In Plain Sight

Caroline pushed the door open, hand on the key, plastic grocery bags hung along her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. She left her keys in the door and let her laptop bag slide down her arm and dropped it to the foyer floor. She kicked off her shoes and then made her way down the dark hallway towards the kitchen, flinging the grocery bags onto the island counter. It was at that moment she realized something was off. 

There was no noise. No TV, no music, no greetings shouted from the other room. There were no lights other than the sunlight coming through the windows. The house was still. 

“Jim?” Caroline waited for a response, her hand loosely gripping the plastic handles of the bags. 

Nothing.

“Mike?” pause, “Kyle?” Her tone grew louder, with an inflection her boys called ‘Mom voice’. 

Again, nothing. 

She let the bags go and walked around the island, peeking into the family room. The room was in perfect order, like Jim required. Nothing out of place. She moved back down the hallway, pulled her keys from the door and shut it, then moved back to the kitchen to start unpacking the groceries. As she began unloading the bags something gnawed at her. Something wasn’t right. 

She stopped, leaving the job half finished and moved to the basement door. It was dark, but she yelled down anyway, “Jim?” Then flipped on the light, “boys?” 

She pulled her phone from her pocket. No missed calls, no texts. as she moved back to the kitchen to check the family calendar. Nothing. She tapped Jim’s name to call him, but the call couldn’t go through. She tried again, still that same buzzing sound.

She sent him a text message: Where are you guys? 

The typical Delivered badge didn’t pop up right away, instead a blue bar indicated that the message was trying to be sent. “What is going on?” she said under her breath.

She turned her attention back to the half-emptied bags trying to recall if there were plans she was forgetting. The house was never empty at this time of day. She mindlessly continued unpacking when a buzzing sound grabbed her attention from the edge of the counter behind the cartons, boxes, and bags. She pushed the bags aside and found Jim’s phone with her text lighting up the screen. Jim never left his phone. In fact, he never let it out of his reach. 

That gnawing feeling inside her grew. Caroline moved through the dining room and into the mud room and opened the connecting door to the garage. She expected it to be empty, but Jim’s Tesla was there, and this is when the gnawing turned to real worry. 

She hurried back to the kitchen and looked out to the backyard. Empty. She turned, her pace almost at a run, down the hall and up the stairs taking steps two at a time. 

The boys room looked untouched, straight and organized just as Jim required. No sign of anything out of place. The boys shared a room, with matching galaxy comforters, blues and purples with splashes of star systems. No clutter allowed. Two years ago, when Kyle turned seven and Mike was nine, Jim decided that stuffed animals were too childish for boys their age and retired them to the attic. Caroline had protested and Kyle had cried, but Jim insisted, smiled, and that was that. The only decoration allowed were the models Jim and the boys had built together over the years. Their shelves were adorned with cars, trucks, helicopters, space shuttles, and even replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the White House. A few planes hung from strings attached to the ceiling. Everything was just as it should be. 

She turned and quickly moved to her and Jim’s bedroom and just like the boys, everything seemed in order. She sat on the bed and turned her attention to Jim’s phone. After entering the password, she flipped through his recent calls and texts, but there were no calls and only 3 texts all of which were from herself. All the other days were just as normal. Work, more work, Caroline, and the local pizza place. 

She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed her Mom, but there was the same signal she’d heard when she tried to call Jim. 

“What is going on?” she said out loud this time. 

She tried her Mom again and then she tried her brother, but there was no getting through, still busy. 

She texted her Mom: Have you heard from Jim? He and the boys aren’t home, but the car’s still here. 

She stared at the blue line as it tried to deliver the message, her mind racing. What was she really worried about? Did she think Jim would disappear with the boys? 

She didn’t let herself think the answer, because she knew it would turn her worry into pure panic.

Caroline had met Jim 12 years ago at work. They were in different divisions, Caroline worked on the finance team and Jim was a part of IT, which he never called IT, but always Information Technology. She had just ended a messy relationship that went on for too long with more bad times than good, and she wasn’t looking for anything new, in fact she was actively avoiding anything new, but then, there was Jim. He was kind, thoughtful, went out of his way to help people, was able to fix things, and not just technical things, he was also great at giving advice. Everybody liked him. He wasn’t classically attractive, he was tall and slender, he dressed well and she thought he was cute, but it was his smile that pulled her in. He exuded safety, and that’s what Caroline was most attracted to. 

Their romance was unexceptional. It was what Caroline told herself she needed, calm and steady. Their time together was always nice. They would go out to restaurants and talk for hours. In truth, Caroline did most of the talking, but he would ask the most thoughtful questions and always wanted to know more. On their first official date he called her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, and this melted her broken heart. But even still, there was no fire for Caroline. 

He liked going on long walks with no destination, and watching the sunset, then pointing out stars and constellations and dots he told her were planets that just looked like more stars to her. He’d tell her all about them, sometimes repeating himself, but she let him because she liked to see how he lit up and seeing a glimpse of something more behind his normal exterior.

The first time he kissed her was after a sunset and it was, like the rest of the relationship, unexceptional. 

They spent a lot of time reading and listening to music, mostly symphonies. Jim said he found movies and TV pointless. She would read fiction and he would read technical books, some of which she couldn’t even understand the titles of. She discovered that Jim was incredibly intelligent. One time, she had asked him why he wouldn’t try to work beyond IT at a security company, why not go for something in space exploration since it seemed where he was most passionate. He simply said, “Information Technology is important work and I’m right where I need to be.” 

Once they started having sex, it’s how they spent most of their time together, Jim was insatiable. He was an average lover, but he left Caroline spent by the sheer number of times that he would take her, and over time they got better together. It was the only way that she would ever say their relationship was extraordinary. She joked with a friend that it was like dating a teenager, and so it wasn’t a surprise when a few months later she found out she was pregnant. 

Jim’s face lit up and he immediately dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him. This too had melted her heart and she decided in that moment she loved him. She said yes through tears that were more happy than sad. 

Jim didn’t like to talk about himself, but Caroline told him she needed to know about him. They were starting a life together, she prodded, they needed to share everything, and Jim reluctantly explained that he grew up in Salt Lake City and that his parents had died when was young, in an automobile accident. “I don’t like to talk about it, it wasn’t happy after that, I left as soon as I was able,” he said flatly, staring directly into her eyes which begin to well with tears for him. She pulled him into her arms and didn’t ask any more questions after that. She didn’t know how to relate, her family was a picture of normalcy. She was the youngest of four with two sisters and a brother. It was loving and warm with memories of holidays and family vacations and sleepovers and now weddings and grandchildren. She wanted that for her children, that safe space, that warm place, and deep down, she wanted that for Jim too. 

Jim was so caring and doting during the pregnancy that the spark of love grew and she felt so lucky to have found him, but when Mike was born he changed. He became very protective of him and very critical of how Caroline parented him. At first, it was little things, holding his head or how she swaddled him, but a few days after they brought Mike home he showed her a side she’d never seen. She was having trouble breastfeeding and getting the baby to latch on. She tried everything and through exhaustion and tears broke down, asking Jim to make a bottle with the formula the nurse had sent home with them. 

He glared at her and in his normal calm voice said, “The mother of my child will feed from the breast.” 

She screamed at him, “If you want him to breastfeed so badly do it your damn self!” 

He stood at the sink and turned the formula over dumping all the contents out, staring at her the entire time. “Try again.” 

“Get the fuck out.” She gripped Mike closer to her body, tears streaming down her face, her skin red, her hair stringy and damp with sweat. 

“No, do your motherly duty for my child.” He said flatly.  

Her mouth dropped open. Her own self conscious thoughts were summed up in those words. Her motherly duty. She couldn’t even do the one thing for her baby that her body was built for. She stopped crying. She felt empty. There were no more tears. Mike wailed against her neck, tears and spittle running down her chest. In almost a trance, she tried again, and this time he latched and drank. It hurt horribly, but she didn’t stop, because it didn’t hurt as badly as Jim’s words echoing in her head.

After the kids, Jim had two sides. The kind, loving, caring man that she had settled for and the controlling parent. There were strict rules for the boys, about what they could eat, exercise, their hobbies, how they could play, the friends they could have, and how to act. Caroline hated the restrictions. She wanted the boys to have the freedom that childhood offered, and she fought it for a while, but the discussion would always peter out, with Jim smiling and making her feel like he was doing what was best. And the boys were happy, wonderful little people and they were her babies. They shared loving moments where they cuddled with her in bed or called for her when they hurt themselves. While their relationship with Jim was hard, structured, and he did keep them to his rules, they got the good side of Jim too, though she always felt his affection for them was robotic, much like he was with her, which she explained away blaming his own awful upbringing. 

Once, while Jim was away on a work trip, in her largest form of rebellion, she had planned a trip to a water park that she knew Jim would never allow. Water slides, wave pools, the lazy river and all the junk food they could eat. After a  two hour car ride, they arrived, colorful tubes crisscrossing above them, families donned in swim trunks and flip flops walking to the entrance smiling and laughing, and the smell of chlorine and french fries filled the car. “It’s against the rules,” Mike said flatly and refused to get out of the car. She tried to coax Kyle out of the car but he followed big brother’s lead and stayed put. She told them how much fun they would have, that they could just be kids, and Mike shook his head and repeated, “It’s against the rules,” and in that moment all she could hear was Jim. She grabbed Mike by the arm, screaming at him to get out of the car, saying things like I’m your mother and I can make the rules too, but he gripped the doorframe, crying and yelling “we can’t, it’s against the rules”, until finally, she gave up and drove back home in silence feeling like the worst mother in the world. When they got back home the boys seemed completely unphased by the trip, did their daily exercises and then went down to the basement to work on their models. Caroline sat in her bathroom and silently cried. 

The text she sent to her mother finally went through on the third try.

Maybe they went for a walk, she thought It wasn’t normal, but maybe Jim had decided that he was going to take the boys for a walk, like he used to love doing with her. Maybe to see a sunset. She held onto this thought, but she didn’t believe it. He was a man of structure, and this, whatever this was, was not structured. She could call the police but she knew they would tell her that there was really no reason to be worried…yet. 

She had lived with this man for eleven years. She put up with his strict rules because every time she thought of leaving he would say the right series of words, he would smile, and she would lose her resolve and stay. She would convince herself that he knew what was best for the boys and she would convince herself that he loved her. 

In a daze, she made her way down to the basement hoping there would be a clue amongst the partially finished models as to where they were. On the last step she slipped on something and almost fell, but caught the handrail and steadied herself. Her sock was moist and a small puddle of something slimy dripped from the bottom step. She looked around and up to the ceiling but couldn’t find a source. She stripped off her socks and dropped them to the step next to the puddle. 

Models currently in progress were spread along the work bench with tools hung on a peg board above and extension cords that seemed to go nowhere scattered on the floor. She stood at the workbench without knowing what she was looking for. She opened the three built-in drawers but they contained nothing but paint, brushes, rubbing alcohol, and other model supplies. She ran her hand along the screwdrivers hanging from the pegboard and let them swing, metal clanging on metal as they settled. She stared, her eyes losing focus, drained, and that’s when she saw it. A small latch at the top of the pegboard. And another at the bottom. Her stomach dropped. She knew it was something. She flipped the latches and the whole pegboard slid on hidden tracks revealing a section of wall that had been removed, and in the indent was a switch. 

Caroline hesitantly reached out and flipped it, then jumped as the wall beside her began to move, the concrete blocks separating at their grout lines. She pushed on the wall and it slid inward effortlessly revealing a small room with a blue glow that looked like an aquarium exhibit, like it was underwater. 

The room was small, no bigger than a shed. She moved to step inside and jumped for a second time as her phone rang. Caroline exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she was holding as she answered the phone, her heart racing. “Mom! I haven’t been able to reach anyone.” 

“Caroline, thank god, did you see the news?” her mother asked. 

The question caught her off guard, “No, why?” 

Caroline stepped into the small room, and it appeared to be empty other than an orb suspended in mid air, spinning and giving off a blue wavy glow. 

“Somethings happening, there’s a lot of people that are missing, but, well they all seem to have…” her mother trailed off, and before she started speaking again Caroline took another step into the room. 

“To have what Mom?” Caroline was drawn to the orb, like it was calling to her. 

“There are videos from all over the world of a flash in the sky...” She paused, but Caroline was only half listening, she reached out and took another step toward the orb. With this step something squished under her bare foot, pushing between her toes, pulling her out of her daze, her mother’s voice coming back to the forefront. 

“...they weren’t human, they look like snake men. Thousands of men, took their children and left, just walked outside and disappeared in a flash. You don’t think Jim could be one of them, do you?”

She looked down and saw three piles of clothes, skin still inside them, goo leaking around the edges, and the eyeless faces of her two boys and her husband staring up at her.