The Vanishing: Chapter 1
Here I am, staring at the blank ceiling of my tiny bedroom. The swirling fan sounds almost like the seawater on the beach coming to shore. I should have fixed that old fan months ago, but I let it be. I almost like that annoying sound, it reminds me of childhood every time I lie down on my bed with my mind wandering aimlessly in the ocean of sub-conscious. I have no idea what has happened to me. Empty. Scared. Anxious. Disturbed.
It all started ten days ago, August 23, 2023. It was my sister’s birthday. She turned ten that day, my favorite and lucky number. It was a beautiful Saturday morning; birds chirping, the smell of grass, warm summer breeze.
8:50am // I rolled my curtain up and opened my bedroom window, only to make eye contact with Cassie, my neighbor who I’ve had a crush on since 8th grade. It’s been 4 years, and this will be our last year together in high school. “Morning Ben!” she shouted with her infectious smile. “Hey Cassie,” I replied hastily, blushing like a fresh steamed crab. There is something about her that I just can’t get over. She is half Japanese, half Mexican. She has these beautiful brown eyes, black wavy hair, and the most gorgeous smile with dimples on her two cheeks. She’s about 5’4”, just 3” shorter than me. I have never asked her out. I guess I’m just too afraid of rejection. It’s almost the same feeling when I found out my aunt died few years ago when she was mowing her lawn because of heart attack. The first being worse than the latter.
9:10am // “Happy birthday Kim!” I shouted to my sister as I went downstairs to the kitchen. As usual, she was eating her favorite cereal Krave with her favorite orange bowl with the word “Dream” written on the inside. I always got into stupid fights over silly little things with my sister. Like that one time when she kept using my Peter Pan mug, or when I finished off her mint Oreos. I love those mint Oreos, and I love my sister too. The latter being more than the first, I guess.
9:17am // I went outside and took Skip, my seven-year-old golden retriever for a walk. She’s usually fast to relieve herself as soon as she sees grass, but not that day. So I took her for a longer walk in the neighborhood. “Good morning, Mrs. Ling!” I shouted to her as she was sweeping her patio. “Morning, Ben,” she replied as she squinted to see me from far away. She just turned sixty-four last Wednesday. Her husband passed away six months ago, and she has been living with her youngest son, Wes. Mrs. Ling is such an optimistic woman. She laughs so annoyingly loud, yet very infectiously lovable. She was born in Taiwan before coming here to Loma Linda, California, thirty-one years ago. She loves to bake, and she always gives us pies. Her apple pie is my favorite. She always puts cinnamon and caramel inside, two of my favorite flavors.
9:40am // I walked another three blocks to the stores. I passed Teddy’s, my favorite toy store since I was a kid. I got my UNO Stacko from there when I was four. I used to make strange creatures and buildings out of them instead of playing it like Jenga. Then I saw a box of a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. It’s a surreal scene of the ocean with a humpback whale jumping out of the water. A big full moon in the center of the background, and stars glimmering forming the Milky Way. I knew that I had to buy this for Kim since it was her birthday, but more than that, there were three of my favorite things: the moon, the stars, and the ocean.
My stomach was rumbling so bad since I hadn’t had anything since this morning. Plus, I needed to get my wallet before coming back to Teddy’s again. I kept thinking about Mrs. Ling’s apple pie. There were still some leftovers from last week. I quickly walked back home with Skip just strolling behind me being exhausted from the unusual morning walk. Her face looked so droopy, saliva everywhere dropping from her extremely moist tongue flopping out of her mouth like a glowworm.
10:22am // I got home and ran to the fridge, only to find the apple pie was gone! I knew it was Kim, she’s the only one in my family who likes cinnamon as much as I do. And so, like normal brother and sister, we argued and fought because of this silly little thing. Again. I didn’t know then, that my life would change forever in exactly 1 hour and 13 minutes. That I would never be the same, nor Kim, nor Skip, nor Mrs. Ling, nor my parents, nor the world I have lived in for 17 years.
10:25am // I ended up eating the leftover pizza, and it’s a vegan pizza that my mom bought last week with disgusting tomatoes splattered everywhere. It’s like diving into a bloody massacre. I hated it. I was so hungry it took me only three minutes to finish five slices up, although I felt like throwing up after every bite. I remember looking at the clock again to make sure that I could be back to “Teddy’s” by 11 am so that way I could go back home to wrap the puzzle nicely for my sister before lunch. It’s been a tradition in our family to celebrate birthdays during lunch instead of dinner because we are such a health-conscious family and eating a lot for dinner will make us fat. Well, my mom believes so anyway.
10:30am // I quickly ran upstairs to grab my wallet. I opened the door to my bedroom, and my sister was there.
“Hey Kim, what are you doing in my room?”
“Oh, I’m just looking through our family picture album that you have underneath your bed. So tell me, what was it like before I was born? When mom and dad were still together?”
I wasn’t expecting that at all. Something is just wrong for a ten-year-old girl with big gorgeous black eyes, almost like a puppy begging for a treat, to ask that question on her birthday. I slowly sit on my bed and hesitantly answer.
“Ummm… It was okay, I guess.”
“What do you mean ‘okay’? Was it nice to have mom and dad come to your piano recital and cheer you up when you felt nervous? Or when you had a bad day at school?”
I pretended to be calm and wise with everything I said, extremely careful and sensitive might be the better words, although I’m crying inside because I hate this topic. It’s just a nightmare, a dark history, an ugly duckling that no one wants to see, hear, or know.
“Yeah, it was nice. You know my problem with stage fright. Look, I need to go buy something downtown, can we talk about this later?”
“What are you buying?”
I was relieved that I managed to divert her talk, although I’ll have to make things up again now that she’s asking this question. I love Kim and the fact that she’s curious. But sometimes, it’s just too much for me who can’t really talk ‘deep stuff’ to a person.
“I am… going to Ted_ NO! Treat n’ Sweet! Yeah… I need to buy some ice cream for your birthday party! The strawberry cheesecake again, perhaps?”
Oh god, now I have to buy that over-priced vanilla ice cream. What were you thinking, Ben?! You barely have money.
Since dad divorced mom, we have been living in this 2-bedroom townhouse, barely fitting the 3 of us, plus Skip. Mom works as a cashier at a nearby grocery store, while I work part-time at Dairy Queen. It’s definitely not enough money for us since we live in California, where you can buy a second-hand car the same price of a monthly rent of a studio apartment. I’ve always dreamed of having a big house where I have a family with three children — two boys, one girl. I’ve dreamed about going to an Ivy League college studying Veterinary Medicine. Dream, dream, dream… Something that could never happen to me.
10.45am // I quickly ran to Teddy’s to buy that puzzle. The sky was getting cloudy, which was very unusual for a typical Californian summer morning. I told the store clerk to wrap it as a gift, a decision soon I regretted since it was a $5 extra. I cringed when I got my wallet out and handed the money over to her. Nevertheless, she was very friendly. We got talking and turned out that she knew Cassie since 2nd grade. They had had violin lessons together, and had been friends since then.
11.00am // I looked at my watch and realized that I better made my way home. After saying goodbye to her, I exited the store. SWOOOOSHH. A wind so strong, it almost swept away the wrapped gift from my cold hands. It really felt like there was going to be a storm or something. I was about to make my way home, when I remembered that I had to buy Kim the strawberry cheesecake ice cream from Treat n’ Sweet. I quickly ran there, which was about a block away, only to find that it was closed for the day. To be honest, I was relieved because I didn’t think I have enough money, but I really didn’t want to deliver bad news to Kim anymore, especially after that talk about mom and dad’s divorce with her. So I stopped by at a nearby grocery store to buy a cheap Ben & Jerry’s cookies n’ cream. I made my way home afterwards with my empty wallet. It was so thin, that for a second I thought I lost it since I couldn’t feel it in the back pocket of my jeans.
11.25am // The sky kept getting darker and the clouds thickened like there was going to be a storm. It was so weird since it was sunny and beautiful just two hours ago. There were some occasional lightning and thunder; the kind of lightning that blinded my eyes, and the kind of thunder that echoed in my ear drums, shook our windows, and made Skip crawled underneath the coffee table in our living room. I remembered mom calling Grandpa and Grandma asking where they were and telling them to be careful on the way here. I felt bad for Kim. She hadn’t had a normal birthday the past three years. Last year, mom was in the hospital because of a surgery on Kim’s birthday, and we ended up spending the whole day there. Two years ago, she was in a summer camp during her birthday, and she hated it because all the kids were mean to her. She’s a pretty tough little girl, so when she said someone was being mean to her, that must have meant the baddest of bullies out there.
11.28am // A ferocious wind blew outside our house. I swear it was at least forty miles per hour. I was starting to get concerned that no one would ever come for Kim’s birthday party. I could see in her face that she was thinking the same. I hated that face. It reminded me of that moment last year when she saw a beautiful snow globe in front of Teddy’s a week before Christmas. There was an old wooden house in the middle, the kind that usually existed in children’s story books, with a tiny, yet highly-detailed wreath on the front door. In front of the house, there was an elderly couple sitting on a wooden bench looking up to the sky, with a dog under their legs. Kim wanted this snow globe so bad, and she looked me in the eyes asking if I could buy it for her as a Christmas present. I looked at the price, and I knew that I couldn’t afford it, but I said “Sure!” to her anyway, because I didn’t want to disappoint her — a decision that I heavily regretted later. On the next Christmas morning, she opened her present from me only to find a diary book instead of the snow globe. She looked surprised, but not with a pleasant surprised face. She only said “Thank you…” and she didn’t say anything at all afterwards. Her face looked so sad, and I knew she was holding her tears. She just looked down and didn’t want to look at me. It was the worst feeling I had ever had in my entire life. And now it was happening again on her birthday.
11.30am // I turned on the TV and saw the news that the storm was happening throughout California. The newscaster’s name was Mary. I remember her name because I had a best friend in primary school named Mary Robinson. Her family had moved to New Zealand in the middle of 6th grade, and I always wondered how she was doing. I tried to find her on Facebook, but to no avail. Mom was getting anxious. She was upstairs calling Grandma, Grandpa, my cousin Ian, some of Kim’s friends and their parents, and even Mrs. Ling asking if they were coming or not. Kim was just sitting on the floor playing with her dolls. I was pretty sure Skip noticed the sadness in Kim’s face, because she got out from underneath the coffee table and cuddled on Kim’s lap. She had never done that before, not on a crazy stormy-full-of-lightning kind of day. Mom finally stopped calling people and went downstairs with her limp body and sad face. I could tell that this meant the party was cancelled. She approached Kim slowly.
“Hey… Kim…”
“Hey mom.”
“Listen… I just called everyone making sure that they will come to your birthday party…”
“And…?”
“And… I know this must be hard for you… But…”
BAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM
11.31am // A thunderbolt so loud, it shattered the glass and put a ringing in my ears. It was unbelievably bright like a camera flash just happened 2 inches from my eyes. The lights went out at the same time, and suddenly it was pitch dark. Skip started barking and crying at the same time. Kim was shouting my name and mom frantically. I ran to Kim immediately only to fall down because of the stupid flower vase on the floor. I quickly got myself up again and found my way to Kim. There was a very strange smell. It was a burnt smell, like when mom usually forgot to take out her meat loaf from the oven and later found the meat loaf to be completely burnt. But something about this smell told me that it was not a meat loaf because it was stronger. The light flickered half-on, blinking dimly, giving us a glance of our surroundings. I tried to find mom. I called her name, but then I realized she had been next to Kim before the light went out. I squinted my eyes in the half-dark space, and I saw only her clothes on the ground with smoke coming out from the rubble. She had vanished into thin air.
