D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

That was when he hugged me, for the first time I could ever remember. He was crying again, and I think I understood. That place had broken him, changed him, made him walk into a corner of despair and hopelessness that a thirteen-year-old shouldn’t have to. He had been, for the first time in his life, certain he was going to die. And now here he was, in the open air, standing on grass, safe in the knowledge that a dark cave wouldn’t be his tomb.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

He wasn’t one to say thank you very often, and I wasn’t one to make a big fuss about it, so I just stepped back, looked him in the eye, and nodded. We could see the smoke now, a dark cloud that might have been lost in the storm if we hadn’t been standing so close to it. It rose from small places here and there across the field, tiny holes that only smoke could find a way through. We walked most of the way back holding hands, not because he was weak or tired – just because he wanted to.

Dad only dated one girl that I can remember. Not remember exactly. I can picture her face. Scraggly red hair. Dark blue eyes. Always wore sandals. And though I have no evidence to back it up, she just seemed like the kind of woman who would smell like incense. I have nothing against incense, but I did have something against her. She was, after all, moving into an open space that had always been there, a vacant parking spot with the words MY MOM written in yellow paint. How could I like her?

Her name was Carla, or Carol, or who gives a shit?

I was fourteen at the time, an especially prickly age, and she hit just about every prickly button that I had. She always wanted to talk, always asked how things were going, and one time she even called me girlfriend . Can you imagine?

In hindsight, she probably wasn’t so bad. If I had given her a chance, maybe she would have been my girlfriend. But she would never have been my mom. I’m not sure if that’s what she wanted or not, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was Dad’s face whenever he saw the two of us talking. He would get this quiet little grin, and his eyes would get all misty. I knew, even at my most prickly, what he was seeing. The potential. What it could have been. She might just be a cardboard stand-in, but even that was more than he had ever seen face to face.

There we were. His girls.

It only made me hate her even more.

The whole thing lasted about a year before everything started to fade out, little by little. There were never any big blowouts, no screaming matches, not even an honest heart-to-heart between the two of us. Without me saying a word, he just knew, which made sense. He always was the one who knew me best. So, one day, she was just gone. Dad and I were both in the kitchen, making separate, unrelated lunches, when he told me. I nodded.

“Why?”

He sighed, the tone of his breath telling me how close he was to letting it out.

“Just… wasn’t working,” was all he said.

I’ve never stopped wondering about that moment, and to this day I feel horribly ashamed of myself. He had that chance at happiness, but I was too damned petty to see it. After that, he never, as far as I knew, even tried to find another mate. So, just like that, Carla/Carol slid quietly into the history books, more or less forgotten. Except for one thing. She raised koi.

Dad took me to see them one day while he was still with her. At the time, I didn’t even know what koi were, but I recognized them from the zoo. There were several huge pools in Carla/Carol’s backyard, like above-ground swimming pools with blue liners all hooked up with pumps and filters. The orange-and-white and black-spotted fish, which were as long as my forearm, swirled and danced beneath the surface.

“Aren’t they like goldfish?” I asked.

She laughed, and I found room in my heart to hate her just a bit more.

“Sort of. They’re a different breed of fish. These are a breed of carp.”

Dad was smiling at the two of us. “I always heard they can’t grow any bigger unless they get into bigger tanks. Like, if you put a goldfish in a swimming pool, it would get to be as big as a shark.”

She laughed, that silly, schoolyard giggle, as she slapped at his chest. “That’s not true either.”

They kept talking, Dad making silly jokes, her bubbling stupid little chortles at every opportunity, but I ignored them and stared into the blue water. I didn’t care if it was true or not, because in that moment, what Dad had said was all I could think about. Imagine it, growing along with the tank you were put into. Never getting a bit bigger than whatever cage held you. I thought of it the rest of that night, as I ate dinner, watched TV, and finally slid under my covers. At any moment, I could venture out. Down the hallway. Out the back door. Into the yard to stare up at the starlit sky.

And what about Andy?

How often did he get to see the sky? Did he ever see the stars anymore? How much could a person grow inside a concrete cell?

I went to sleep that night hating that stupid woman, hating koi, hating myself for being free.

“Wait.”

It was still pouring on us, but we had made it all the way to the edge of the woods that led back into the neighborhood. Both of us took turns checking over our shoulders, but now that we were nearly back into civilization, my heartbeat had started to return to normal. Andy, on the other hand, was as squirrely as ever, and he eyed the dark horizon behind us as I talked.

“We need to talk about our story,” I said.

“Story?”

“Yes,” I said, frustrated. “Dad’s lost his mind since you left.”

“I know,” he said, still looking over my shoulder, seeming to barely listen. “I figured he would be after all that time.”

“It wasn’t that long,” I said.

He finally turned and looked at me, that fresh panic rising in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Dad freaked out, but it was only a few hours so—”

“Hours?” he said, his whole body shivering. “No. It was… days. Maybe even a week.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

“It… it had to be…”

I shook his shoulder, trying to shake him out of it.

“It’s the truth,” I replied with finality.

“In… in that place… I couldn’t tell what was going on. It was constant. Just, pain. Confusion. And that voice.”

A chill ran up my spine, because I knew exactly what he was talking about. I ignored it, for now at least.

“We can talk about that later, tonight, once everything’s calmed down. Dad called the cops and everything. We have to get back.”

He turned away from me, staring behind us, his head darting left and right.

“It won’t follow us,” I said with confidence, even if I wasn’t sure of the fact. I believed he wouldn’t follow us out here, but there was no way to know for sure. The Toy Thief didn’t strike me as the kind of creature that would fight unless he had no other choice. The night in my bedroom had proved that. But it had passed beyond what was normal for such a monster. It was mad. What Andy had done had thrown it into a fury of utter insanity. So all bets were off now. I thought we’d be okay, until the sun fell at least, but I also wouldn’t have been overly surprised if it sprang around the corner and tore into both of us on the spot.

“We have to get home. Everything will be safe once we get home.” Another lie, but one I desperately wanted to believe.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes lost between me and the field behind us. “Home.”

In that single moment, what I had already known about Andy’s kidnapping came into stark focus. He was changed. Altered. Maybe even broken. I knew, even then, that something so awful would have changed anyone, made them as gun-shy as a wild dog. But this was something else entirely. One person went into that cave, and another came out. I glanced down at the handprints on his leg, and wondered to myself if he would ever be the same.