They shone in the moonlight, scattered all directions on the sand. Glistening with the borrowed shine of distant stars.
Then that tall thing in the darkness interlaced its fingers and flexed them until its joints snapped as loud as firecrackers. It proceeded to crack the others in its overly-articulated fingers one by one. Shadows cast by an unknown source of light on the far wall seemed to show those hands like the legs of an impossible boney spider wrapping itself delightfully around a fly caught in its web.
My feet were gritty and frozen.
That’s how I found out it had taken my shoes.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, “I didn’t think you were going to.”
“I almost didn’t. You’ve been in a spiral and I was afraid of what you might do to yourself. You sounded really out of it on the phone. I’m worried about you.”
My words were kind but came out in icy whispers. I sounded distant and more heartless than I had when I practiced this in the car on the way here.
Season pass members can listen now, but for everyone else, “A Letter To My Husband, Jack” is on the NoSleep Podcast episode (S14E03) this Sunday and I can’t wait for you all to hear it. It sounds great! I’m scratchy datchy with how it’s come out! It gives me the squiggles.
I
“The day I first saw you, I knew that my life was forever changed. It was love at first sight. Life was always so hard before that, and in that moment that I first saw your face, I knew that things were about to be different. It’s hard to explain. If I didn’t know you as well as I do now, I would never have admitted it at the time. It was like magnetism. I was drawn to you.”
We bought the house at a county auction, my husband and I. We saw potential there from the moment we passed by. It was old, falling apart. Abandoned for many years. On a hunch, I did a bit of research on it. The taxes hadn’t been paid in a long time. The county seized it and would be selling it off with a few others whose taxes were derelict on a Thursday morning. The weather predicted sun, but that didn’t happen often in winter. That Thursday, years ago now in December seems just like yesterday. The sky was overcast, looming, and gray. There was Frost on the ground but no snow and the sunshine that the weatherman promised sunshine never showed itself through the low-hanging clouds… But this was our first home and we were happy.
They shone in the moonlight, scattered all directions on the sand. Glistening with the borrowed shine of distant stars.
Some came in their slippers. The majority forged their way through the howling dark in socks or the bare feet they rose with. Abandoning their beds in the quiet dead of after-midnight, the hordes of somnambulists shuffled through the drifts of New Mexican desert sand, painted black by dark. From every compass point, the masses shared one destination.
I used to think reality was made up of choices. A hundred little choices made every day in a row, strung up like a necklace of pearls. You probably think reality is something like this too, each thing that you do could go a hundred different ways, and the only way it goes is the way that you choose for it to go…but that’s not how it works at all. That’s not how anything works. Reality is manipulative, just like people are and it’s manipulating all of us. It’s even manipulating you. You might not think so. Choices are only binary. Yes or no. True or false. There’s no great big gray areas like they tell you.
I
A little over a week ago is when Kariann Rose Nathan went missing. In the photo they used, she’s holding a stuffed giraffe and smiling wide. A towheaded girl who’s hair is a vibrant yellow, almost white, cascading messily down her shoulders. Adults with teeth missing tend to smile with their lips pursed together but Kariann is beaming, the dark gap of a lost baby tooth in the bottom row on proud display in that way only children with missing teeth can do.
“Daddy come get me.”
It’s four words a parent never wants to hear. I’ve always been worried about these calls. Being her father never gets easier. I don’t even ask her what is wrong. I don’t need to because she’ll tell me what happened when I get there.
I
“Hello!” I said as I approached the bench.
The man’s eyes shot up with a start looking up over the thing he held in his hand. “Are you talking to me?” He asked. He looked tired and agitated despite the placid mask of emotionless empty the rest of his face conveyed. I felt my insides lurch, instantly regretting the interaction. I had to keep going so I kept smiling until he smiled back. There was no way he could be like all the rest. If he was, there was no hope. Finally, he did smile and I felt my stomach fall. His smile was exactly like the ones I’d left behind. Fake. False. I felt my heart racing a bit in my chest.