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  “What’s your name?” someone behind him asked.

  He turned around, pushing clothes aside. His hair caught on a zipper. He yelped and tugged it free.

  A little girl, near the same age as himself, stood in the rack with him. Even though it was a chilly fall day, she wore shorts and a t-shirt. And she was gray. Her black within black eyes stared at him. “I’m Caroline,” she said.

  “I’m Adam.” He frowned at the sound of his voice. It was like when his mother pushed the button for the radio station that didn’t come in quite right, all scratchy with static and missing parts of words. He jabbed a finger into his ear and wiggled it around. “Where’s your mommy?”

  “She’s not here.”

  The finger didn’t help. His voice still sounded weird. So did hers.

  “Want to play?” she asked.

  “No.” His scalp hurt and her weird voice made his skin all prickly. He wanted his mom to find him. Adam let go of the rack and stepped out of the wall of clothing.

  Caroline grabbed his hand. “I want to play.”

  The whole store had gone gray. Salesladies folded gray clothes and smiled at gray shoppers. Children held their mother’s gray hands. A deep hum buzzed all around. He could make out bits of what the adults were saying and what sounded like a baby crying somewhere.

  His mother yanked the clothes hangers apart on the racks as she came closer. A saleslady talked to her and started looking too. Soon after, a third joined them.

  Caroline let go of his hand and tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re it.”

  Tears welled in Adam’s eyes, making Caroline’s smiling, gray face blur. “I don’t want to play. I want to go home.”

  His mother walked right past him. He reached out for her but his hand went right through her leg like it was pudding. She stopped for a second and looked around but then moved on to the next rack.

  “Mommy!” he yelled.

  Caroline scowled. “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “I’m not.”

  Adam didn’t want Caroline to see him cry. He darted back into the middle of the rack and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing more than anything else to be found.

  Bright light penetrated his eyelids. Adam found himself once again surrounded by dark blue pants and yellow and orange shirts, some with bright floral prints and others with white stripes.

  “He’s here. I found him,” shouted one of the salesladies.

  Adam’s mother raced over and plucked him from the rack. She squeezed him tight to her chest. “I swear I just looked there. Thank you.”

  Her heartbeat pounded in Adam’s ear as he pressed himself against her silky red shirt. Her arms were shaking and her voice had turned to sobs.

  “Really, thank you so much,” she said to the lady.

  She kissed Adam’s forehead and strode out of the store with him in her arms. “Don’t tell your father I lost you. We’ll both be in trouble.”

  “I won’t.” Adam knew better than that.

  Though part of him was afraid, he was curious about Caroline and the gray place. He didn’t know what he’d done to get there, but he thought that if he could get to the gray place at home when he wanted to, maybe it wouldn’t be so scary. Over the next few months, he huddled under the covers at night, asking Caroline to play, but she never came, nor did the hum or the gray. He sat in his dark closet, surrounded by clothes, waiting. But she didn’t come.

  It wasn’t until his father came home drunk one night, yelling, and banging things around, that Adam grabbed his blanket, hid under his bed, squeezed his eyes shut, that heard the hum of the gray place.

  Caroline lay across from him. She smiled. “I’ve missed you. Can you play now?”

  The hum drowned out his father’s yelling and, if he concentrated on Caroline’s voice, his mother’s high-pitched voice too. His father couldn’t touch him. Here, in the gray place, he was free to do whatever he wanted. Adam smiled back. “Yes.”

  They spent the night jumping on his bed, playing with his toys, and telling stories. When finally Adam’s eyes wanted to close, he wished the gray place away.

  “Not like that.” Caroline laughed. “I’ll only tell you the way if you promise to come back and play with me again.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.” She took his hand and tugged him down to the floor. They huddled under his bed on his blanket. Caroline held his hand tight. “You promise, right?”

  Adam nodded.

  “You gotta be where you were when you hid and then wish to be found.”

  He closed his eyes and wished just like he had in the store months ago. Only this time, he wasn’t crying, and he wasn’t scared. He was just really tired.

  The hum remained in his ears and Caroline still held his hand, but he couldn’t stay awake any longer.

  He woke to his mother peering under the bed, calling his name. “There you are.” She pulled his blanket, sliding him out from under the bed. Sunlight beamed through his window, filling the room with a warm yellow glow. A rainbow scatter of toys littered his floor. “Why are you under there?”

  Adam yawned. “You were too loud.”

  His mother’s face turned red. “Oh. I thought you were sleeping. I didn’t think…” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry, baby. Daddy’s gone.”

  Adam considered that he was probably supposed to cry too, but he was happy Daddy was gone. It was the bruise on his mother’s cheek that made tears comes to his eyes.

  He had wished to be found, and she had done just that. Daddy wouldn’t have ever found him. He wouldn’t have even tried. Adam hugged his mother.

  The next night he waited until he heard his mother’s bedroom door close before sliding under his bed. He closed his eyes and hid there until he heard the hum. Caroline’s static-edged giggle came seconds later.

  “I knew you’d come back.” She clapped her hands. “What do you want to play first?”

  He picked up a car and pushed it across the floor to her. With the hum surrounding him, he could barely hear the sound of hard plastic wheels on wood—a sound that would have normally brought his mother running into his room to tell him to get back into bed and go to sleep. Even in the quiet house, they could be as loud as they wanted. Adam let out a whoop and grabbed the drum his aunt had given him. He pounded out a wild beat while Caroline danced. They spent the night building towers with wooden blocks and smashing them down with cars, feet, and pillows.

  When it came morning, his mother again found him under his bed. She ruffled his hair. “You look so tired. Did you get any sleep at all?”

  Adam knew better than to lie to his mother. He shook his head.

  “This is a hard time for both of us, I suppose.” She sighed. “How about I make you breakfast and then you take a little nap before we get this day started?”

  He sat at the wooden table, chin in hands, trying to keep his eyes open while she made pancakes. “Is Daddy coming back?”

  “No.” She touched the bruise on her cheek and grimaced. “Not this time.” She slid a plate of steaming cakes in front of him and drizzled them with sweet syrup.

  Adam gobbled them down. Feeling safe and full, he climbed into his bed and slept. However, his mother didn’t let him nap long, and so when she put him to bed at the end of the day, he was far too tired to play with Caroline. The next night his mother was sad so he stayed up late, curled in her arms, watching television until he dozed off. He woke up in his bed. On the third night, there was a phone call.

  From the living room, he could hear his mother screaming into the phone in the kitchen. She even said the words she’d told him never to repeat. She said them lots of times and loudly.

  “You are not coming over here,” she yelled. “I told you that you couldn’t see him. I don’t care if he’s your son or not.”

  Adam put his hands over his ears and burrowed into the couch pillows. The sound of the phone slamming into the counter exploded through his shaking hands.

  He ran into
his room and closed the door. Her words had never stopped Daddy from throwing and breaking things or from hitting her or yelling at him.

  Daddy was coming.

  He swept his books from his bookshelf and pushed it in front of the door. He piled his heaviest toys on the shelves. Adam clutched his blanket and slid under his bed, curling into a ball. He wasn’t hidden enough.

  The hum of the gray place surrounded him.

  Caroline squealed. “You’re back! Where have you been? Didn’t we have fun together?”

  “Yes.” He forced a shaky smile, but his lips couldn’t lie either.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The gray would hide him better than any bed could. Daddy could come and throw everything he wanted. He could even break down the door and smash the bookcase. Daddy still wouldn’t find him unless he wanted to be found. He was safe here.

  “Nothing. Let’s play.”

  Adam tried to build a tower but they’d scattered so many blocks last time that he couldn’t build it higher than his knees. Caroline pounded on the drum and told him to dance, but his feet didn’t want to. He kept glancing at the door. She tried to play cars with him, but even though he knew the sound didn’t go outside the gray, every throaty rev and rumble made him more nervous.

  “Let’s look at a book,” he suggested.

  “Sure.” Caroline picked one from the scattered pile on the floor and sat down next to him.

  “I can’t read good,” Adam said. He wished his mother would read him a story right now. To be able to sit on her lap, to hear her heartbeat as he leaned against her chest, would make him feel safe.

  “That’s okay. I can read.” Caroline began the story of a boy lost in the woods and a talking squirrel. The static in her voice and the clipped words kept him from drifting off into his imagination like when his mother read to him.

  He wanted her to stop. He didn’t want to play. He just wanted to hide. But he needed the gray for that and Caroline came with it. Adam sat and listened, but he wasn’t listening to the story, he was listening for his mother’s voice.

  Adam concentrated hard, and then he heard it. The yelling. Daddy was here.

  Then it was quiet.

  He didn’t want to, but Adam tried to hear Daddy’s voice. Just above the low hum, he caught his name. Daddy was coming for him. Even within the safety of the gray, Adam shook. His fingers crushed his blanket until his knuckles hurt. Caroline stopped reading.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Daddy’s coming.”

  “He can’t find you.”

  “I know.”

  She took his hand. “Come on. We’ll go in here.” She pulled him into the closet.

  Adam sat on the floor, littered with shoes and clothes that had fallen off their hangers. Caroline closed the closet door and sat next to him, holding his hand. “You’re safe here,” she said, though her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  A crash and bang told him Daddy had gotten into his room. Adam huddled closer to Caroline, his hand slippery with sweat in hers.

  More crashing and banging. The door to the closet flew open. Daddy yanked the hangers aside. He knocked neatly folded clothes off the shelf at the top. He kicked at the shoes on the floor. Daddy’s heavy work boot flew right through Adam’s face. “Think you’re smart, bitch? Hiding my kid? Like hell if I’m going to let you get the house too.”

  Daddy turned around and stormed out of the room.

  Adam felt sick. His heart pounded and his head throbbed.

  Somewhere in the house, another door slammed and then there was only the hum of the gray place.

  “It will be okay,” Caroline whispered.

  Adam saw smoke—a billowing grayness in a gray room, drifting in through the open door and creeping over the toppled bookshelf and scattered toys. It rolled and gathered like a big puff of cotton candy just below his ceiling, hanging there and growing thicker until it covered the top half of his room.

  Adam whimpered. Smoke was supposed to smell, but here, in the gray place, it didn’t. Could fire hurt him here? Would he feel the heat?

  Daddy must be gone. He couldn’t hear him anymore. Adam let go of Caroline’s hand and ran for his bed. He slid underneath like a baseball player sliding into home. He closed his eyes and wished with all his heart for his mother to find him.

  She didn’t come.

  Adam opened his eyes to see Caroline standing beside the bed. He slipped out from under it and stood.

  “Why isn’t she coming?”

  Caroline’s black gaze dropped to the floor. “She’s not in the house. I looked.” She chewed her gray lip. “She’s outside with your Daddy, but she’s not moving.”

  Gray flames reached into his room like Daddy’s long fingers. They grabbed onto the wood around his door. They tasted the door and the bookshelf and then, like Daddy drinking a bottle of whiskey, swallowed his books in minutes.

  Adam stood, starring in horror as his gray toys melted and the paint on his walls went from light to dark. The smoke turned almost black. Adam slid under his bed again, wishing and praying for someone to find him. Anyone.

  A sharp pain shot through his body and took his breath away. For a second he thought he must be on fire too, but when he opened his eyes to check, all he saw was smoke from floor to ceiling and the mattress above him engulfed in flames. Bits of glowing gray fell on him but they didn’t burn.

  Sirens cut through the hum.

  Flames bounced on his bed, eating up his sheets, blankets, and pillows, even the quilt his mother had sewn for him when he was a baby. The wooden floor buckled beneath him, curling up at the ends and blackening.

  A door opened.

  It had to be firemen. They would find him. It wouldn’t be hard—the bed was nothing more than a charred frame. He was lying right out in the open.

  A fireman, his face covered with a mask, waded through the smoke into Adam’s room. He reached around as if he couldn’t see well. He ran into the remains of the bed, knocking over what was left of the frame.

  “I’m right here,” shouted Adam. “Right here. Help me.”

  The fireman stumbled and fell through him, landing on the floor with a loud grunt. He got up and scrambled out of the room.

  Adam cried. Caroline stood next to him, holding out her hand. “The fire can’t hurt you. Come on.” She took a deep breath and with her head bowed and her shoulders slumped, she led him outside.

  Flames rose all around them as they walked out the front door, but Adam never felt the heat. Firemen showered his house with water from hoses bigger than he’d ever seen, but even all that water didn’t make Adam wet. Only his tears did.

  “She was over here,” Caroline said as she led him through the firemen and the hoses and the trucks to where an ambulance sat across the street.

  His mother sat in the back of it. A man wrapped a long light gray bandage over her forehead and around the back while tears streamed down her face. Daddy wasn’t anywhere around. Adam walked over to them and concentrated really hard.

  A fireman made his way over to Adam’s mother. “I just got word they’ve located him. He’s been taken into custody ma’am.”

  Fire reflected in her wide, glassy eyes. “Adam? Did you find him? Is he safe?”

  The fireman took her hand in his. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re still searching.”

  She sniffed and her face quivered. “He likes to hide. He’s usually under his bed, but he must have found his way out of the house. He’ll turn up safe somewhere. I know he will.”

  The fireman looked at the man in the ambulance. They nodded to one another. “Why don’t you lay down, ma’am,” said the man in the ambulance.

  Adam and Caroline climbed inside and stood next to his mother. He reached out to touch her but his hand fell right through. He tried to kiss her cheek but there was nothing there. “Hide,” he told her.

  Caroline put her arm around him and laid her head on his shoulder. Her static-filled voice shook. “She can’t hear you.
Even if she did, mommies never hide. They just keep looking. Forever.”

  A LITTLE THING LIKE DEATH

  First published electronically on Isotropic Fiction 2014

  Sometimes, when I was half asleep, I remembered what my life was like before I came to the Cedar Springs Rejuvenation Clinic. At least that’s what I told myself. The medication made it hard to remember a darn thing.

  There had been a beach and waves that crashed upon the sand. I’d walked along it every morning before meeting my wife on the back deck for breakfast. The tangy bitterness of grapefruit danced across my tongue, a taunting trick of the mind for a mouth that hadn’t tasted anything in months. I hadn’t walked in six. Dear Kate had been gone twice that. Age had stolen everything from me.

  The door squeaked open, allowing the glaring light of the hallway and the drone of the nurses’ chatter into my room. The nurses rarely left me alone for more than ten minutes these days, looming over me like vultures.

  It wouldn’t be long now. At least I hoped it wouldn’t. This was no way to live.

  How had Kate survived this place? I’d tried to visit, but that wasn’t allowed. I’d even tried to bribe my way in, but no one would take my money. Then, after all the money I’d invested in this new, experimental treatment, in this center, in her rejuvenation, I received the ultimate insult. She’d never come back to me.

  She promised, lying in bed, that last morning we’d had together before they came for her. “Don’t worry, Bill, I’ll be back and better than ever. I promise. You don’t think a little thing like death could keep us apart do you?”

  I’d waited for months, listening to the waves crash on the beach alone until my body couldn’t wait any longer. Now I was here too. The first thing I planned to do with my new body was to hunt that woman down and find out why she’d left me after all the years we’d been together.

  “Mr. Jackson, it’s time for your medication.”

  Of all the nurses at the Clinic, why had they stuck me with Obermeyer? I’d paid good money to be here, dammit. I deserved a nurse like I’d had back at home. Molly, she’d been a sweet young thing. Always ready with a dimpled smile and she’d had a nice backside too.