Little Lost Things

When you fall asleep, you expect yourself to wake up in the place you fell asleep. After all, why should anybody move you? It completely scares somebody, waking up feeling out of place. I remember that feeling.

I remember when I was little, I had visited my grandmother’s house overnight. My parents had been on a date, happy to be away from their two troublesome children: me and my little brother, Drew. My grandmother lived far away from us, so Drew and I didn’t visit her often. This made us unnecessarily hyper when we realized we were going to visit her. We played Sternhalma (Chinese checkers), built blocks, and watched VHS tapes of our mother dancing in ballet recitals and playing in a marching band when she was young. After we were tired and fed, my grandmother had put us to bed in the living room, tucked in our sleeping bags like caterpillars in cocoons. I fell asleep that night, expecting to wake up in the living room, in my Frozen sleeping bag, next to my brother’s Paw Patrol sleeping bag. I would wake up, and he would be beside me, sleeping with his limbs all over the place as he slept on the sleeping bag and not in it. I always thought he was weird for that reason. But instead of waking up in my grandmother’s living room, I was in the car, driving past lampposts and little squat brick buildings. I had been so scared, thinking somebody had stolen me away in the night like the kids at school said. But I had looked at the front of the car to see my mom and dad talking in hushed tones. I had looked beside me to see my brother sprawled, sleeping, in his toddler car seat. I had realized that I was in my car seat. And kidnappers typically didn’t put the stolen kids in car seats, from what I had heard. So I had finally calmed down. Everything had been okay.

That was before the world had been infested with monsters. That was before I had been sold to a submarine called the Submarine (wow, really creative there) to work off my parents’ debt. Lots of other kids had had to do that as well.

But that was also before I had escaped. I had been tossing coal about the size of both of my hands balled into fists into a large metal furnace, other kids hurrying up the wooden ramps to toss the coal into the maw of the furnace, where it would fuel the Submarine. About halfway through the day, one kid collapsed and the supervisor, a fifteen year old paid to criticize us, walked over and made a huge fit, yelling for the kid to get up. A kid in a gray cardigan and I were the only two out of about thirty that were brave enough to escape. The other kids made a subtle wall to block us from the supervisor's view as we ran into a separate room.

After that, I avoided any child I saw. Most were working dully, so they didn’t pay much attention. They thought that if they kept their eyes down and worked until they were released, then they would get out. Some kids had escaped, and from time to time we would have to help each other with a puzzle or mechanism, but we used something called Submarine Signs in order to communicate with each other, since we all spoke different languages. It was a set of gestures that represented important words that had to be used to complete puzzles or make plans. I never caught the names of the kids I met.

When I fell asleep in a small place tucked away in the labyrinth of vents, I had expected to wake up where I had fallen asleep, like all those nights ago. But no. Of course, something confusing had to happen. Go figure.

The only thing I could say about the confusing thing was that somebody was leaning over me. Not like when I’m in a bed and my mom leans over me as she tells me to get ready for school, but like when you fall over backwards on a skating rink, on your back, and a friend puts their hands on their knees, leans over you, and asks if you’re alright as they laugh. That had happened once with me and my church friend, Annie.

This person was not Annie, and I was not on a skating rink. This person was not my mom, and I was not in my bed.

The place I had fallen asleep in had had a lantern in it that cast a warm glow over the small place, and I had fallen asleep in an old valise filled with dusty tattered clothes. There had been a leak in the tangled pipes above me, and I had remembered catching some drops on my parched tongue.

But now the floor was cold and hard below me, and it felt damp below my yellow sleek raincoat. The atmosphere was not warm and welcoming. Instead, it was nearly pitch black. The only thing I saw was the figure leaning over me. They held a flashlight in their hand, and it shined on my face.

“Are you hungry?”

“What?” was all I could say before the flashlight flicked off and the world plunged into darkness. I was most definitely afraid of the dark, so this scared me. I jumped up, and pain shot through my legs. I remembered running a very long amount of time before falling asleep. Running a very long amount of time to get away from monsters.

Rustling and whispering occurred, with much whacking of metal. To me, it sounded like a fork getting thrown against metal, but when the flashlight flickered on it showed the figure and multiple other figures smacking the flashlight aggressively.

“Who are you?” I asked. I looked around uneasily. “And why am I here?”

The figure turned around and pointed the flashlight to the many kids behind it. My breath escaped. Kids, not monsters. But what if they were mean, or seeking something from me? The figure returned the beam of light on me, which made me feel like I was on a stage, a spotlight stuck on me.

“We are kids in the Resistance. We brought you here to help.”

To be continued. . .