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| Lost and Found | |
| By linguistictendencies | ||||||||
| 09 April 2007 | ||||||||
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This is a random supernatural short story that came from nowhere. It' just over 2,000 words long. I'm going to post it in several parts rather than one big chunk. Two people. Two friends. A man and a woman. Middle-aged. Unhappy. They got to know each other at one of those meetings, for people who have lost. United in grief, united by tragedy. A corroding tragedy that has blighted their existence since it blundered into their lives and destroyed what made them whole. Them and many others who try to be together, take comfort in other victims, but who, in their heads and hearts are really isolated, solitary, weighed down by an immense and heavy emptiness. On your own, with everybody else. But their grief is not ordinary. They don’t even know whether they should grieve. They are unsure of the fate of the loved ones they have lost. A few years ago both had young children, a life partner, a clean, neat house in the suburbs, a cosy life, safe, dependable, routine, unremarkable. Then their children disappeared. Just vanished into thin air. One minute they were in their beds, the next they were gone. Sally had just tucked in her young son, Ray, after reading him the customary bedtime story. She’d kissed his forehead, wished him good night, turned off the light, shut the door and went back to the living room to watch a drama on terrestrial. Twenty minutes later she’d kissed her husband and said she was going to read for a while in bed. On the way to her bedroom she’d looked in on Ray. His bed had been empty. The covers crumpled at the end of the bed, his favourite teddy bear discarded on the floor. The light had still been off, the window securely shut, yet he was nowhere to be seen. She’d screamed and screamed, ran outside to look for him, knocked on neighbour’s houses, shouted his name into the cold, dark night. They’d called the police, her and her husband had been suspects, the police had searched their home, they didn’t really believe their story that he’d just vanished. But they’d had no evidence against them, so they had not been charged. But everyone had looked at them differently from then on. Friends, neighbours, work colleagues. They’d all suspected Sally and her husband. When she’d walk past a group of people at work, their voices always lowered and they’d look at her, disgust and hate in their eyes and faces. But she hadn’t done anything. And neither had John, her husband. But he’d dealt with it better than her. She’d withdrew into herself and gradually sunk deeper and deeper into depression. And after a few years he hadn’t been able to cope with her all-encompassing sadness any longer, and he’d left. Since then she’d really been alone. Until she’d started going to the meetings, and there she met Graham. Graham’s story was remarkably similar, his daughter, Hailey, had also mysteriously vanished one night from her bed. All the major details of his story were like Sally’s, apart from his fiancée, Julie, hadn’t left him, she’d committed suicide, unable to actually go on functioning without her beautiful little Hailey. The loss of not just his beloved daughter, but also his beautiful fiancé, who he’d doted on, had completely ravaged Graham. He was now but a shell of a man; hardly what one would call a human being. He went on as normal on a daily basis, on the surface he seemed okay, but inside he was a hollow void of pain. He didn’t speak much, but when he did it was to say important things, words that needed to be listened to. The suffering could be heard in his voice, an undertone of hurt bubbling beneath the surface of the words, threatening to explode as his voice cracked and wavered. These two friends had nothing left in their lives, bar each other. This was until someone else made themselves known to them, someone who would provide closure, show them what had happened to their children, provide answers to their horrible questions. Reveal the fates of their lost loved ones.
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