Chapter 2: The Nightmare

Clarissa's POV

As soon as our plane landed I took in the beautiful scenery that surrounded me. There was green. Lots and lots of green. The surrounding forests carried a certain beauty that I had never experienced before. It was extremely different from the scenery in Los Angeles, California. The lack of traffic was the first thing I noticed on our way to our new house.

The new house was small. It was simple in the way of design and beauty. Certainly not what you would expect to 26 year olds that had more money than Mark Zuckerburg himself to buy. Simple is exactly what I had been going for though. So when I saw the property for sale online I didn't hesitate to buy it. I had only hoped that buying it sight unseen wouldn't backfire on me. Thank goodness it hadn't.

"Do you like it?" Josh asked me as we pulled into our new driveway.

"Like it? Honey I love it" I said in awe.

"It is beautiful alright. Well come on we didn't buy it just to look at it from the outside" he said as he began to unstrap our sleeping son Josh from the backseat. We called our son Josh to differentiate him from his father.

I snapped out of my daze quickly and got my daughter, who had also fallen asleep, from the backseat. The inside of the house was just as simple and beautiful as the outside of the house. In my opinion the pictures that the previous owner had put online had not done the house any justice. Nothing could compare to seeing it in person.

I could try and pretend to be happy here. I could pretend that we were a normal American family with no dirty secrets to hide. That we were just a normal happy family. The key word there...pretend. I sighed. The truth of the matter was that I could never be happy. Yes, I loved my kids and my husband. The love I had for them had no boundaries. However I could not be happy knowing what we are doing and have already done to millions of families over the years.

"Honey are you okay?" my husband asked me.

"I'm okay. Just a little homesick. That's all. I will be fine" I lied. I had never even told my husband my true thoughts on the business that our parent's had left us.

He walked over to me and hugged me as carefully as he could without waking our son. However, his hug did little to comfort me. "Everything will be okay"

I didn't say anything to that.

"Mommy?" I couldn't help but smile a little when my Sofia spoke to me. Her beautiful chocolate brown eyes were still halfway closed with sleep. I wish I knew where she inherited her chocolate eye color from. It certainly wasn't from me or her father. I had a darker eye color and my husband's were green. My son had gotten his father's green eye color. My daughter though? Who knew?

We purchased a pizza for dinner that night and everyone was happy. Our house had already been furnished before hand so we began to unpack soon after and we stopped when we finally got too tired to continue doing anything.

I woke up in the middle of the night breathing extremely hard. My body was shaking more then I thought was humanely possible. My heart felt like it was going to jump out my chest from pounding so hard. I had never been so scared in all of my life. I thought I had known what fear was but I was wrong. It was only now, after that horrific nightmare that I had just awaken from, that I truly understood the meaning of the word fear.

I had to get up and check on my kids and make sure that they were alright. I sprinted to their rooms not even caring if I woke anyone up. I just had to see them. I had to make sure that they were alright. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my five year old son and three year old daughter sleeping soundly in their beds. The baby I was carrying inside of me kicked reassuringly and I rubbed the spot where I had been kicked.

I suddenly broke down in tears. In my dream all of my kids had went missing. I had just given birth to my third baby and a few hours later not only had my newborn gone missing, but so had Josh and Sofia. All three of my babies, my reasons for living, had gone missing and I had no idea where they were. I was going crazy searching for them and fearing the worst.

I was relieved that it had been nothing more then a nightmare. Then reality came crashing down on me. This was happening and it was because of me and because of my family. I couldn't even begin to imagine the depths of the pain that we had inflicted on families over the years. The pain and the fear. What I felt for a few seconds, or however long the dream lasted, lasted years and perhaps even a lifetime to these families.

I barely even noticed when my husband found me in tears on the floor awhile later.

"Oh my God what's wrong?" he asked as he hugged me tightly and tried to comfort me. "Honey talk to me you're really scaring me here"

"I can't do this anymore" I cried.

"Do what?" he asked, completely confused.

"This! Our family business. I just, I can't-"

"Okay what happened? What brought all this on all of a sudden?"

"Joshua last night I had a dream that all of our kids went missing and we had no idea where they were. I had never felt so scared in all of my life. Don't you see the pain we cause these families and these babies?"

It took a few minutes for him to answer with "The money is nice though. We have everything we could ever want because of that money"

"At what cost!? How would you feel if our children were taken from us and we never saw them again? Think about it. Is money worth pain and suffering?" I said as I began to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"Out. I need to clear my head. I don't know when I will be back" I answered.

I didn't look back as I left the house. I wasn't in any state of mind to drive so I chose to walk into the nearby forest instead. Probably not the best idea to go wondering into a forest that I didn't know while emotionally upset but I didn't really care at this point. I walked deeper and deeper into the forest until I finally got to tired to carry on. I was too emotionally drained and sleep deprived.

I laid down on the forest floor to get some rest. I didn't realize that I had fallen asleep until I felt something cold and wet nudging me urgently. I yelled, startled at the creature before me. It was an extremely large reddish-brown wolf. I was in awe of the horse sized wolf. From a distance I would have probably mistaken him for a grizzly bear. He sniffed me and licked my face a few times. When I looked closely at his eyes I could see tears welling up inside of them. It looked like he had been crying or he was about to cry.

Carefully I stood up. He sniffed me again and brushed his warm body up against mine. My baby kicked hard when the wolf brushed his face against my stomach. The wolf recoiled in response. He looked at me in shock and then let out a long sad howl. I couldn't help but to cry once again.

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