The Story of Dot

Dot was champion nose-picking for three consecutive years, and she was proud of it. The four trophies, two times gold, one silver, and one honorable mention, shiny lay in plush in her bedroom cupboard, never to be touched because that would mean bad luck according to her friend, the green city parrot, a stuffed animal of gigantic proportion.

They both would lie on her Princess sofa, Dad bought her for her third birthday, eating popcorn and drinking Coke Zero out of glass tea cups, giggling and talking like friends used to, no care in the world.

There was a word for this innocent, dreamlike state of being, where they were tucked away and hiding from the big, bad world outside the room of her parent’s four bed condo in the state of Kentucky. It sounded like padam, padam, padumdam, but she never seemed to remember the exact phrasing.

Did it matter?

That morning, it was the day of Pentecost in most Western countries, she and the parrot, whom we shall name Xylo-phone for unmentionable purposes, enjoyed their breakfast, crumpets and all, under the open bay window looking out over one of the US lakes, the in-between curtains moving gently by the winds, with particles of dust going upwards under the guidance of the already brightly shining sun.

It was still early. The possibilities seemed endless.

Somewhere in the desert of the land of Mesopotamia, the movement of a big rock gave people a scare, a real fright.

The two worlds were connected in time, although few could fathom their significance.

When Dad knocked on his daughter’s door at 6:44 in the morning, she was gone, the gigantic stuffed animal alone on the bed, a reminder of the better days he would always remember and cherish.

The police swept the room, the premises, and the land, but there was no trace of her; she had vanished into thin air.

Dad and the family searched for decades, with the cardboard flyers wrapped in plastic stapled at electricity poles in dormant towns around the city as a silent reminder. Sometimes, years later, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, somebody would visit a pub and ask, " What’s the story of that missing kid whose face is on that pole outside?”

And they would tell the tale.