by Kim Foster
The great pink body of Bangkok, without it's eel tentacles, looked like a beached whale, bloated, fragile, just flesh, impotent, mortal flesh. Josie bent to touch it. It was cold, like death makes bodies go cold, but the air had turned warm. Josie no longer felt chilled. His wounds healed, erased from his skin, as if he were a white board and the ink was taken off with a warm cloth and water.
He wasn't tired. Or mangled by the experience. He was renewed.
Josie watched more puffs of clouds come out of the hole in Bangkok, rise to the ceiling and become mist.
He walked closer, looked in the air, and saw children, babies some of them, with dummies, and diapers, and some older with knee socks, and pony tails and worn leather balls. Each child was doing something, something they loved and made them happy. They were all laughing.
He watched a little boy run with his dog. In another cloud, a mother cooed to her baby, wrapped in a monogrammed blanket. Another, a girl with a bonnet and long skirts, read from a pile of books in a field. Another girl climbed a large tree and sat in the crook of its branches while other children searched for her on the ground in their game of hide-n-seek. A family ate together at a long wooden table, a little girl passed a giant bowl, and giggled at Josie.
Each little puff made Josie smile, as they spiraled up into the air, popped and joined the mist forming around him.
These were the children Bangkok had taken.
He looked into the next cloud. There was a young girl, running through the streets of a small village, a cloud of dust at her feet. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was sure it was Emerald's mom, Arataki, when she was a girl. She was skipping, pulling a red balloon behind her. She stopped and looked at Josie.
"I'm still here. I didn't go away," she said, and smiled, and turned on her feet and ran laughing down the dirt road, the balloon bobbing behind her.
Emerald had been right. Her mother was still alive.
And another bubble, this one a boy with little blue anchors on the cuffs of his sailor pants. The baby from the market. Clio. He folded into his parents, Ana and Petros, who hugged him hard and kissed his cheeks until they were pink and loved appropriately.
Josie couldn't help but smile.
The baby turned his face to him, and beamed, then buried it again in the folds of his parents clothes. Josie reached out, touched the bubble and it burst into air.
He hadn't noticed it until right then, but the Organic Food Shop was changing.
A swatch of mangroves with great knobby bark, and long twining roots were growing through the floors and counters and shelves of the shop. The roots worked themselves everywhere, and he felt soft dirt under his feet in water than came to his knees. Then the mangrove burst with leaves, so green he felt them pop open in the recesses of his brain.
He felt the breeze. It was an old memory.
He was in the middle of a mangrove forest, like the one where his Grandpa Jack lived. He took a long, deep breath, and remembered the scent of the swamps, and the heat, and the sweetness of leaves. He closed his eyes and opened them again. He felt the knife Jack gave him, and was grateful for his trust and that the knife had saved all of them.
The clouds seemed to be coming more slowly now.
Josie looked into the last misty puff and saw a little boy, maybe three or four, with a wild and crazy mess of hair. The boy looked familiar and not so familiar.
The boy smiled at Josie. And held up a little silver hand mirror to his own face. The mirror was old fashioned, plated silver, ornate with lambs heads on it. Josie had seen it before, but he couldn't remember from where.
He leaned in closer to look at the mirror.
What he saw was his grandfathers craggy face, his long, thick grey hair, tangled and dirty, the wrinkles deep and embedded into his brown skin. Grandpa Jack smiled back at the baby, a weak but warm smile.
"I don't think I can hold them off much longer...." Grandpa Jack said, his voice the same as Josie remembered, but more tired, ragged and thin.
The boy laughed, and in that voice like tinkling chimes, turned his little face to Josie.
"Don't worry, the Shintawk is here," the boy said in a bubbly voice.
"We'll be okay."
"What's the Shintawk?" Josie asked the baby.
"Tell me!...What is the Shintawk?...I don't know what I'm supposed to do," Josie reached out tried to grab the cloud, but his hands slipped through the mist.
The baby’s face was disappearing.
"Grandpa Jack!"
And then it was gone, and all that was left was a ripple of giggles.
Then the cloud lifted up into the air above his head, and burst into a thousand drops and a torrent of warm rain covered him.
And as quickly as it began, it ended.
Bangkok, and the mangroves, and the heavy mist, melted like soft mud, through the floor boards. And there was Josie, standing in the middle of the Organic Food Shop, alone, and it was just the way it always was when he came to buy his chicken nuggets.
fourteen
BROKEN
"No, there is no solid evidence to link Josie Brown to the disappearances of these kids," The Barrel was speaking to Botany Cook, in front of the Organic Food Shop.
"...But there is no evidence exonerating him either.”
It was a sunny day, and it seemed tourists and sight-seers and rubber-neckers from all over Australia were curious about what happened on Tamarama Street. The tiny street bustled with groups of people snapping photos and standing on the sidewalk in front of Emerald's house, peering into the windows of the shop, gabbing about what happened there.
Botany and Horace were filming for their TV special, "Teenage Child Abductors: How to Spot Them Before They Steal Your Child"
"But, Detective...er I mean Sargent, you were given a commendation and promotion for your work on this case, right?"
"Yes, I was. But catching bad guys, saving poor defenseless kids, it's all in the line of work for any cop, really," The Barrel said, puffing out his chest.
His mustache fluffed itself, dramatically.
"Well, Sargent, people are saying that one young man helped you make your case here. Do you have anything to add about that?"
"Well, no it was really the hard investigative work of the Sydney Police Depart...."
"Wait! Wait!" a voice screeched from behind them.
"I have something to say about that!"
It was Mrs. Doris Kippelibby, dressed in her finest orange flowered moo-moo, and her brightest pumpkin-colored lipstick, her hair curled to perfection in little swirls around her head and tied up with a matching orange piece of cloth.
She was running toward them, her legs moving clumsily like two pork butts.
"It was Greg Umple..." she said huffing and puffing, parting the crowd that formed and grabbing the microphone.
"U-M-P-L-E...got that?" she asked, poking her index finger into Botany's notebook.
"Yes, we heard Greg Umple was critical in finding the children and getting them out of the Organic Food Shop."
"Oh yes, he was. He saved those children," Mrs. Kippelibby explained.
"Those children were going to be drowned in all that water, when they say that pipe burst, or whatever it was, and he got them out safely."
"Would you call Greg Umple a hero?"
"Oh yes, I don't think a braver boy ever existed," Mrs Kippelibby said.
"Well, I don't know about brave..." The Barrel butted in, sticking his mustache into the microphone.
"Mr. Umple helped the police, and when young people help the police, good things happen," The Barrel said in the most condescending manner possible.
"We appreciate all the junior detectives who help us," and then he pointed his fingers into guns and shot the camera and winked and clucked his tongue.
He looked like one of those shady guys that sells used cars.
"We're having a parade for him, you know, with a float and everything," Mrs. Kippelibby said, putting her balloon face in front of the mi
crophone and shoving The Barrel aside with one thick hip.
"Um, um, yes....sounds wonderful..." interrupted Botany Cook.
"I'm getting word from the station that we are live with Dorin Hanes, the aunt of Trinket Parsnips, down at the hospital," she said, holding the ear-piece in her ear.
"Let's go down to you, Dan."
The scene flipped to a long white hallway, and Josie - watching all of this on TV - recognized his science teacher, her wild crazy hair, her hands playing frantically with her nails.
He hated all these people talking about him. He was sitting on the little love seat in Rasha's house, next to Teta, who worked her knitting needles furiously while silently staring out from un-seeing eyes. She hadn't spoke to them in any coherent way since Bangkok came.
Rasha sat crossed legged on the floor, with her back against the loveseat, and Bacon, gnawed on a raw steak bone in her lap. Musa played with trucks next to them on the floor. Emerald was coiled up in a chair, wearing a rather frightening mask that looked like her skin was melting off.
Josie could hardly believe what he was hearing. The Barrel got a promotion? Grotty was going to get a parade? And what did he get? Not guilty, not innocent.
Limbo.
"Trinket is…um, okay," Miss Hanes said, "Um, it was touch and go, but we heard Greg Umple gave her CPR and kept her alive...."
Rasha, Josie and Emerald groaned at the TV. Musa threw a balled up sock at the screen.
"Um, Gerty and Frida are just thrilled to have her back, naturally."
"Has she spoken about what happened? And who took her?" the TV person asked.
"Um, well, no. Not yet..." Miss Hanes said, clearing her throat.
“Trinket is still pretty…um…broken…”
"Do you think it was Josie Brown?
"Well, I guess...I mean, the police still think that..."
"Do the Parsnips feel safe living across from the teenager who might have stolen their child?"
"Well, um, you know, yes, yes, I think there is some concern since um, the perpetrator, er ....I mean, alleged perpetrator is living across the street, but you know, um...Gerty and Frida are strong, so I'm sure they'll figure out the best way to keep Trinket safe. Thank you, that's all for now...please respect our family's privacy."
And then her crazy hair left, and the interview was over.
The cameras panned to the hospital parking lot, where a group of supporters lit candles for Trinket, and a bunch more who carried signs that said, "Bring Baby Stealers to Justice" and "Don't Trust The Teenager Next Door!"
Josie tightened his hands into fists. Everyone still thought he could hurt children. He was still guilty in their eyes. He was someone dangerous, a threat.
Rasha, who felt Josie tense up, reached up from her perch on the floor, and put her hand on his. She held it there and did not let go. Her touch ran through him like a warm, torrent of river. It startled him, and without thinking, he jerked his hand away, and then chided himself for being so uncool around her.
"We know the truth," Emerald said, smiling.
She lifted her mask off her face and slid it up onto her head, so he could see her eyes, and know that they were with him.
Bacon barked and jumped in his lap and licked his face profusely, and they all laughed and petted his square little head.
Josie didn't know how he was going to feel in school the next day. Or how the other kids would treat him. Or whether The Barrel would try to make up evidence to put him in juvie. Or whether he would barf up his dinner if he had to watch Greg Umple getting a parade for his so-called bravery. Ugh. And what about this crazy Shintawk stuff? His grandfather? Emerald's mother?
And his parents. Neither Phyllis nor Portland even spoke to him. His father didn't get his job back, although Bob Blister gave him a nice severance for leaving quietly, and Josie was grateful for that, but they hadn't even bothered to tell him. He overheard Mrs. Kippelibby talking about it to Mrs. Fockerson on the street out in front of the Organic Food Shop.
He and his parents passed, like birds occupying the same sky, but never touching, never flying into the others space. He had shamed them, embarrassed them, and his family did not do shame well. Wasn't that why his mother never talked to Grandpa Jack anymore? The family shame.
There was so much, too much.
Josie closed his eyes, and considered all of it. He wanted to put his ear buds in his ears and crank up some Dream Wife or The Courtneys. He wanted to hear something deep and thrumming to help him sleep for hours. He wanted to go home, lock his bedroom door, and be alone in his room. That's what he wanted. Or did he?
No. He could never go back, he knew that. There would be time for his music, but the world was out there, not inside his head.
As he looked around the room at his friends - he had friends - people who believed in him, and risked their lives for him. He knew he didn't want to go back to how it used to be.
Everything was different now. It was far from perfect. But really, it had never been better.
About The Author
Kim Foster
Kim Foster is an award-winning writer who is known for essays about food and culture, but, deep down, really wishes she could write horror ALL. THE. DARN. TIME.
Kim lives in Las Vegas with her husband, David, four kids, 23 chickens, 3 dogs, 3 cats and a very fat rat. It's crazy there.
Find Kim on Instagram & Twitter @KimFosterNYC. Or at her website: www.Kim-Foster.com