2038
"Don't stray too far," Jessica distantly heard her mother call as she ran towards the play set. Of course she wasn't going to go too far. She was merely heading for the rock wall.
She seemed to instantly reach her destination, eagerly grabbing onto the rocks and climbing a few feet into the air. Then the fun began. She'd seen some of the older children climbing and sitting on top of the ten foot high wall. She wanted to do that too. It looked like fun. The only problem was there were no rocks near the top of the wall both large enough to cling to and close enough together for her short stature to reach the top.
Her the tread of her shoe stuck to a tiny yellow rock while her now sweaty fingers clung to a medium sized red rock. At least the red rock was concave towards the wall, just large enough for her to wedge her small fingers into the gap and hold there securely.
Jessica tried to look down towards her feet to see where she needed to proceed to next, but it was difficult given her precarious position. There was a blue rock and as she tried to lift her right foot up to step on it, bending her knee at an unusual angle in the process, it was just too high up and too small for her foot to stand firmly upon it.
Unfortunately, at that very same moment Jessica's food encountered the blue rock, she pushed off of her left foot, trying to gain the upward movement necessary to grab ahold of the top of the wall. Had her left hand reached its mark or had her right foot not immediately slipped, she would have very easily reached her goal. Neither happened. As securely wedged into the red rock as her right hand was, the force of gravity was too much to resist. Jessica's grip faltered.
Then she was on the ground and standing, running, while the wind whipped her hair to the side obscuring her vision. Black pickup trucks were encircling her. She knew to be wary of them. Her mother warned her time and time again to stay close so that she could protect her. Stealers. Coming to get her. A child. Alone. If only she'd stayed closer to her mother.
She whimpered as tears started to fall—caused both by the harsh wind and the stress—blurring her vision even more. Her mother told her to always be wary of Stealers. They took children. Kidnapped them. She did not want to be kidnapped. She wanted her mother.
Men, all at least seven feet tall and very muscular, emerged from the cars. Had she not been so afraid of her imminent kidnapping, she would have found the sight of such large men emerging from the small space amusing. She only felt terror. Their faces were dark, covered by shadow, and their expressions were ominous. Their faces were grim and unemotional. They moved towards her, surrounding her, encircling her.
She looked around but her mother was no where to be found. The rock wall was gone, a distant memory from a hazy past. She could not see her mother, but she heard her voice calling desperately to her. "Jessica!" she heard her mother should from somewhere to her left.
Mustering all her courage and glad the wind blowing her hair into her face easily disguised her facial expressions, she rapidly moved right as if to escape. The men, all ten of them, lunged after her. She was surrounded. They were moving rapidly—gaining on her. She would not let them win.
With only the abruptness that a child could muster, Jessica tensed, halted, and no sooner had she stopped then her body was lunging in the opposite direction and towards her mothers voice. The Stealers were not as nimble and fast in their movements as she, so they continued their course away from her for a fraction of a second, before turning to chase her.
She saw her mother in the distance with her four siblings beside her. Her mother would protect her. Her mother would make sure the Stealers did not take her away. She ran faster than she had ever run before. Each of her muscles clenched in agony at her shortness of breath but she could not slow down or they would get her.
Her mother was in the distance but no matter how fast she ran she never drew any closer. She felt her legs running, moving her as rapidly as they could, but the scenery around her slowed. She was proceeding nowhere and her family drew further away. She heard the shouts and footsteps of the Stealers rapidly gaining on her.
Then they were right behind her; then one was on either side of her, looming ominously. Their forms were tall and their paces fast. She was surrounded on all sides but one. She had no choice but to continue forwards. Feigning a direction change would not work for her this time.
Her legs burned. Her throat burned. Her chest heaved. Her eyes blurred. A hand—large and powerful—descended towards her. She tried to duck but her body did not obey her, instead frozen in place as the hand was about to clasp her arm.
Jessica's eyes flew open and she was confronted by darkness. There was no light. No sign of where she was. A holding cell.
Jessica felt hot and clammy. Her body was covered in sweat. The Stealers caught her and brought her to a holding cell. If only she had heeded her mother's warning and stayed closer by she would not have been kidnapped. Distantly she became aware of the soft surface beneath her and the covers on top of her and a familiar scent lingering in the air. Mother. Father. Home. Safe. Just a dream.
Jessica let out a sigh of relief. It was only a dream. Stealers did not exist. She was safe.
She checked her clock, the numbers reading 3:12. It was too early to be awake yet. She tried to settle back to sleep, but each time she tried to close her eyes she was once again consumed by the helpless feeling of running but not moving anywhere all the while her attackers drew nearer. She was unsettled by the dream. Her first instinct was to run into her parents room and crawl into the space between them where she would be safe. They would always protect her. Especially from her nightmares.
But she was becoming a big girl and she did not want to have to go to them for reassurance. She knew logically that everything was just fine. She simply needed to get back to sleep.
Aware that just falling asleep was not going to happen, Jessica decided that perhaps a soothing glass of water would. At the very least it would quench her thirst and minimize her distraction. She did not want to leave the softness of her bed, but she did, shivering slightly when her light summer pajamas were not warm enough to fully counteract the cool nighttime chill in the air.
She crept silently down the stairs so as not to wake anyone up. The darkness of the house was stifling but she did not want to turn on a light to guide her path. It was perfectly rational to sneak around in the dark. Mom and dad would be mad at her for being awake so late. They did not need to know she was not in her room, and turning on the lights might wake them.
Jessica was grateful for and scared by the night lights in equal parts. While they lit the path down the curved staircase, they were not fully bright in the otherwise complete darkness. They provided just enough illumination to keep her from tripping or miscounting the stairs—though she knew the layout of the house well enough she could have easily made the journey with her eyes closed—the visual cues were soothing. At the same time, the partial illumination resulted in eerie shadows cast about the room. Shadows where monsters lurked. Shadows disguising the Stealers that were coming to take her away from her family.
No. Monsters did not exist. Stealers did not exist. If only she knew differently, if only she truly did believe that monsters did not exist, but she had come face to face with them. It was a hazard of her family's line of work. It was not logical, but neither was it impossible that a monster lurked in the shadows waiting to attack her.
As Jessica crept through the family room to the kitchen, she noted how eerie all the electronics seemed to be in the dark of night. There was the stead red, piercing green, and lightly flashing blue; all those lights would have been unnoticeable in the daytime, but in the night they shone brightly like a type of laser trained on her and tracking her movements.
She flicked on the kitchen lights and felt immediately comforted by her ability to see her surroundings. No monsters. No Stealers. No figments of her nightmares could hide under the bright LED light. She was safe at last.
The room-temperature water—she did not dare get ice because the ice maker was noisy and while the kitchen lights would not wake to sleeping occupants upstairs, the loud sound certainly would—soothed the remained of her nerves. Her trek to the kitchen woke her even more and she seemed to forget the few remaining residues of her dreams. She was happy for them to go.
The green lights on the dishwasher indicated that the dishes were clean, and although Jessica knew her mother did not like it when she left dirty dishes in the sink, she had nowhere to put her glass but there. She would risk her mother's ire in the morning for there was nowhere else to put the dirty glass but back in the cupboard where it belonged. Jessica suspected her mother would be even madder if she replaced the dirty glass amongst the clean ones.
Jessica was about to turn out the kitchen lights and return to her bedroom when she saw a figure on the living room couch. It was large and menacing but it did not appear to be moving. Upon closer inspection, Jessica noticed the figure's chest was heaving deeply and regularly. Asleep. She ventured closer; she was just close enough to recognize the figure when she stopped. It was her father, but why was he sleeping on the couch? Why wasn't he upstairs in bed with mommy?
Head full of questions, Jessica turned out the kitchen lights and headed back to her room. Once safely tucked into her bed and feeling the exhaustion overcome her once more, a dark thought entered her mind.
At school, she'd heard — tell how his dad slept on the couch, and then his dad left. For good. No one saw him again. Anxiety descended upon the young girl. She couldn't loose her daddy.