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Soothing

A story of loss

By Jaime FreedmanPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Soothing
Photo by Igor Karimov on Unsplash

If he wandered away I may have been worried. But he didn’t wander in fact, I watched him walk away and head downstairs to the basement to play video games. A thing I had watched him do at least a few hundred times over the last year. The basement was secure. There was an old rickety door that was virtually impossible to open- I personally had not opened it in three or four years and the windows didn’t open much past 8 to 10 inches, there was no physical way for someone to crawl through them. An hour or two later when I was starting to feel hungry and I figured he needed lunch, I yelled down to him to come up and eat with me. I could hear the monotonous background news of the video game and I assumed he was still playing. That song is like background music in my head, the repeated tone going back and forth and then gaining a crescendo and then back down again. I hum it sometimes in the shower without even noticing that I am doing it.

I yelled down again, assuming he would scream at me “I am coming.” That wasn’t the case, just the background music again playing. I yelled again louder “Hurry up the lunch is getting cold.” And again nothing. Finally, annoyed I went downstairs. Everything was in its usual spot. His controller was sitting neatly on the couch and the game was playing. But he wasn’t there. I looked around again and yelled his name. There wasn’t even a breeze down there. There was nothing, but the damn music of the video game repeating over and over again. I looked around. Telling him to stop hiding. Although, in my head I knew there weren’t really any hiding places. I moved some cushions half-heartedly and looked behind a book case. I went to the backdoor. It was secure like always. I tried pushing it and I still couldn’t move it. Nothing looked out of place. There were even a few used tissues under the couch. But my son was nowhere to be found. I checked the windows knowing that there was no physical way possible he could get out through them. But they were covered in dust and old dead bugs and it looked like they hadn’t been touched in months.

I started to panic. How could a ten year old kid just disappear? The logical explanation was the door. But I knew that door was impossible to open. I ran upstairs, outside, and looked around the back door. The weeds were still intact and there were no footprints in the dirt. No disturbance of the brick. In fact there was still an old broom leaning right up against the door and it hadn’t been moved at all. I started to scream his name over and over. I went outside and looked up and down the street. The neighbors were nowhere around and again there wasn’t even a breeze. I walked around the house, looking for any sign that he had left. His bike was in the same spot, his skateboard was against the house where it always was, and again there were no footprints, no sign of a disturbance. He had literally disappeared. He was gone.

I went back down to the basement again yelling his name. I was screaming now, and my face was starting to turn red and I was having trouble breathing. There was no answer and I couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t hiding. That wasn’t a thing he did. I started back upstairs. Maybe he had snuck past me and I hadn’t noticed maybe he was in the house and had not heard me screaming his name. I went all over the house. It is not a big house, only 1100 square feet and two bedrooms. I looked under the beds, in the shower, behind the doors, in the laundry basket. I knew what his breathing sounded like. I could follow that noise anywhere, sometimes he whistled a little out of the right nostril when he had allergies and was stuffy. He couldn’t hide his breathing from me. I looked under the covers, on the toilet, behind the coats. He wasn’t there. He was gone.

***

On the tenth anniversary of my son’s disappearance I followed my therapists suggestion and took up a hobby. I rented a guitar and started plucking. After a few months I could play the video game music perfectly. The monotonous tone followed by the short crescendo and then back to the monotony soothed me.

Short Story
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About the Creator

Jaime Freedman

I am a mom of four that spends my time dong laundry, taking care of small humans and in the five to ten minutes I have outside of that-trying to write. I love Selena and books and anything Whitney.

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