Runaway: Chapter 3 (Patreon)

The first two shelters I contacted hung up on me when I tried telling the person on the other line my story.  That’s how I figured out that the magic that made people’s eyes glaze over and ears go deaf didn’t work via phone.  

The magic made people see me as a child, or at least childlike.  I figured that out pretty quick too.  Only so many times a stranger can call you “dear,” or “honey,” or “sweetie,” and it not mean something.  It worked to my advantage in small doses, though.

The Real couldn’t have changed that much since I’d been gone.  There was no way that someone would consciously lend their phone to a strange woman.  And every time some rando in a baggy coat came up to me asking for a dollar, I was suddenly short on cash. 

But all I had to do was approach my marks, tell them something to the effect of “I was kidnapped by Faeries and just escaped,” and I’d watch their eyes glaze over and their jaws go slack.  Then it was just a matter of me going “Hey Mister, can I have a dollar?” or “Excuse me, Ma’am, can I use your phone?”

As long as I didn’t mind being called “cutie” or holding a stranger’s hand while I googled to find a shelter, I found plenty of helpful people willing to part with their spare change.  

I learned to keep my crazy shut over the phone, and tell people the truth without telling them the facts.  I said I’d been abused.  I’d said I didn’t have any  family I could go to.  Family was part of the problem.  I said I’d gotten away and I needed a place to be safe while I got my life together. 

It got me through the front door of a couple of places, but things got complicated.  It was all come on in, make yourself at home.  After a few hours though, I’d eavesdrop on phone calls or hear whispered conversations.  They were always talking about me, or asking what to do about me.  

Which was weird, right?  These people had drug addicts, rape victims, women with scars running up their wrists, and pregnant mothers with black eyes living under their roof.  Me? I kept running to the toilet every five flipping minutes.  

How was I the problem? 

I slipped out the back when I saw red and blue flashing lights that first night.  I slept in a gas station bathroom.  

Second place, it was the same routine.  Tied my hair back and kept my head down, told them I wasn’t ready to talk about it.  Got an “okay dear” for my trouble.  That should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t.  Didn’t even make it ‘til lunch that time around.

Both cops were lady cops.  Nice, non-threatening, smiling lady cops.  A third woman was with them.  She was a social worker, she told me.  She was from child protective services. “Alice,” she said, “This place isn’t good for you.  Come with me and we’ll set you up with a nice family who-”

I didn’t even let her finish her sentence.  I flipped the fuck out.  I hadn’t told anyone my name was Alice since I’d escaped There.  How did she know?  Or was she not a she and a She instead?  Even written out like that, it sounds crazy.

Fuck.

I got out only because I had the element of surprise on my side.  In hindsight, I think it’s because they weren’t really seeing me.  They’d readied themselves for a kid.  I don’t know how old they thought I was, but you don’t put an adult in foster care.  I was still stronger, faster, and meaner than a three year old, even if my bladder wasn’t.

It wasn’t until the third time, when I caught people staring at my ears and whispering, that something clicked.  I let my hair down so that the tops of my ears were covered and still...the whispering and staring didn’t stop right away, but it changed.  It went from “what’s a kid doing here?” to “the hell was I thinking?”  I’ve made it a point to wear my hair down ever since.

I won’t name it here, just in case, but that third shelter was a godsend. It very likely saved my life. I would have probably killed myself or gotten caught, if not for Shelter.  If by any chance you’re reading this and parts seem familiar to you, then the crazy girl who always talked in metaphors without giving specifics during group thanks you.  Gods bless you. 

I suppose I could have used my curse as a kind of superpower.  With a magically enforced begging success rate of 100%, I could at the very least live out of a hotel and have three squares a day.  I still can, hypothetically. It’d be even easier now that my insides are back under my control.

Something about taking advantage of people like that just rubs me the wrong way.  Makes me feel like I’m acting like Them.  They, and perhaps even some of the more reductive people reading this, might argue that I avoided becoming a super cute con artist because I wanted to be a good little girl.  That I didn’t want independence.  That I needed someone to take care of me.

You wouldn’t be wrong on that last part.  Just not for the reasons you’re imagining.  The few days I was in the hospital, I felt safe.  Iron bars on all the windows, and it was easy enough to hide the shitty bread roll and milk carton that came with dinners under my bed, just in case.

Out in the Real, and still reeling from that first phone call, I needed a place where I could sleep and not get taken again.  I could have gotten myself arrested, I guess, but jails and prisons are filled with the kind of people who cause abuse, not heal it.

I needed people who could understand me on a conceptual and emotional level. I needed a place where I could cry. 

The Fay hate crying, I think.  I don’t remember ever being told this specifically, but there’s something about it that makes it ring true to me as I write this. 

I don’t mean that they can’t handle tears or loud noises or mewling or whining.  That’s not crying.  Not really.

Waaaaah, I’m hungry!

AAAAAH, I’m uncomfortable!

Boo-hoo, my favorite toy broke.

Waaa-aaa-aaaah, I’m scared of the thing in the dark.

Same thing for good stuff: It’s all surface level.

Giggles from tickles or a funny joke?  Sure.

A happy belch from a fully belly?  Absolutely.

Orgasms?  Yes.  Just yes.  They totally get that.  They really, really do.

These are all things that the People can understand.  They get pain and hunger and discomfort and fear for your life.  They get that selfish part.  That lizard part that just wants a warm bottle and a comfortable diaper.  

But real stuff?  Deep emotions?  The fear that comes with an existential crisis?  Worrying if your life has any meaning?  Being sick with grief because you’ll never hear your mother’s voice again?  Regret because of how much time you wasted worrying about what everyone else thought?  That deep, beautiful sadness that comes with a breakup?  

That quiet happiness at looking across the bedroom and realizing that you love the person whose bed you share?  Not just attraction, but love and knowing that just being around them makes everything better even if it’s nothing?  That wonderful feeling of giddiness and disbelief when you realize that they still look at you the same way in Year 10 as they did on Day 1?

I don’t think the Fay get it.  I think that kind of stuff is as alien to Them as They are to us.  If I ever felt any of that deeper, subtler happiness like that while I was with Mommy Dearest, I don’t remember it right now.  If ever I did, I don’t think I would’ve been able to leave the Land Beyond the Real. Maybe it was feeling that deeper, more intense sadness that let me escape.  I still don’t know.

Thinking on it, that might be why we were treated like babies There.  Infancy and toddlerhood are the only forms of humanity that They’re capable of grasping... 

The sun had still been shining, was still in its original position when I was changed and toted out into the kitchen.  Over four thousand swats and the sun hadn’t moved an inch from the window sill.  

Think about that.  

Because I didn’t.  

I was topless in a diaper and being carried around on the hip of the Green Lady.  I wasn’t in any position to notice that until much later.  

Time doesn’t make sense in the Land Beyond the Real.

It’s just one of those things that needs to be said.

The geography of that house never made much in the way of sense, either.  If I had to, I could give you a rough map of the place.  I could draw for you where everything was in relation to everything else, but you’d be on your own when it came to scale. 

The spaces in between spaces never made sense.   Have you ever had that dream where you’re in school and going to class, but the hallway was infinitely long?  Or you walk out the front door and straight into to the loading dock of a submarine?  It was kind of like that.  Dream logic.  Dream space.  

Sometimes the hall out of my nursery would stretch on for miles.  The walls would take on the dusty grays and glowing fungus of an old cave.  It would twist and turn, and hollow trees and rocks with little nooks in them would appear and me and Peter would literally be able to play hide and seek for hours, in just the hallway.  Other times, like this first time, the door leaked immediately to the kitchen.  Only the Green Lady, Mommy Dearest, knew the way of things.

The kitchen was 1950s chic. Black and white tiled floors, like a chessboard.  A rectangular white refrigerator with rounded corners that never ran out of cold food.  A black colored stove that belched out warm meals, even though Mommy Dearest never put anything in them.  

The sun was shining there, too.  I could see it through the window and everything.  In the Real, this would have been impossible.  My window and the kitchen window were facing opposite directions. Here, this was one of the least troubling things.

Peter was there on the floor.  He looked worn and tired; a poor sap at the DMV that has too much paperwork to go through just to get their photo retaken.  Mommy Dearest had told him to wait outside, but that had been four thousand swats ago. He laid on his side, whispering to his shadow that was acting less like a shadow and more like a reflection.

When we came in, he sat up, and snapped to attention, scrambling up to all fours.  “Hi, Mommy!” he said.  He was about my age, but he seemed less of a man right then.  More like a puppy.  A cute little puppy that had been kicked too many times.  “Welcome back!”

“Back?”  Mommy Dearest laughed her fake butterfly laugh.  “Why Peter, I haven’t even been out of the house.”

Peter looked like he was afraid. “Yeth, Mommy!  I’m just feelin’ thilly I guess.”  He shifted his weight so that he sat down, splay legged on the floor.  He made a show of sucking his thumb and looking up at us- up at Her- with big doe eyes.  All of it was for show.

A high-chair big enough to fit me in clip-clopped over, neighing as I was lowered into the seat.  Its straps fastened themselves around me, its tray closing down from above my head like a roller coaster. 

As soon as I was secured I was forgotten, as the Green Lady turned away and bent down to the other “baby” in the room.  “You’re a very silly boy.”  Mommy Dearest said. “Very silly.” She bent over and squeezed the bulge between Peter’s legs. “And very wet.”  

Peter didn’t even flinch or blush.  If anything he looked more relaxed just then.  This was routine. Ritual.  Scripted.  Normal for him.  “Yeth, Mommy.”

“Did you think that just because you had a baby sister that you’d grow up, too?”

Lips retreated and followed the thumb past his teeth. A nervous tic.  An unexpected question, maybe.  “No, Mommy Dearetht.”

Her voice went back up to that sickeningly sweet, nearly Glinda octave.  “That’s right.  Such a good baby boy.”

“Thank you, Mommy,”  Peter sighed.  

The Green Lady whipped her head back to the door we’d come in from.  The nursery with the crib couldn’t be seen.  Just darkness and a hint of narrow hallway.  “How long was Mommy in there?”

“I don’t know.  I’m just a baby.”  Peter looked up at me from his spot on the floor.  His eyes no longer signaled regret, but concern.  

Pay attention! his eyes said.  This is important!

The Green Lady smiled at that.  Good answer.  Her rocky jade dress swayed with her hips.  Her hair stayed unnaturally in place.  Her yellow eyes peered down at the man on the floor and a smile came to Her ivy lips.  “Since you were such a good boy, and so patient,” Mommy Dearest said, “you get biddie for breakfast today.”   

Peter went quiet and looked back to Her.  The junkie had just gotten offered a free fix. His body tensed up as She bent down to pick him up.  Just as before, the top of her dress parted, her nipples not popping out as much as blooming.  

Peter was done talking.  Done teaching.  No more “Yeth Mommy” or “No Mommy”.  Just a quiet groan of anticipation as he latched on, cradled awkwardly in Her arms.  

It might have been fear.  It might have been fascination.  Not sure what kind of trainwreck it was, but I couldn’t look away as Peter was picked up and breast fed in Her arms, moaning and writhing as he sucked in more and more of Her milk.

I didn’t laugh as he gripped onto Her breast and groped Her while She hummed. I didn’t laugh while he awkwardly tried to hump the arm holding him up between his legs, making Her giggle.  I didn’t laugh as he stopped thrusting his hips and moaned as he came in his wet pants.  It was too sad to laugh at.

Yikes! Is that what I’d looked like?  

Probably...probably.

I saw Her, too.  Looking down at him and smiling.  Looking back up at me and winking.  She kept making gentle shushing noises while She petted his hair.  It didn’t quiet him at all.  Cookie Monster eats more quietly than Peter while breastfeeding.

After his moaning and wriggling and writhing and humping had all stopped, She turned him vertically and slung him over Her shoulder.  Green hands patted his back.  Pounded him.  Beat him.  Massaged him.  

Burped him.

“Come on.  Give Mommy something.”

A loud belch came out from Peter’s mouth.

She started pacing the kitchen a bit, bouncing him up and down.  I caught his eyes again.  I’d seen winos more sober.  “Come on.  You’re not done yet.  Give Mommy some more.”  Another belch.  I saw Peter’s mouth that time.  No teeth.

She paced.  “Just little bit more.”  I heard Peter sigh, saw his shoulders move and heave as he exhaled. I also saw the seat of his feetie pajamas balloon out as he shat himself.  “Good baby.”  She whispered something else to him and gave him a few more pats on his back.  Finally she patted the new lump in the back of his pants and then laid him on the floor. 

He kept moaning and wriggling on the floor in a post coital haze. His eyes drooped closed and his thumb went into his gumless mouth; his mess cooling beneath him. It was one of the few times I can remember when both he and his shadow were in sync.

I miss Peter...

Yellow cat eyes turned to me in the horsey high chair.  “Now for you, my dear Alice.”  

This is going to sound stupid, but I didn’t want to breastfeed from Her.  It wasn’t out of any false sense of pride or so-called maturity.  I’d done it already and it had been one of the most intense and pleasurable experiences in my life.  I’d already peed myself, had my diaper changed, and been spanked past the point of breaking.  I had no doubt in my mind that before the day was over I’d poop my pants and need to be changed again. 

No.

Taking in that milk, feeding from Her, was more potent than any drug I could ever imagine taking.  I was already addicted.  I wanted it.  I wanted it bad.  But something was missing.  I didn’t want to go back to that toothless brainless state unless I felt safe.

Peter was out of it.

I did not feel safe.   

Mommy Dearest didn’t want to breastfeed me, though.  The oven opened up and belched up a bowl of steaming light brown mush.  The little plastic bowl landed perfectly on the tray, causing my high chair to whinnie a bit.  “Since this is your first solid meal,” a plastic spoon glided from a drawer and into Her hand, “I thought we’d start off with something gentle for your tum-tum.  Something bland.”

A rough, blanket-like fabric, the kind that goes onto a horse before you put a saddle on it, snaked around my neck, covering my boobs like a bib.  Mommy Dearest felt the fabric between her long fingers.  “That’s a boy’s high chair.  We’ll get you a proper one later.  This will do for today, though.”  How strange it was that someone with this much crazy about Her still talked about shopping.    

I still don’t understand how that works.

The mush beneath me was the color of brown sugar and smelled of burning logs.  It burbled just as the spoon went in.  “Be good girl, Alice, and open wide.”  There wasn’t any point.  I was in no position to resist.  

I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and let her slide the warm mush in.

Thanksgiving. 

It was Thanksgiving in a spoon.  Not just turkey and stuffing and gravy, but the feeling of it, too.  It was Thanksgiving in a spoon.  Not the real, complicated feelings: the anxiety of explaining your work to relatives too old to understand, or the awkward feeling of powerlessness as Grandpa says something racist but decades of politeness training has taught you to let slide.  None of that.

I opened my mouth for a second taste.  Definitely none of that.  

The warm mush tasted more of how Thanksgiving should be; how all the ad companies wanted you to think about Thanksgiving.  It was propaganda and nostalgia mixed together.

It was the taste of family who adored you just for existing.  Mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.  It was the warm sensation of holding hands and saying a blessing. Yams and green beans.  The ritual and pageantry of carving the turkey or breaking a wishbone. Pumpkin pie with extra, extra, extra whipped cream.  The lazy bliss of feeling safe enough to fall asleep on the couch while a football game played while everyone else around you talked.  

Another spoonful.  And another.  And another.

Every spoonful revealed more detailed textures and feeling.  It was the feeling of being little and cared for, and having your own special seat, or your own special table, away from the boring talk. Gourmet macaroni and cheese.  It was having meat and vegetables cut up just for you and not having to be asked any questions because your needs were anticipated.   Warm chocolate chip cookies.  People talking about you, right in front of you, but it not being offensive.

I had been emptied of so much of my adult life moments before.  Now I was being filled up with something else.  I was eating memories.  They were my memories, but flavored with something else.  My mother’s eyes were unusually yellow.  My father’s hair, oddly green.  Grandma’s laughter, not so grizzled from a pack-a-day habit she’d kicked before I’d been born, but instead filled with butterflies.

“I’m full…” I said.  I opened my eyes, staring back into the Green Lady, the Fay who had decided to adopt me.

“Are you sure?” She asked.  I looked down at the bowl.  I’d lost count of how many spoonfuls I had, but the burbling mess seemed no closer to emptying.  

I nodded.  “Yes…” I stopped.  There was a look of expectation.  “...Mommy Dearest.” I finally said.  

“Very well,” she said.  A jar floated to her hand from the pantry.  It was no bigger than (you guessed it) a baby food jar, but somehow she emptied the entire bowl into it.  “I’ll bring along the leftovers for lunch.”  She gave the stuff a sniff and wrinkled Her nose at it. 

I’ve been to baby showers before and played those stupid food tasting games to humor my pregnant gal pals.  I’ve tasted real baby food.  My nose still does the same scrunching whenever I catch a whiff of pureed chicken.  The stuff is slop. 

How odd then that my so-called Mommy turned her nose up at something so rich and wonderful.  The saddle pad bib lifted itself up and wiped my mouth for me.  Bits of Thanksgiving had made their way onto my shin and dribbled out the corner of my lips without me noticing.  

“Let’s go shopping,” She said.  

“For what?”

The Green Lady laughed at that.  “For clothes, my silly darling.  I can’t have you crawling around naked, can I?”

I felt a slight tinge of shame for the first time.  “No, Mommy Dearest,” I said, looking down at my breasts.  “I guess not.”

“A second highchair, too.“  She playfully jiggled her breasts.  “Mommy can’t give her babies biddie all the time, can She?”

“No, Mommy Dearest.”

“Then let’s go shopping.” 

The saddle pad bib unwound itself and placed itself on the back of the highchair.  The tray flipped itself back, too.  I looked down at the floor.  Peter and his shadow were still sleeping in a dirty diaper on the kitchen floor.  “What about Peter?” I asked.

With a wave of Her hand, the front door of the kitchen opened and in wheeled in a stroller, big enough to fit a grown person.  “I’d never forget about Peter.”  Car engines revved as the bright red pushchair sped around the kitchen and repositioned itself facing the door leading out of the kitchen.  “Though I suppose I’ll have to invest in a two-seater.”

She leaned down and picked the sleeping man-baby up from the floor. His shadow stayed as Mommy Dearest buckled him into the stroller. 

“Aren’t you going to change him?”  I asked.  I couldn’t help it.  Something about it just didn’t sit right with me.  Adult or baby, knowingly letting another person stew in their own feces seemed wrong to me.

Yellow eyes were trained on me.  They blinked blood red.  Then back to yellow.  “Excuse me? Are you telling me how to do my job, little one?  Do you think I don’t know how to care for my babies?”

I panicked inside.  Rally.  Submit.  Redirect.  “Uhh...no Mommy Dearest, not at all!”

“THEN WHAT?!”  

The space between the stroller and the highchair must have shrunk, because she was in my face faster than my eyes could track.  She was an angry God.  She was Satan.  She was the monster under my bed come out to eat me.

Don’t cry.  Don’t cry.  Don’t cry.  

Lightbulb!

“Peter’s a stinky boy!” I said.  “He smells baaaaaad!”  I pointed to the stroller with one hand and pinched my nose with the other.  “Stiiiiiinkeeee!”

Mommy Dearest looked back at the stroller.  When she looked at me again, She was all smiles and coos.  “Awwwww!” she said, stroking my face.  “Is Peter’s stinky diapee hurting my little baby girl’s sensitive nose?”

I nodded.  “Uh-huh…”

The sounds of grinding metal and whirring machines rang out as the pushchair leaned back like a recliner.  The sounds reminded me of a pit crew going in for a tire change.  “Then Mommy will change him.  For you.”

Daintily, She bent over and pulled out a diaper bag from a compartment just under the seat and went to work on a sleeping Peter. Even with his feet being worked out of jammie sleeves and his ass being wiped, the milk was so absorbed in his system that he was dead to the world.  

I looked down at the diaper I was wearing.  A bizarre thought entered that bothered me more than it should have:  What if the diaper I’d woken up in wasn’t the same one I’d passed out in?   It seemed like a violation.  Fuck, this whole thing was a violation.  I’d been abducted, not adopted.  But it was more of a violation if I was unconscious. I was probably passed out when I’d been bundled up.

But clearly, these casual violations of his person were old hat to Peter by now.  I couldn’t see his face, but  I stole a glance at his crotch, and no, not for the reason you’re thinking. No hair on his legs.  No hair between, either.  Just like me.  

I reached up to my head and touched my ears. Pointy. Spock ears.  Elf ears.  Real, too.  Not some cheap rubber knock off you’d find in the Halloween store. Just like his. They felt my fingers brushing the points.  They were mine now.  More than just my underwear had been changed.

His diaper changed and thrown away in a bottomless silver trash can, Peter’s stroller inclined back up and slowly drove itself out the door, leaving Peter’s shadow snoozing on the floor.  Mommy Dearest came over to the and put me on her hip.  “Where are we going?” I asked.

“I already told you, silly girl,”  She said.  “Shopping…”

The world outside that sunny little kitchen was dark and starless...

Confession time: after leaving the hospital, I didn’t start out at shelters.  I got out of the psych ward and into a shelter.  It took me a couple of tries to figure out what to say, to get past whatever roadblocks the Fay had put on me and to find the first loopholes, but I did it.  But I didn’t go straight to looking for shelters.  

I came into this world with people in my life, and now that I was back in it, I searched for them first.  My Mom and Dad.  My real family.   It wasn’t hard.  I couldn’t tell you exactly how old I was or what I did for a living before I was taken, but I could remember my parents’ cell phone numbers by heart.  Some things just never leave you, like who you call when you’re in trouble and need a bailout.  

I was all but incontinent, in a city I didn’t know, and my clothes were out of a hospital’s lost and found bin.  I needed help.  Before I left, I was allowed to use the phone.  I called Mom. My real Mom.  

The call went to voicemail. That was okay.  That was fine.  Strange number from a strange area code.  I could still leave a message...

”You have reached the voicemail of...” a man’s name and a man’s voice chimed in, hollow and formal. Mom must’ve got a new number.  That’s all.

I hung up.  “Can I try another?”  

The receptionist chuckled as if I’d just asked a stupidly adorable question.  “This isn’t jail, sweetie.  Take as long as you need.”

I called Dad next.  It rang. And rang. And rang.  Dad was always shit at setting up his voicemail.  The ringing stopped, and the telltale pause of somebody taking a deep breath.   “Hello?” he said.  I quivered immediately.  Instant relief.  It was Dad.

“Dad?”  I said.  

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me, your daughter,”  I gave him my real name, my True Name.

There was a long pause.  “Miss...I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong number.”  A slight panic built up inside me.  I looked down at my new coat and panicked. I had to remind myself that it was already grey; that it hadn’t changed colors.  

Wrong number?  Had both of my parents switched phones?

I gave his real name. “Am I speaking to him?”

“Yes…”

I gave the address where I grew up.  “Do you still live there?” 

“Yes I do, but-”

I gave Mom’s name.  “That’s your wife correct?”

“She was, yes.”

I was about to trample over his next sentence, try to jog his memory, try to spark some kind of memory.  But referring to his marriage in the past tense startled me, shook me out of whatever panicked spiel I was launching myself into.  “Excuse me?  Did you just say ‘was’?”

“I did.”

Had they divorced?  

“You and Mom got divorced?”

“Please stop this,” my dad said. “I don’t have a daughter.”

I ignored him. I could hear the hurt in his voice, but I couldn’t let myself think.   “Where is she?”  I asked.  “Where’s Mom?” After everything I’d been through I needed my mother- my real one, and not Her.

“My wife,” he said. “My wife is dead.  And I don’t know anything about your mother, miss.”

Mom died?  She died? 

She died.  She died and I was gone.  

She hadn’t been sick when I left, had she?  I couldn’t remember.  

Was it sudden? Drawn out?  Was she in pain? Was it quick?  Was it a memory that had been taken from me along with the little bits of body hair?  How long had I been gone?

I had never gotten the chance to say goodbye.  I racked my swiss cheese memory from before and during.  Had we been fighting?  Had we talked recently?  Had we drifted apart? 

Fuck, did I even consciously think of either of them while There?

I didn’t know.  I still don’t know, and I’m afraid of the answers that typing this all out is gonna bring.  

But right then, I had to know.  The truth, the Real, was itching at the back of my skull and wanted out.   “How” I asked.  “How did she-?”  

I couldn’t finish it; couldn’t say it out loud.  There’s no greeting card, no pamphlet, no Mystic Arcanum for “My Mom died an indeterminate amount of time ago and I need to ask my father about the specifics of the event to quell my unexpected grief using morbid curiosity”.  

If there were, Hallmark would be bigger than Disney.

“I don’t know who this is or who you think you’re talking to, but this isn’t funny anymore. Goodbye.”  He hung up the phone.  

That was Dad.  That last goodbye nailed it home.  He couldn’t even hang up the phone on a telemarketer without saying goodbye first.

That meant that Mom was really dead.  Dad didn’t remember me, either.   I hadn’t just been stolen.  I’d been edited out, erased from history. I put the hospital’s phone down on the receiver. “Anything else I can help with, honey?” the receptionist asked me. 

No.  There wasn’t.  There really wasn’t.  So I hung up, made myself numb inside, and walked out into a world that was a little bit worse than when I’d been taken from it.