and safety, then I, just one child, could trust him too!

So, I thought Mommy wouldn’t get mad.

Because I knew him and I trusted him.

I did exactly what she told me to do.

So, I got in the car, the sports car, with him, all by myself, in the front seat! And I was hoping we were going to go fast. But I didn’t say anything about going fast. I was just smiling. I was so happy. A sports car!

We didn’t have to drive very far to get to my house. It was close. I usually walked home from school every day by myself. But it was a sports car. Driven by a man, a doctor, I knew and trusted. So, I thought it would be a short ride home, but a fun one!

I could’ve walked home like I usually did. And now I know I should have. I should have said “no” to the ride in the sports car.

Because it was a safe neighborhood. Even for a little girl like me. No one ever bothered me when I walked. Until that day. When I didn’t walk. Instead, I took a ride in a doctor’s sports car.

After I got in the car and he started driving (not very fast at first) he asked me if I knew about the Mickey Mouse Club.

I said yes, because I had heard of it. I had even watched the show. A lot!

I told him that my Grandma loved that show, and Mommy did too! Grandma said it reminded her of when she was my age. She said that watching it helped her to keep feeling young. I thought that was awesome. I loved my Grandma.

Then I told him I was even kind of named after one of the kids on the show. Annette is my first name. There was an Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club. A looooong time ago. It was made in black and white, before there was color TV. Her last name was Fooni-cherub. Foona-choo-choo. Something like that.

He said “Yes! I know! I love the show too. Annette is my favorite! I noticed your name was Annette. I was going to ask you just that, if you were named after her!”

I was excited that he knew about Annette and the Mickey Mouse Club because not a lot of kids my age knew about it, the old black-and-white show with Annette Fony-cha-cha. I think I turned red when he said that because I was shy but happy and I felt a little famous because of it. He said Annette, me, was his favorite. She was my favorite too.

As he talked I started feeling safer, and excited, because I knew him and he was a doctor and after talking a little I knew him even more and better. He liked something that I liked, just like me, something that Grandma and Mommy liked too. I thought they’d like him as much as I did!

He asked me if I was thirsty or hungry. I said not thirsty, but a little hungry. He pointed at the dashboard and said there was something in there I could eat. I opened the glovebox (Why they called it that I didn’t know. I never saw gloves in one of those!), and there was a brand-new bag of peanut M&Ms. My favorite!

“They’re yours,” he said.

I tore open the bag. He took the torn-off part from me and put it in the coin holder. I started stuffing my face right away, very fast, fast like how a sports car can go. I was so happy eating peanut M&M's (my favorite!) that I forgot to pay attention to where he was going. I forgot I needed to tell him where I lived because he didn’t know. But he didn’t ask. I guessed he forgot to ask like I forgot to tell him. We were having so much fun.

It was after I put the last M&M in my mouth that I looked up and I noticed we were driving over a bridge. I didn't live across that bridge! I didn’t live across any bridge! I told him “We missed my street! We have to go back!”

He said he was sorry. He said he was having so much fun with me that he forgot to ask me for directions to my house. I thought he knew where it was. That was stupid. I don’t know why I thought that he knew where I lived because he didn’t really know me. And I didn't really know him. And that he shouldn’t know where I lived. I only met him that day at school.

But he said he could tell that I liked M&Ms a lot. Which made me smile again. And he called me Annette a lot, which made me like and trust him more and more.

I still felt OK even though we were driving away from my house. I think maybe I was getting a little nervous, but not scared, because I still trusted him (The school trusted him, so I should too!) even though I started realizing that I knew him less than I made myself believe I did before. I guess I really just wanted to ride in his sports car. But the M&Ms were awesome and they made me feel awesome too. Then I gave him directions to my house and he said he’d bring me home!

But he told me that before he’d bring me back, since we already drove so far out of the way anyway, and since we were so close to his house, that he wanted to stop by there first. He said he needed to get something for a patient he was seeing later that night and then he’d bring me home. He said he had to go back over the bridge for work later anyway, and he would pass by my house, so it was no big deal.

I told him that was okay but my mother would worry so I gave him Mommy’s phone number and he called her. I watched him talk to her and I said I wanted to talk to her but he said I couldn’t speak with her because she was busy. But he said she said she wanted me home by seven o’clock. And since it was only four o’clock we didn’t need to rush. He said he didn’t need to be back at work until eight o’clock so we could take our time.

So, I kind of felt better and I kind of felt worse. I didn’t want to wait three hours to get home. I don’t think I was scared yet but now I think maybe I was, even more scared than I realized, and I was just getting more scared the longer I was with him. And then I couldn’t remember his name. So, I asked him to remind me what it was. I was kind of embarrassed. I thought I knew it before. But I couldn’t remember and I was afraid he would think I was dumb for not knowing his name and really dumb for getting in a sports car with a doctor that I couldn’t remember what his name was.

Inside my head I was thinking I was an idiot for going with him because I didn’t really know him. How could I? If I did really know him it would have been impossible to forget his name.

But he was a doctor. And the school trusted him. I said that to him, too, out loud. I wanted to feel like I was right about trusting him. He smiled. He told me I could trust him. He was a doctor. And that he’d helped a lot of children. But I didn’t need help. I needed to go home and be with my mother.

He kept driving (How far away did he live?) and I kept getting more nervous. And more scared. He knew it too, because he kept telling me I could trust him because he was a doctor. But somehow it didn’t make me feel better. And each time he told me I believed him less and less.

I tried to convince myself I was being silly. But inside I secretly knew I wasn’t. And I knew why. It was because I didn’t really know him. And I didn’t know where I was. Or how I could get to talk to Mommy. Or how to get home. But I was trying to still trust him. I really wish he had let me talk to Mommy on the phone.

He said don’t worry. You’re safe with me. He said his name was Mickey, like the mouse, from the Mickey Mouse Club. I said I thought he was a doctor. That’s what the school said he was.

He said he was. But that he liked to be called Mickey. He said I could call him Dr. Mickey if it made me feel better. His patients call him that. Dr. Mickey. That’s what he told me. He calls his young patients, kids like me, “Members of Dr. Mickey’s Especially Awesome Kids Club”. He said he helps a lot of children, children just like me. Except they are sick. And I wasn’t. Yet.

He also said that he loves all of his patients, and they love him, and he loves being called Dr. Mickey. So why should I be nervous or scared around someone like that? Someone who helps children and loves the Mickey Mouse Club? That’s what he asked me.

And he kept reminding me that he was a really big fan of the old Mickey Mouse Club show, especially the seasons when Annette Foona-funny-name was on it. He must have been. He kept talking to me about it. He must have thought I might forget he liked the show like I had forgotten his real name.

But I called him Dr. Mickey like he said to and I didn’t forget ever again. He smiled at me. His smile didn’t help me feel any better. I wish I had walked home.

When we got to his house he showed me his play room. I didn’t know grown men, doctors, had play rooms. It was down a bunch of stairs, in his basement. It seemed really far away from my home. It was kind of creepy, walking down there with him alone. It was dark. And kind of cold. And it smelled funny.

My father has a “man cave”. But his isn’t creepy, or cold, or smelly. And it has windows. I don’t know why he calls it a “cave”. It’s just a room with a couch and a couple of reclining chairs and a pool table and an X-Box and a big TV hanging on the wall. It was where he watched sports with his friends. That’s mostly what my Dad did in his man cave.

Dr. Mickey’s play room was like a real cave. There weren’t any windows. Or any way out.

Dr. Mickey’s play room was decorated like the Mickey Mouse Club. It had pictures from the show all over the place. He showed me one with Annette Foona-jello in it.

Dr. Mickey’s playroom also had a giant hat rack with mouse-ear hats all over it, each with the name of one of the Mickey Mouse Club kids on the front. That’s what he told me. Dr. Mickey. He kept reminding me over and over again to call him Dr. Mickey, especially if it made me feel better, but I think it made him feel more better than it made me feel better. Because I didn’t. I’d never forgot his name again. That’s for sure. But I didn’t want to call him that any more. I didn’t feel better calling him that. I wanted to go home.

Dr. Mickey put one of the hats on his head. It said “Mickey” on it. I thought it should say “Dr. Mickey” since he liked being called that so much. I didn’t say that to him. He looked stupid in it. He smiled at me like I would think it was great, him wearing a child’s hat.

He put one of the mouse-ear hats on me. It said “Annette” on the front. Then he asked if he could take a picture of me wearing the hat.

That made me cry. I don’t know why. But as soon as he asked if he could take a picture of me wearing the hat I got scared. I don’t know why but I did. It just didn’t feel right that he should take a picture of me. I didn’t ask to come to his house. I wanted to be home. But he asked, and I got scared. And when I’m scared, really scared, I cry.

He gave me a soda. Mommy wouldn’t have allowed it. She always wanted me to drink healthy things like fruit juice and water, but I was scared and crying, and I thought that like the M&Ms it might make me feel better right away and it did. You’d think a doctor would give a child something healthy like water or juice like Mommy would want him to.

But he gave me a soda. Orange. I drank it. It was awesome. Cold and sweet and bubbly. It was the best soda I ever drank. I know that there’s no real orange in orange soda, and it tastes nothing like orange juice, but it is awesome. I drank it and I calmed down. Then I let him take the picture of me with Annette Funa-something’s Mickey Mouse hat on my head.

The picture was just me wearing the hat. I had to put the soda down before he’d take the picture. He made me stand in front of a wall with a giant painting on it. I think that kind of wall painting is called a mural. The mural, or whatever it’s called, was of a room, a fake room that looked like the real thing if you stood far away from it. Up close you could tell it was a painting.

The room painted on the wall looked just like the one on the Mickey Mouse Club TV show from when Annette Fooni-cha-cha was on it. There were other Mouseketeers in the painting, and there were even life-size statues of some of the kids from the show standing in front of the mural. The painting was in color though, not black-and-white like the TV show. The statues were really creepy. They looked so real. They made me scared. I was afraid they were going to start moving on their own and grab me.

But I was the only real kid in the picture, just me and the kids in the painting and the statues.

After Dr. Mickey took the picture his phone rang. He answered it and turned away. I couldn’t hear what he said. He spoke with the caller then quickly hung up. He told me it was Mommy again. He said she told him that an emergency happened at home. He said our neighbor fell, our old neighbor Mrs. Rafferty, who Mommy and Daddy looked after. Mrs. Rafferty was 93 and had no family. We were like her family.

Mrs. Rafferty always came over for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I loved Mrs. Rafferty. She was old and had a hard time getting around, but she was still always baking in her kitchen.

We would smell her baking every time and try to guess what it was she was making. We knew that whatever it was she was making would end up in our house too. At least some of it. But sometimes we got a whole whatever it was, usually a pie.

I didn’t guess very well what she was baking when I was younger. I just knew that whenever she was baking smelled awesome and my mouth watered. As I got older I got better at guessing what Mrs. Rafferty was baking since I had smelled and eaten a lot of her baking. As I grew up I learned more about how things smelled while they were being made. It was fun. And Mrs. Rafferty was a great baker.

But that day Dr. Mickey said that Mrs. Rafferty had fallen and got hurt and Mommy took her to the hospital. He said she was expected to be OK. But Daddy was away on a business trip and Mommy was at the hospital with Mrs. Rafferty. She told Dr. Mickey that she might need to be there with Mrs. Rafferty all night and that she thought that it would be best if I didn’t come home until the next day. I told Dr. Mickey I wanted to speak with her. He just shook his head “No”. He said we couldn’t call her back because she was at the hospital, in the emergency room, and people weren’t allowed to make calls from there. He said we could try again later once Mrs. Rafferty was out of the emergency room. I said “OK” because I thought he would know about hospitals and would tell the truth because he was a doctor. I was sad Mrs. Rafferty was hurt, but I wanted to go home. I got really scared after that call. I started crying again, for me and Mrs. Rafferty.

I cried a lot. And loud. And Dr. Mickey got mad. Really mad. He yelled at me. I got more scared because he yelled, and I cried even more and louder. I almost peed myself. That would’ve been embarrassing. I didn’t know what he would do if I did. He was so mad. I didn’t think doctors got mad like that. I didn’t think doctors would yell at children, especially a doctor who mostly had children as patients. But he sure did yell loud, and I started feeling sick to my stomach. I could’ve thrown up but I didn’t. I wouldn’t do it because I was afraid of how much he’d yell, or worse, if I did.

He yelled again anyway and told me to sit down on the couch in the playroom and shut up. Then he grabbed his head and shook it with his hands like he was mad at himself. And then, quietly, he said he “Sorry” and said that he didn’t mean to yell at me and make me upset. He smiled like he was embarrassed. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and closed his eyes. He smiled again without opening his eyes and again said “Sorry”.

I sat down where he had yelled at me to sit. There was a TV in front of it. He turned it on. The show that came on was the Mickey Mouse Club show. An episode with Annette Foona-chill-out in it.

It was in black and white. I didn’t want to watch it.

I cried some more. He again said “Sorry”. He said “I shouldn’t yell. It’s not right. I want you to have fun here. I want you to remember nice things about visiting my play room.”

He gave me another soda.

He still looked mad even though he was smiling.

I drank the soda.

I started feeling tired. It was weird. It wasn’t very late. And I was scared. I usually can’t sleep when I’m scared.

But I did. I don’t remember falling asleep. I must have passed out.

It was weird. I don’t remember anything else.

The last thing I do remember, right before I passed out, was a weird thought that came to me. I thought “I’m never see Mommy again. Or Daddy. Or Mrs. Rafferty.”

I thought “I’ll never go back to school, see my friends, or grow up and go to college. I’ll never get married or get a job or have children of my own.”

I knew somehow that I’d never grow up. Never be a mommy. I never had thoughts like that before.

I felt very afraid before I passed out. Even though I don’t remember passing out. And I was right to have been afraid. Very afraid.

Because, the next morning, when I woke up,

I was dead.

ONE

KAT

University of Pennsylvania

………………………………….

I was a little nervous. And I suppose I should have been. But still, I was surprised that I was nervous. I think since I was surprised I was nervous I became more nervous, because I didn’t really care about the interview. I didn’t really care about the job. I didn’t care if I didn’t get the job.

Well, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care. And I succeeded to a point, I guess. I had convinced myself that I should care. I should have. I was convinced of that because I needed that job. Not wanted, needed a job. I needed any job. But, as usual, the only thing I was truly confident of was that I wouldn’t get it anyway, I was convinced of that, no matter if I really tried to do well on the interview or not. So, why care? Why get my hopes up? Why set myself up for disappointment? The best offense is a strong defense. Expect the worst, hope for the best? Nah. Just expect the worst. Then be surprised as hell if the best happens.

But I had no lofty expectations. I had prepared myself so that after the interview, after I got turned down, I would be disappointed. I would act disappointed. I would act surprised and dejected. I convinced myself to pretend to be upset if I got rejected. When I got rejected.

I convinced myself that I should act disappointed when speaking about how I tried but didn’t get hired but I could’ve done better on the interview if I’d only prepared more and taken it more seriously but oh I am always disappointing everyone, but I’ll do better on the next one yadda-yadda-yadda.

I was going to lay that line of bull on everyone: my teachers, my parents, my siblings, even my friends who wouldn’t buy it because they knew better. But they’d act like they bought it because that’s what friends do, real friends.

Your best friends and you have unspoken agreements about how to behave, what to believe, and when to call out “Bullshit!” And since we were all about to graduate, whether we wanted to or not, we’d all have to attempt to be more responsible, to be more adult-ish. And one of those things adult-ish people are supposed to do is act disappointed when things don’t go your way, even if you don’t really care about whatever didn’t work out. Because, you know, as an adult and as a college graduate, you should care about something.

I mean, if you are going to be a failure in life the one thing you need to be good at is pretending to give a shit. Nobody empathizes with someone who boldly admits they don’t give a fuck. They don’t help people who knowingly fuck up…and don’t mind it. They don’t loan money to people who aren’t trying. They don’t help someone who really wants to do nothing.

And trust me, there are more people at that age who feel that way, not giving a fuck, than there are those who admit it. Most us do not know what we are doing or what we want to do when we graduate. Adulthood was, is, an intangible concept, for me and my friends. We pretended to have plans, some of the time. We pretended to know what we were going to do and how we were going to do it, and why (the greatest lie), other than we were going to do whatever because we need money. And that really kind of pissed me off. I guess that was pre-graduation angst. But it wasn’t so much disrespect for life and responsibility and my elders. It was more like I got a jump on my mid-life crisis by starting it at twenty-two.

But please understand me, I was convinced I really didn’t care. I knew I needed the job, even though it was to be unpaid at first. I was going to try and lie my way into an internship at twenty-two years of age after having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, a very good school, with a BS in something (a BS in Bull-Shit my father would tell you).

I needed something, anything, that I could point to just in case someone asked, “What are you doing with your life?” Well, I could point to that, that internship, if I got it. What am I doing? How dare you! I’m doing that. That. Over there. That “job”. Whatever that is. That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing that! Yes, unfortunately, it is unpaid. But it is what I want so desperately to do with my life. Oh, so desperately. I can barely contain my joy for getting to do that for the rest-of-my-life! But I still have rent. Can you help? Please? Mommy? Daddy? I am working my buns off. It’ll become a paid job in six months. Possibly sooner. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. And I’m doing well. And I’m sooooooooooooo happy. Please help. Please? Pretty please?

And I know that makes me sound bad. Maybe. I don’t know. But hey, at least I’m honest. Honest now.

But then, over time, as expected, me and my circumstances, my desires, my life, changed. Quickly.

Starting just then when I shocked myself by being nervous before the interview. Asshole. People that don’t give a crap don’t get nervous. People that care but try to act like they don’t give a crap get nervous. I used to be the first kind of person: no crap, no nerves. Suddenly I was confused. Had I become the second kind, loaded with crap and nerves?

I had been expertly indulging my Olympic-caliber, well-practiced apathy all the way up to the front door of the doctor’s office. I was as cool as a cucumber pulled straight from an icebox as I spoke to the receptionist. I wasn’t even thinking about what I’d be asked by her boss, the doctor (envision a man in a white coat with his nose pointing to the sky), or how he’d look or sound or smell. Yuck.

Whether he was a creepy bald perv’ with a face full of moon-like craters from his acne-dominated teenage life or a boring old relic who smelled like he had died years earlier and whose Alzheimer’s-deadened mind was preventing him from acknowledging his lack of life, so he kept coming to work, a zombie doctor helping the living keep on living, I didn’t care. I didn’t care whether he had personal grooming issues or if he looked like a model from the cover of GQ (though I would have acknowledged how that might have complicated matters even though the odds were poor that his problem would be looking too good). None of it mattered. And even if it did, a little, I needed to not let it. I needed to not care because I knew I’d never get hired.

I’d learned early in my life that caring leads to disappointment. Apathy is armor against life going against you. When you expect nothing, and get nothing, life can still be good. Expect a lot, and get nothing, and life seems shitty.

And I was a pragmatist. I always played it safe by not caring. I don’t know if I was born apathetic or if I developed it to accommodate my apparent inability to do any more than the absolute minimum to get by. Nature or nurture? Well, I know a lot of it was nurture. And a little more than a touch of nature. But my nature, thanks to my parents’ messy gene-pool collaboration, was very obviously at fault. And then the nurture I was subjected to, by those same parents who had made certain my future direction at a minimum was unknown[V1] if not wrong. As if the poor genetics were not enough, my parents seemed to have concluded that they’d nurture the good right the hell out of me too.

Well done folks. Well done.

But graduation was looming over me like the Grim Reaper doing his rounds in the terminally-ill section of your local cancer ward. As such, and expecting to have to go on a lot of interviews before I’d finally land a management trainee position at Walter’s Discount Liquor Bonanza, I decided to observe myself during this interview like a third-party evaluator. Maybe I’d learn something. I needed to. In a very short time my career as a pretty and charming slacker would be over.

So, with my cool-as-a-cucumber exterior concealing my fully engorged internal-apathy, and after waiting for the interview to start for so long that I almost walked out of it before I got a chance to be rejected (there was no one else there, just me, the receptionist, and the big boss man hiding behind closed doors like the Wizard of Oz), I was finally escorted into his office. By then I was a little agitated, still hanging on to apathy, but unexpectedly again, more than a little curious.

OK, Mr. Big-Time Neuro-Psychia-chologist, whatever you are, here is me! Kat! Not short for Catherine, or Kathleen! Just a random, three-letter combination that is better than my stupid given name, Gemma! Gemma! Sounds like someone’s Grandma, not an at-best mediocre college student! The one that no one can figure out. She’s smart, but her grades are borderline expulsion-worthy! She’s attractive but only dates losers! And dumps them before they can remember that her real name is Gemma, the name she hates and doesn’t even use! She’s in shape, and “has a nice figure” …ughhh... yet she looks like a crap-sack as she’s usually dressed in some kind of postmodern, goth-hippie-grunge muumuu leftovers! Fire away, Mr. Big! You’re my last hope and apparently, whatever you did wrong I’d like to know, because I’m the one the university sent to you for your internship!

Finally, Ms. Receptionist led me in to [V2] the almighty Doctor’s office and saved me from suffering more of my self-deprecating interior monologuing; into his large, opulent, expensive-looking, and impressive office, where he was not to be found. Fuckin’-A. Are they serious?

I sat down with my thighs securely clamped together. I was wearing a skirt, not a mini, but I was determined to not show him (not yet, anyway) how I color-coordinated my eye shadow with my thong (I wore the thong so I wouldn’t have panty lines. Please…).

It was a very nice office. It looked expensive, though there was very little I knew about the cost of good furniture. My on-campus apartment was almost exactly how it was when I moved in except for some Walmart curtains and a retro “I Want to Believe” X-Files poster from the 1990’s.

But it looked nice, his impressive furniture. Each piece was made from expensive looking wood which I couldn’t identify. And each piece also had perfectly matched wood grains at every seam which were accented with shiny metal trimmy-things, surely chosen to make him look rich and successful, though I couldn’t tell you what the trimmy-things were made of either. Brass? Bronze? Gold?

I was not very sophisticated.

There were also a lot of books in the unidentifiably fine wood bookcases with more of the shiny metal trimmy-things all over them. Of course, the books were big, gold-embossed (That I knew. Yea!) leather-bound encyclopedia-looking things (Nobody makes encyclopedias anymore, right? Thanks Google?) with unpronounceable, presumably medical-oriented words on the spines. I was starting to feel like I cared about the interview a little more while I sat there with all those imposing books in that expensive-looking furniture staring down at me. Shit, if he had read all those books he must be rich. And if he’s not horribly gross, anciently old or the walking, talking, living dead, I began considering that I might want to really give a crap about the interview.

But I maintained most of my balls and bluster before he came in (though I knew I was mostly pretending). But when he did come in (Not in me, dummy!) I was surprisingly…wait for it… excited.

Not in a sexual way. Not yet. Mostly not yet. I was glad to see he was attractive. He was older than me. Duh. What’d I expect, Doogie Howser? He was older by a few half decades I guessed. But not too old that if we were out in public anyone would confuse him for being my dad. On first sight, I guessed he had to be about 40, which would be a very young dad for me (though in that moment I did momentarily imagine him spanking me as I squealed “Oh Daddy!” at which point he would have surely made the eyeshadow/thong color connection), and as a husband he would be right on the border of uncomfortably older. Buuuuut, he did seem to be rich. He was kind of famous, or so I guessed by the framed magazine covers and newspaper articles on the walls of his office. And presumably he had the smart thing covered, if you cared about brains and all that. And his brains were covered by what looked to be all his own hair, which, chemically-enhanced color or not, was not grey (Oooh. Matching pubes? Oh yuck! I knew how to disgust myself).

He started off by introducing himself as Dr. Fleming, Dr. Geoffrey Fleming, in a James Bond-ish kind of way. Geoffrey, spelled with a “Geo”, said in such a way that you knew it was spelled G-E-O-ffrey. Jeffrey with a J-E sounds different. I guess. Ehff instead of Ahff. Like Jahff-rey. Or Johff-rey. Whatever.

But I already knew that part, his name, and how to spell it, because I did some research before I went to the interview (look at me showing signs of maturity so soon). The sarcastic me wanted to say, “No shit, Sherlock!”, which would’ve been funny, condescending, and likely to eliminate whatever slim chance I had of getting the internship sooner than predicted. But I didn’t. I stayed proper. Well, I tried.

We shook hands. His hand was strong. Not overpoweringly, smartly confident. And certainly not weak and flimsy like some of the creepy professors at the university who tried to enhance my grades by volunteering to consult with me on my eyeshadow/G-string color combos. Dr. Fleming’s hands were slightly calloused, likely from the gym, not from labor, and were not too big, not too small, and lightly furred (there was no monkey-neck hair creeping out from under his collar either). After sizing him up I concluded I’d fit him like a glove.

And he smelled delicious. Mmmmm-mmmm. Delicious. I was losing focus before he’d asked a question. And I didn’t have much to spare. All it took to get me off track was a decent look, a reasonable handshake, an appetizing aroma, and an office full of expensive stuff, and I was off and running into la-la land.

And by “aroma” I mean he smelled professional. Nice. A very nice cologne. A present yet subdued fragrance. Strong enough to be appreciated, but not so strong as to cover his natural, intoxicating manly aromas…. sorry. Today, just like that day, I can go off the rails quickly, remembering the moment.

As I was saying, his apropos cologne wasn’t there to give me a sneezing fit and it was not there to mask an unpleasant indigenous stench that I might discover later after he’d worked up a sweat on me…to me…with me…

I give up.

Any-who, at that point, about 45 seconds into the interview, I’d concluded that I wanted him, as an employer, I mean, I wanted his…his internship…I’d take the internship then wait and see if he grew on me (you saw that one coming, I know. But you thought I’d say, “In me.”). I decided to fight my baser instincts and be the person my mother always wanted me to be, not the one I was.

“So, Ms.…,” he smiled boyishly while grabbing my resume (a blank sheet of paper with my name on top I’m sure) that the university had emailed him, “Gemma. Yes. Gemma,” he emphasized the hard “G” in an unintentionally playful, sexy kind of way. He was showing off, letting me know that he knew how to pronounce my God-awful name, Gemma with a “G” as in Gorilla, not Jem. “Tell me about your college career, the highlights, anything which might help you help me if you were to work here.”

Oh, I could list many ways I could help him if I were to… “OK,” I said cautiously, “Well, if I only give you the highlights this might be a short interview!” I laughed knowingly, hoping he knew we had just shared our first inside joke (No, not inside me. Stop that.). He just held the exact same look, a pose in fact, kind of like one of the dead Presidents on Mt. Rushmore, with a smile and a slightly furrowed brow meant to feign interest, the same exact look that he had before I let that lame joke fly.

He waited patiently for the answer to his question. The truth was that there weren’t many highlights. Not of the kind that I’d want share in the interview. There were more un-shareable ones. Those would be reserved for class reunions and girl’s night happy hours. Maybe I’d share a few with him later over cocktails, assuming he was going to take me.

But we were one question in and I was already concerned. It was not the first time I’d felt like I blew it within the first few minutes of an interview. Yes, I said “blew it”. And there I was again, after the very first question I felt at risk of losing the job, a job with no competition mind you. I was his last hope. Could he be better off with no one rather than with me? If I was to save this interview I needed to unleash my greatest asset. No, not color coordination. My talent, my skill, my oeuvre, is bullshit!

“Well Dr. Fleming, I’ve spent much of my collegiate career…,” which by the way I’d never considered college a “career” until just then. College was much more a procrastination technique used to delay my entry to the real world. “…experiencing many different intellectual pursuits to ensure that as my collegiate academic career continued I would become more intentionally focused on my major track and confident in my pursuits so that I would progressively be concentrating on that which I wanted to pursue professionally, to excel at it and to find personal fulfillment with my future employer…and career.” I ended on that phrase, “personal fulfillment with my future employer”, which you could argue is obvious nonsense, but I was imagining him thinking “personal fulfillment with me on top of you” …you know, something like that.

He smiled, maybe he got the innuendo, and maybe I am not as subtle as I think, but the questions got harder. Not…

“For example?”

That was question #2. I was certain then that he intended to grill me. Rake me over the coals. Maybe he thought this was a real job? Maybe IT WAS? But I had no examples!

“Well, Doctor, I’ve taken classes in the arts, Renaissance Literature, Classical Studies, Ballet (I did for real. I was a little hard body, despite everything else. I wanted him to know that too). I’ve taken classes in the sciences, notably neurobiology, cosmology, and a class that I’m told is a campus favorite, “The Psychopath Next Door – The 2% Nobody Knows About”. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I am so interested in working with…you.” Smile, smile, smile. No smile back Doctor Downer?

I had practically purred in between the “with” and the “you”. I needed to calm myself down. I might’ve been giving the wrong impression, like I was moving in to his house before he’d offered me the job. I decided to give him back the reins. I felt I’d already made my intentions known.

“Hu-huh.” He was not impressed. I was worried, becoming the wrong kind of moist. What the Frankenstein? I didn’t care about this internship. Right? And I wasn’t actually attracted to him! I just want to get it, so I wouldn’t have to do it again somewhere else the following week. Screw him! Either way!

He kept talking while I verbally bitch-slapped myself, and then him in my imagination. I didn’t hear what he said. But he looked disappointed. I had just met him two minutes earlier. So why should I have felt anything at all, whether he was disappointed or not? Who cared what he thought?

I did apparently.

“Uh, Gemma. I’ll be blunt. Please be honest. If I hire you, can you assure me you’ll do as you’re told?”

“Huh?” What the Flutie? “Uh, of course. Who can’t do what they’re...? Like what? Do as I’m told what?” My voice dropped an octave when I said, “Like what?” My timing was off slightly as I smiled and reiterated the question needlessly. And my optimistic and dirty mind instantly had me hired and thinking that maybe he did have something kinky in mind. It would not have been an internship killer for me, him wanting kink, because I could be game for some wild stuff, but as soon as I started thinking he was a freak I started losing interest. I wanted him to be a choir boy that I could transform into a freak. Luckily, he straightened me out.

“I’m dancing around the subject, I guess. Look, here’s the deal. I’m in the brain business. I’ve met and interviewed thousands of people. Some were clinically insane. Some were just regular people seeking treatment for mild depression, maybe to recover from a traumatic event, the loss of a loved one. Over time, as with most professionals, my assessment skills have gotten better and better. I’ve interviewed people using different techniques just to see how accurate my assessment skills are. I once interviewed someone and only said twenty words during the interview. I influenced the person and got her to tell me what I wanted to know mostly through gestures and body language. The subject did not know I was experimenting. The subject may have thought I was behaving unusually for an interview. But I was with her for an hour. I spoke twenty words. And I got all the information I needed, as I would in any interview where I might speak hundreds or thousands of words. I like to be economical with my words. My words are far more valuable when used elsewhere.”

He smiled genuinely for what felt like the first time since he entered the room. I didn’t know exactly where he was going, but my seat was getting warmer which was a good sign. And I was warming up down there not just because he was truly attractive when he smiled, in contrast to my pseudo-slutty alter ego working overtime to get the gig, but because he made me feel that I was going to be hired and that made me want the job, truly want the job, and not because it was going to be easy or he was hot or because I had no other options. And I didn’t think I’d need to do any “extra-credit” work to secure the opportunity and, just maybe, a decent future.

“So, one thing I do with patients as well as potential employees to save me time and expenditure of valuable words that are better served elsewhere, I do this thing where I have my subject brought into my empty office and I watch them for a couple of minutes. I watch them to see where their eyes wander, what they do, where their attention goes. I want to see how they genuinely react to the environment while assuming they are not being observed. Do they get up and walk around? Do they touch things they shouldn’t? Do they take things? Do they seem to be nervous? Confident? Are they focused and spending the extra alone time preparing for the interview or are picking their nose while playing Candy Crush on their smartphone?

I learn much more seeing them behave naturally, alone and waiting, before I come in for the interview. Before I arrive, their guard is down and believing they are not being watched they’ll display their true selves. Once I come in the room they change. The guard goes up. I ask questions and they pepper me with nonsense, embellished bullshit and outright lies. It is amazing how different some people are before the interview versus during the interview. In fact, some people get so nervous, even when they are not aware of it, that they do not get hired for jobs for which they should have been hired, simply because they behaved poorly on an interview despite being great candidates and would likely be outstanding employees. The interviewer sees this weird, uncommon version of the interviewee, caused by anxiety and overthinking, not the one that if hired would show up to work on time and do an outstanding job. Then they understandably decide not to hire the candidate. So many people screw themselves out of jobs during the interview. Jobs they should have gotten. While lesser candidates who don’t give a crap get the jobs because their apathy puts them in a relaxed state of mind and they perform well during the interview. So, I watched you before I came in. From those observations, I already knew what the outcome of this interview would be, unless you did something radically different than what I had already observed and expected, and screwed yourself out of this job.”

Oh shit. Did I look up my skirt before he came in to make sure he wouldn’t be able to make the thong/eyeshadow connection? Holy Cheezes! What else did I do? I didn’t tweak my nipples, did I?

“You look worried,” he accurately noted. He was smart.

I blushed. I told myself I blushed to look embarrassed. But I did so involuntarily. Shit. I realized just then that despite my own bullshit, which I shoveled to myself all the time, I really wanted that job. I had to remember if I did something gross when I was alone in his office and I thought no one was looking? “No, I’m fine. I was just trying to remember if I picked my nose or something embarrassing before you came in. I’d be mortified if you saw me do something, weird.” I tried to be the most modest and likeable me in that moment, the most modest and likable since the day I, uh, well, let’s say since my First Communion. You know, the last time I’ll ever have worn a white dress while walking down the aisle in a church? I was cute, and innocent, and gave a crap back then. Just then, with Dr. Awesome about to pop the question, but not my cherry, I felt nine again. In a good way. That didn’t sound right.

“Oh, I see. No. Not that I recall. You didn’t. No nose picking. You were fine. You assessed the office. You first examined the perimeter. You seemed to judge the furniture quality. I thought I saw you make a subconscious facial gesture that suggested approval. You know, the kind of upside down smile, but not a frown, with the up and down head nod. Then you looked at the medical journals, that I was glad to see. Some people look up, see this collection of gigantic scientific tomes, and roll their eyes at it, like I’m going to make you read them. You didn’t roll your eyes. You seemed interested.”

“Well, impressed more than interested. But yes. Thanks for noticing. I am impressed and interested in working for you. And enthused.” I exhaled. “OK. So not so bad. But really, did I do anything embarrassing? It was weird, sitting out there, then in here, for so long. Not what I expected. But I just want you to know that…”

“Do you like being embarrassed?”

“No.” I laughed uncomfortably. I think I do. But… “I just am curious. You know, I mean, you know, people do things when they think they are alone and nobody is watching, even in public, or in a strange doctor’s office. The old nose pick, armpit sniff, boob adjustment. I thought I must’ve done something. You know, the things we do but don’t realize…”

“Well, I don’t think I’m a very strange doctor, not Doctor Strange anyway, but no, you did nothing embarrassing. You were fine. A perfect lady waiting. I bet you are in greater control of yourself, both consciously and subconsciously, than you are aware of. You did seem to fidget a bit. I assumed either you found the chair to be uncomfortable, which it is not terrific to sit in for long, but that is also intentional, or I thought you were concerned that your skirt was somehow likely to fly up over your head.”

Oh no. Did I look? “Oh, sorry. It’s been a while since I wore a skirt like this. Just getting used to it, again.”

He smiled in a way that practiced doctors of the mind probably all knew how to. I felt calmer and more relaxed. And my skirt stayed put. And he had called me a “perfect lady waiting”. Perfect lady. Perfect lady in waiting. Purrfect Kat. I started fidgeting again, but this time it was because I was truly concerned that my skirt was about to act - inappropriately.

“Well, Gemma. You only must answer one more question. And it’s the one I already asked. Can you do as you’re told?”

Huh. Do as I’m told? Really? Haven’t I already, my good doctor? “Well. The answer is yes. But I don’t know if I’m comfortable with how that sounds.” Stop it Gemma. Cheap smile. “Or if I like it more than I should. But yes. I can do exactly as I am told.”

He stared at me for a minute. Which seemed like an hour. He had puffed out his lower lip slightly in a soundless facial gesture that was a kind of “Harrumph” of approval. I thought? Or did I just blow it?

“You’re hired Gemma. What’re you doing tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Tomorrow. I’ve been without a “you” for two weeks and I don’t like it. I need you tomorrow.”

And I need you to… “Uh. Sure. My schedule is open, no job and all. But, uh, Dr. Fleming. Can you respond to my response?”

“Sure. You need to do as you’re told. Period. No innuendo, though I do have a sense of humor. This is a serious business. I am responsible for the lives and mental health of many, many people. My patients. My student doctors. People around the world who rely on my research, my books. I am consulted by law enforcement, world governments, education institutions, religious leaders. I need you to do as you are told. To the very letter. No variations. No thinking for yourself. If I cannot rely on you to do so, and I will know quickly if you can and will, then I’ll need someone else.

“The prior you, Eduardo, he thought he was more important than he was. At first, he did well. Very well. But then his ego blossomed. Not that you, or he, are not important. And a healthy ego is advocated. But he, your predecessor, thought that he was equal to me. He started questioning my decisions. And acting upon his own, jeopardizing some of my professional relationships by doing as he thought he should, rather than as I told him to. So, you will do great here if you never forget your role. And frankly Gemma, if you do well, this could extend beyond the terms of this internship, assuming you do well and want to continue with me. It has been and still is my objective to hire someone that I can teach, mold, groom, and help advance themselves in their career. The right person, and this could be you, under the right circumstances as in do your job as expected, might be with me for years, even decades. I’m still fairly young in this profession, I won’t be forty for another two years, and I expect to be doing this for a long, long time. So, this is a great opportunity for the right person. I hope that is you. We’ll start tomorrow. Sound good?”

Sound good? He’s not even forty! No wonder he looks so good. And yea, he noticed my skirt! He wants to marry me! Yes! Mrs. Dr. Kat Gemma Fleming! “That sounds great Doctor. Thank you. I can’t wait to start.”

“Terrific. Jess will let you out.”

I turned to see “Jess”, the creepy receptionist, had snuck in and was standing just behind my right shoulder. I was so in love that I never heard her enter. I turned back to smile one more time at Dr. Fleming, but he was gone. Like a great magician, he left the stage in a puff of smoke, leaving me alone with Jess and my fantasies about life as the wife of a world-famous Neuro-psycho-scientist something or other.

This was going to be great.

TWO

Adeline Lazenby

Mother

………………………………….

Getting the mail had never been a big deal for Adeline Lazenby, before her son went missing anyway. Back then, when her son was not missing and when her husband, her missing son’s father, was not her ex, most of that which she’d ever find that the mailperson had left for her in that cold, metallic tube, the one adorned with that damned, stubborn, plastic, red, flag that seemed committed to fall each day, to a position parallel to the ground, thereby falsely indicating that there was no outgoing mail for the mail-carrier to withdraw from the tube. And that damned flag was determined to fall each time it did before the mailperson came down her street often giving the false signal to the mailperson that there was nothing to deposit, often delaying not just the crap that was being delivered until the next day but especially the things she needed to have taken away. When the flag managed to stay up, or when the mailperson decided to stop by despite the flag being down, often what came to rest in the mailbox was commonly unwanted: bills, advertisements, free local newspapers filled with useless local news stories but mostly just ads for pizzerias, happy hours, and HVAC services. But as time passed, and the longer her son was missing, getting the mail became a bigger and bigger deal.

Jason had been gone for three years. His case was still open (“His” case, like he had requested it), and there were people, law enforcement, somewhere, supposedly looking for him, and the other missing kids. But his case, not unlike like the others, had gotten very, very cold.

Adeline and her husband, ex-husband in the present tense, were told after the first year, on the same day as today, the anniversary of the most terrible day, the day their son disappeared, that despite their son not being found (due to a complete lack of evidence or clues) the case would be kept open. They were also told that it could, and most likely would, get colder. And perhaps eventually freeze over entirely and permanently.

They were also told that they should never give up hope. They should remain optimistic even when the case got colder, because they needed to believe it would eventually get warmer. Even though it probably wouldn’t. And it sure as hell did get chilly, the case that is, but so did their marriage. But they were also told, somewhat hypocritically as far as Adeline was concerned, that they would be best served personally, she and her husband, her soon-to-be ex, “personally together” she thinks they meant but they were wrong, if they “moved on” with their lives, without the son they no longer had, while not giving up hope despite the case getting as frigid as Jason’s long, dead, cold, corpse.

But the Schrodinger in her decided that until they looked under the box, Schrodinger’s Box, she could maintain some optimism, as difficult, impossible, as it was, because he was, until evidence proved one way or the other, both dead and alive. But certainly, none the happier.

This angered Adeline and her ex-husband to be. But mutual anger was not enough to keep the family, minus their son, together. They managed to stay married through the second year their son was gone although, like their son’s missing persons’ case, their relationship got colder day by day and as time went on and faster and faster still colder the longer their son was not found.

How could they tell us to move on, like Jason, our son, is dead, when he might not be? No! He isn’t dead. How dare they? Why don’t they find him!

The anger was understandable. They, the ones that told her and her ex-husband who she was still married to until the start of the third year to move on, agreed with her and her soon to be ex-husband even as they told them to move on and as she cried and her husband, now ex, yelled. They all said, “We understand how you feel”. That only made them, she and her husband, soon-to-be ex, angrier. She knew they meant well by saying that they understood how she and her soon to be ex felt and that when they told them[V3] to “move on” she knew what they meant and that they were probably, painfully, right.

Without any clues, literally none (she hates people that say “literally” all the time but in this instance it feels appropriate), zero, no-thing at all, the case was going nowhere, except to the freezer, and their son, dead and alive, was unlikely to be found unless someone, somewhere, who saw something, or knew someone, who heard something from someone who saw something, told them, the cops, the ones that told her and her soon-to-be ex to move on like their son was dead, even though no one knew if he was, or where he was, that even if he was alive, or dead (most likely dead according to they who said to “move on”), he was not ever going to be found.

Unless someone got a freaking clue.

So, three years later, after they’d moved on (both in the sense of living like their son was dead or alive and never to be found and also in the sense that since they lost their son who they don’t know if he is alive or dead but presume that he would probably never be found, they had grown to hate each other and the last thing they ever agreed on as husband and wife was to “move on”, separately) on that day, that special day, that hated, unavoidable anniversary in a bad way day as she was going through the mail, by which time “moving on” had sadly become easier[V4] , because without her husband, and without the house they had shared with their son who had not been found alive or dead after three years, she found herself disturbingly able to push away thoughts of her old life, like she’d never lived it, like she had seen it in a movie, the memory of which was vague. The memories of her son however were not vague and although she couldn’t think[V5] of him in her current setting since he’d never been there and probably never would, her old life she remembered well like a movie she didn’t particularly like but couldn’t stop thinking about.

She wanted to think as little as possible about anything, but rarely could not when it came to her son. Her son who was missing for three years. Her son who was neither dead or alive. Her son she was holding on to hope for. Her son that she knew she’d probably never see alive again. Her son, her only child, the only child she was likely to ever have, who went away like a ghost in the night, three years ago,

today.

And then that very day, this day, the anniversary of that hated day, in the mail, along with the bills and magazines and advertisements, came that thing that she had been secretly anticipating, subconsciously expecting to come, knowing it would arrive on that hated, special day, expecting it with as much trepidation as a death row inmate awaiting his walk to the gallows.

And just like a dead-woman walking she retrieved the day’s mail, ordinary as it should be, wondering, while knowing, why it would be different than yesterdays or tomorrow’s mail.

Just because today was the day.

And as she had secretly, subconsciously known it would be, though she struggled to not consider it, it was there. Waiting for her. Just like she’d been dreading. There it was, an envelope, just a plain old envelope, from someone who didn’t want Adeline to know who they were but who had something very important to share with her, something that quite possibly could make her already unbearable existence even worse.

There were no markings of any kind on the envelope. It was one of those manila (reminds her of vanilla) envelopes with a flap at one end with a metal brass-ish, claspy-thing holding it closed along with the already-there glue that had been moistened by some means other than a tongue, for if it contained what she expected, the anonymous sender wouldn’t want to leave DNA on it. The envelope was triple-secured at the flap with Scotch tape and the moistened pre-glued flap and the metal clasp thingy-thing after which the mailer affixed a white address label presumably printed on a laser printer with her name and address on it (not her ex-husband’s name or address on it nor that of the someone who sent it), and a postage paid postmark from a post office somewhere in the City of Brotherly Love, hers and their former home town (until her son went missing), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By the time she received the envelope, three years to the day after her son disappeared, she was no longer living in the city but in the Philadelphia suburbs. Not in Pennsylvania, but on the New Jersey side of the river, the Delaware River that is. She lived in a semi-rural town near the South Jersey Pine Barrens, home of the world-famous Jersey Devil, (though she was certain that if the Jersey Devil was real it was no scarier than who or what took her son), which was about halfway across New Jersey, at a midpoint just off the Atlantic City Expressway between Atlantic City, thirty miles to the south east, and Philadelphia, where the envelope was postmarked, about thirty miles to the north west.

Before then, when her son wasn't missing, and she was still married to her ex, the father of her missing son that she sadly was thinking less about these days (but still many, many times every day, which she thought, even more sadly, was probably a good thing), they had lived and loved in Philadelphia. But once her son was gone, and then after her husband was gone too (less sadly), she also wanted to be gone, if not totally from the Earth definitely at least from Philadelphia, far from the too painful reminders of her missing son, who is probably dead but might still be alive and never to be found, and her ex-husband, who agreed with the men that told her and him, her ex, to move on, though they probably weren’t suggesting that she and her not-yet-ex should move on separately from each other.

And, for some unknown reason, some crazy sense of intuition, some appalling anticipation of the horrid, she did not want to open the envelope because she had expected it, subconsciously maybe, but she knew it would be there and she was afraid of what she believed was inside of it.

Adeline shook as she held it. She shook hard, fast, and erratically like she did in the days and weeks immediately after her son vanished, when his case (like he owned it) was not yet freezing cold, though it had never really been hot, it had never even been lukewarm (the first 48 hours had passed by rather uneventfully since other than a missing child there were no fucking clues), shaking like she did back then after her son was gone but before she could fill the prescription her doctor gave her to calm her, before the passage of time wore her down and helped her keep the shaking to a minimum, along with the as yet ever present, ever full, pill bottle.

She was shaking for sure that day. Shaking like it wasn’t Day 1,094, but Day 1. And she was crying too, like on Day 1. She was crying long before she noticed she was crying but the shaking she knew about right away. She was shaking and crying, which made her shake and cry more intensely, as she held the envelope and then looked around the room, her kitchen, looking for something, something other than the envelope. She was looking for something, and she didn’t know where it was, or what it was exactly, she’d know it when she saw it, the thing she needed, the thing she was looking for as she shook and cried until, just like when she realized she was crying, crying before she realized it, shaking all along, she realized that what she was looking for was not where she thought it would be, because what she was looking for was not there in her kitchen, or anywhere in her house, or anywhere on Earth except maybe with her son, who, whether alive or dead, would probably never be found with the thing she was looking for.

Because he didn’t have it, alive or dead. Found or not.

What she was looking for all over her house was not in her house. It was in her head. She was searching for a reason not to open the envelope.

And she couldn’t find one.

So, she stopped looking, but kept shaking and crying and not opening the envelope even though, had we been there to ask her why she was shaking and crying, she would not have been able to tell us why because she didn’t know.

It’s just an envelope, goddammit! Why would it have anything to do with him, my son Jason, my maybe-dead but maybe- alive son who went missing without a trace, in Philadelphia, without a clue my boy whose case is still open even though we’ve been told he may never be found and he is probably dead but he might be alive but we will probably never know and the case is so fucking cold because we don’t have one single fucking clue, not one single fucking idea who, what, when, where, why, and how that fucking boy went missing!

And then she stopped. Crying and shaking. She stopped. Not because she felt better. She felt worse.

And she got scared. More scared. Because she knew that any moment now, she might be doing far more than crying and shaking. So much more. So, so much more.

She was starting to think she might die.

And when she thought the word “die” she wasn’t sure if that would be so bad. Because even though she had moved on, reluctantly, without her ex-husband her missing boy’s father, and she had moved out of Philadelphia, and she manages to go to work most days, and she manages to act normal, most of the time, at work and in social situations despite knowing that every person that sees her every day thinks of her not as Adeline but as Adeline whose son went missing and is probably dead but maybe alive and that she still really hasn’t fucking moved on and probably never will.

Every day has been hell. How do you live? He was 10. He’s been gone for three years. If he’s alive, he’s now a teenager. I might not recognize him. If he’s dead, he will never be a teenager. And I don’t want to see him dead. My boy. My son. My only child. He’s gone. And so is my life. All of it. Forever. It’s already gone. This envelope. Why? What can it contain? Why do I think that my boy is in there? Jason. My son. My love. Named for my father, and his father. My ex was gracious enough to honor them. They weren’t alive to meet him, my missing son Jason, who I silently hope is still alive but secretly believe he is not. What should I do? What?

She looked at the wall calendar. To confirm what she already knew before she thought it. She knew before she walked to the mailbox. So, did everybody else.

She remembered. How could she forget? Could she pretend? She knew when she went to bed last night. And immediately upon waking this morning.

But she was practiced at acting normal. For them. For anyone. For everyone. Because she knew that they knew that she knew what today was and that they were going to not mention it to try and help her act normal because they thought it would make today easier for her even though they really did it for themselves because how the fuck do you talk to someone about this on the anniversary of the day her life ended?

Why am I shaking and crying? Why am I going to die if I open the envelope? Why?

You. Know. Why.

She knew the envelope was there in the mailbox before she saw it in that pile of mail after she got it out of the mailbox and dropped the pile on her kitchen table.

How? Why? Why? Who would do this? Why me? Us? Jason?

She knew all day long it would be there. As did everybody else. She knew this envelope was coming last year. Even though it didn’t. She knew it would. It was just a matter of time. Because she knew, whatever year it arrived, whatever year it came in, this fucking envelope with her death warrant in it, it would come on this day. The Anniversary.

His Anniversary.

The day Jason was taken.

The last day she saw him, dead or alive.

Because the motherfucker who took my son wouldn’t be satisfied until he rubbed my face in it, without letting me know what happened, how he took Jason without leaving a clue, without getting caught, without bragging to me about what he did to my son.

She dropped the envelope on top of the pile of mail and called Detective Al Cruikshank, “Crook”, of the Philadelphia Police Department.

#Thriller #Suspense #CrimeFiction #Murder #UnsolvedMystery #SerialKiller