Short Story
Fox
He began searching the week he turned eighteen. Without any fanfare. Just finally giving in to an unforgiving hunger that had been gnawing at him for well over a decade. A borrowed laptop, some internet searches, a trip back to his hometown with scrounged train fare. A visit to the local council, and a hunt through some archives. Forms. Online, and paper ones, too. After a while, he felt as if he carried that whiff of dusty paper with him everywhere he went. Absence, it turns out, can come in many fonts. His mother: deceased. The obituary was bland and vague, giving only the barest bones of her, and no hint as to how she might have died. He had been so sure they would find each other again. This was like being slammed with a wall of ice buckets. Shock. Numbness. Then... Was that sadness? Grief? Listlessness? The elastic band that had powered him this far snapped and pinged off into a gloomy corner of his psyche. He kept digging, hoping to find it had been a mistake, and he might still find her after all. Fearing to discover the truth, but poking anyway, like a gaping hole in the gum that should be left well alone. Just a note tucked beside a risk assessment dated two months before her death. Suicide risk. The brother he’d never met was a needle in a whole haystack of needles. He didn't know the child's birth name. Wasn't even certain it had been a boy. There were throwaway snatches of conversation buried deep in his memory... "Daniel," his mother had said. "I like Daniel." His father had pulled a face. "The kid next door is a Dan, and he's a little shit." "Not Dan," his mother pouted a little, "Daniel. Or Danny. Daniel is nice. Like in the Bible. The lions." Another snort of disgust. "Ugh. Definitely no Bible thumping names." "Alright, Joe," his mother pushed at his arm, half playful, half exasperated with how silly the man was being. "I'll stick with a regular name like Tyler, or Brandon... or David." His father took a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. David is okay," he mused. His mother rolled her eyes, but she was smiling... Even if the baby had been a boy, and even if she had named hem Daniel or David, that didn't narrow it down much. Who knew if the new family had let him keep his birth name? A stranger sent to be raised by strangers. Isaiah sighed, deep and heavy, as if he were much older, and something inside his chest was squeezing. His father turned to be surprisingly evasive. No address. No trace. Isaiah wrote letters. One was returned unopened. Another disappeared into an office that no longer existed. He left voicemails. His calls were never returned. It felt like he was in a beaurocratic labyrinth. He kept going. The social worker burned bright and hateful in his memory The stale smell of her, her sweaty fist swamping his hand, her judgemental sniff. That ugly black hair and smug wet lips. What had her name been? He'd never known on bothered to remember, but the records showed a Denise Batley had been the worker assigned to him. All his searches for a woman of that name came up fruitless. The nurse’s name had been stamped across the first report. Mrs Hazel. He remembered the smell of handcream and antiseptic that lingered wherever she'd been. He sniffed her out now as easily as if she still had that stink cloud hanging round her. It did no good. He found out her cause of death just as quickly. Cancer. Breast. Years ago. She’d ruined everything. His family. His childhood. His life.. And now she was gone. Beyond whatever justice he'd have been able to yell or spit at her. Her daughter was just as easy to find. It wasn’t just envy. It was something slower. A need for weight where there had been none. A need for someone to feel what he had felt. A need, maybe, to be part of a family, after all. To belong. +++ Thank you for reading!
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