Short Fiction

We're in Florida, and Carole and I decide to fly off for a few days, leaving the kids behind. We're apprehensive about doing it but we really want to go to this other place without them. The flight over there is so turbulent. The weather on take-off is the worst we have ever seen, and I can feel the plane struggling against it, especially as we seem to be sort of suspended below the undercarriage, like a top-down rollercoaster. I remember thinking how they must handle conditions like this every day, and that you never hear of a crash, especially on a tourist plane like this.

Anyway, we return and go to the theme park where we left the kids. At first I am fairly relaxed about the whole thing, after all Jemma is 14 and legally okay to supervise them. It may be that we left them at the villa and let them do their own thing and they chose to go to this park. But Leaving them at a theme park for two days seems a little odd now, and I start to question if we did the right thing. We are searching the grounds, not really having much idea where they might be, and soon enough Scott comes up like he does, out of nowhere. He doesn't know where the other two are. As we progress through the park we start to get more worried. I really begin to regret the decision now, although Carole seems quite casual about it. We have to climb down this sort of trestle thing and below there's a game involving long bamboo sticks and hitting something with it, like baseball. Carole decides we'll have a go at this and I'm sceptical. We should carry on looking for Adam and Jemma. I've got a really bad feeling, but she insists on getting these sticks and going across to this rope-type bridge where you hit something from the other side.

Because of her confidence I am placated, but somehow, in the course of walking over to these things, she changes when I suggests they're probably ok. She starts to get agitated. 'Course they're not, we've been gone two days and there's no sign of them. Scott is just following along, and has no news to offer as to their whereabouts. Indeed, he hasn't seen them since he went off to do his own thing, at least a day ago now. We both start to feel that we've been really irresponsible, and took a horrendous, selfish risk but it seemed pretty ok at the time.

I wake up, worried and fretful, with an bad nagging at the stomach. I go back to sleep briefly, and revisit the dream, or its aftermath. We see American bulletins on tv about abducted kids, what they do to them. A portion of video is shown and the presenter describes it as 'proselytising'. A young girl, already deeply out of it has a hose attached to her mouth by a young boy and some sort of gas is being administered. It is clear they are going to violate her sexually.

My anxiety increases, even though I am only in shallow, almost thought-like dreams by now, and I forcibly wake myself, not wanting to pursue it further. I get up, disturbed. We would never do that in real life, even though they are 17 and 14 and 13 now.