Emma's Best Nightmare

Petunia Mae (Emma) Johnson was exhausted from yet another day of police interviews (a weekly event, now), trying to determine what had become of her only child, her son, Ryan, who had simply vanished from the care of his babysitter on Good Friday, April 2nd, at 2:47 pm, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Good Counsel, just five blocks away from the house. 

Their devoutly Catholic Filipina babysitter had taken him with her to their Good Friday service, hoping to transmit something of her faith to the boy. Emma didn’t mind this - she had no religious preferences of her own, but admired the simple moral strength of the young woman, and saw no harm in her son acquiring something of her virtues, where ever they might come from. 

Social distancing had been in place for the raging COVID pandemic, along with a requirement for masks, so Magnolia (Maggie) Flores hadn’t felt the need to keep her hand on the five year old while she knelt down to pray in preparation for the ceremony, so certain was she that no one was coming within six feet of him. 

According to her sworn testimony, when she’d looked up, she’d seen that he was not in his seat. She had at first assumed that he had wandered off to look at the candles, or to gaze at the various scenes of the Crucifixion depicted in the Stations of the Cross along the walls of the nave. She looked first toward the candles, and didn’t see him there, and nor did she see him among the few people who were praying the Stations, so she got up and walked around, trying to imagine where he might have wandered off to. 

When she grasped the awful fact that she had lost him, she returned to where she had been sitting, and asked if anyone sitting nearby had seen what had happened to him. Mrs. O’Connor told her, “His father came and got him,” so Maggie phoned Chris Johnson to apologize for bringing the boy to Church - it seemed obvious to her in that moment that he was opposed to his son being present for the Good Friday service. 

Chris was startled to get the call, since he hadn’t even realized that Maggie had the boy with her - he’d thought the boy was at home with Emma - and both Chris and Maggie realized in the same moment that he had been kidnapped by a masked stranger of about Chris’s height and build.  

Emma was told after the police were called, and felt completely helpless. She was distraught, she didn’t know anything, and she alternated between blaming Maggie, and comforting her when she burst into tears and agreed that it was entirely her fault. 

Things had not improved for Emma in the intervening six months, so when she got into bed that night, she lectured God about His criminal inaction on her son’s behalf, threatened Him with non-belief for the rest of her natural life, and then pleaded with Him to bring Ryan safely back home. 

As she lay on the bed waiting for sleep to come, she watched in fascination as a bright pink horse emerged from under the dresser and started counting backwards from ten in French. It went back under the dresser, and Emma followed it. She was started by a bright flash of light - the reflection from a knight’s armour. He had the longest legs she’d ever seen, and they were getting longer and longer, until he walked over the green hill and left her there with a baby dragon who was demanding that she teach it to sew. The ground opened up, and a cavern full of filthy toilets appeared, which made her realize that she urgently had to pee.

She ran into a wall she hadn’t remembered - had Chris moved the bed against the wall? She rolled over the other way, and briefly noticed that the floor seemed a long way down. 

The door was in the wrong place, too, but the line of light underneath it guided her to the hallway. She found herself in someone else’s house - the bathroom door was open, though, so she went straight for it, again noticing that everything seemed oversized. 

The toilet was absolutely gigantic - it came up to her waist. She dropped her pyjama pants and hoisted herself over the bowl - which was when she realized that somehow she had acquired male anatomy. She tried not to think about the unpleasant details - she simply finished, jumped off, flushed, and wondered how she was going to wash her hands. 

Before she could come up with a solution, a giant woman in a chequered nightgown swatted her hard across the bum, and yelled something she couldn’t understand. She was then hoisted over the basin, hot water was poured over her hands, and she was carried back to the bed. 

What the actual … 

In the dark, and under the covers, in case the crazy old woman returned, Emma assessed her situation. Clearly, she was having some kind of extremely vivid dream. Even knowing that she was dreaming, and experiencing pain, didn’t cause her to wake up. 

The little-boy body that she was in was exactly like Ryan’s. “I’m dreaming that I’m Ryan,” she realized. “Somehow, my subconscious mind has decided that he’s been kidnapped by a crazy woman.” 

She wondered if little-boy Emma went to sleep, he would wake up as the original Emma. She decided to stay “awake” in the dream, to see what happened next. 

There were voices in the hallway. “I caught him going to the bathroom by himself.” 

A second voice, surprised - “I thought we cured him of that. He was so good last night about waiting for one of us to come and get him.”

“Something’s happened in the meantime. He didn’t even cry when I spanked him. He seemed startled by it, in fact, like he wasn’t expecting it.”

“This kid is harder to control than I had realized. Maybe we should return him to the broker.” 

“Won’t they kill him?”

“Whose problem is that? He knew he was supposed to obey us. Anyway, they’ll probably sell him to someone else. He’ll be fine.” 

Emma felt like they were talking about a disobedient dog. She also realized that, dream or not, the little boy needed to escape.

Tonight. 

She waited for the light in the hallway to go out, and for the voices to stop talking. She waited some more, to be completely sure. 

She crept out of the bed, trying not to thump on the floor. There was a streetlight just outside the window, so she pulled open the curtain to see what was in the room. There were clothes piled on a chair, and shoes under a table. She dressed in the clothes as quietly as possible. It took a few minutes of frantic looking to find socks, and then she put on the running shoes. They were a little tight, but they were well-worn and not uncomfortable. 

She looked through the dresser drawers to see if there was anything useful in them, like maybe a flashlight. No luck. 

She eased the door open, and went into the hallway. There was a kitchen at the other end of the hall from the bathroom. She found a purse, and there was a cell phone in it. She activated the cell phone’s flashlight, and looked through the fridge and the cupboards. She found a cloth shopping bag, and put a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter in it, along with a spoon and a knife. 

She went back into the purse and emptied out all the cash into the shopping bag. There was just over $250.00.

She clicked off the flashlight and held perfectly still when she heard movement in the hallway. Someone used the bathroom, and then went back to bed. She began to breathe again. 

She located the front door, and wondered whether there was an alarm system. There was no keypad that she could see, so she decided to take a chance. 

A five year old kid with a shopping bag, out in the night by himself, was going to attract attention no matter what. The key to the thing would be to get as many streets away as possible, in any direction, and then see what opportunities presented themselves. 

She unsnicked the thumb lock, undid the deadbolt, and carefully eased the door open. No alarm. Good. 

She then eased through the screen door, and sprinted down the front sidewalk, ran across the street, and into the first yard that didn’t have a fence. She then picked her way down the dark alley, and tried not to react when every dog in the alley started barking. She turned left at the end of the alley and kept walking, fast - like you’re late for something, like someone’s expecting you, she remembered from her Lady Beware classes. 

A man came out to shush his dog, and saw Emma / Ryan walking past. “Hey!” he called out. 

“Your dog is getting away,” she hollered back, and kept going. When he turned to look for the dog, she dived under a bush and held her breath until both dog and man were inside their house. 

A bus came into view, and she saw that she was near a bus stop. She realized that she was still in the same city, at least. Getting home seemed far more realistic, now. 

She dug for change in the shopping bag and pulled out what seemed to be enough, and then went to the bus stop, and signalled the bus. It stopped, and she got on. She almost jerked off her feet as it started up again, before she had the chance to put her change in the box. 

“Ye’ve give me too much, kid. I don’t give change.” said the driver. 

Emma went and found a seat by herself near the middle of the pack. 

There was a group of drunks on the back bench of the bus, and a scared looking woman who made no eye contact with anyone. Nobody except maybe the bus driver was going to report a five year old on the bus by himself, and the bus driver was more worried about having been given too much change than that he had a lone five year old on his bus. This, thought Emma, is why Ryan has been so hard to find. 

Emma looked out the window to make sure they were making steady progress away from the house of kidnappers. Belatedly, she realized she hadn’t taken any note of the address. I, too, am a terrible witness, she thought. 

There was a hotel off the road to the right, so Emma/Ryan stood on the seat and rang the bell to get off. There would be taxis at the hotel, she thought. She jumped down off the seat, gathered her shopping bag, and then jumped down the exit stairs, one by one. The drunks observed this, and laughed. Emma ignored them. 

She walked over to the hotel, stood by the taxi stand, and watched for a few moments. A hooker got into a cab. Emma / Ryan followed her, and the cab driver simply assumed he was with her. She didn’t notice him at all. 

When she arrived at her destination, she paid him and got out. The cab driver looked at Emma / Ryan expectantly. “Getting out?”

“No. Take me home.” Emma gave him her address. 

“You got money?” Emma / Ryan showed him a bundle of five $20.00 bills. He took it, and stashed it in his pocket. Emma / Ryan shrugged. 

Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of the house. Emma / Ryan got out and went to the door.  

Emma woke from the strange dream, startled by insistent knocking on the door, and ringing of the doorbell. She put on a housedress and answered the door. 

She first noticed the cabbie, and then she saw Ryan, with a shopping bag. She was so excited to see Ryan that at first she didn’t hear what the cabbie was saying.

“Fifty five dollars, ma’am. For drop off the boy.”

She was confused. “He paid you already. You have five $20.00 bills in your pocket. You owe us $45.00 in change, actually.” 

The cabbie blushed. “I give you forty. Keep five for tip, yeah?” Emma just wanted him gone, so she said, “Perfect.” He pulled two twenties out of his pocket and handed them to her. She pulled Ryan into the house, and locked the door behind him. 

“CHRIS!” she shouted 

- fin -