Just Another Run Away Teen

The fog is so thick that I could not tell what surrounded me. Was I in a forest? A cliff? Would the next step I took plunge me into death? Even as I walk nothing becomes clear. The ground beneath my feet is dry and I can see tiny pebbles that my sneakered feet press into the dirt that makes a small gravely sound.

I take a few more steps and a figure before me appears. I pause to look at it as its square shape moves towards me turning from an undiscernible blob to the more defined form of a creature. A few more paces forward and I can make out that it is an animal. Horns with tips that looked dipped in ink protrude from silky black hair around its head. Its ears twitched under its horns as it assessed me, as I assessed it. Its eyes were depthless pools of night, and I found the misty surroundings start to disappear as I look in those eyes. Soon enough all I can see is the dark pools. All I can hear is my own breath matching up with the creatures.

“Then I wake up.” I tell Dr. Reid, my psychiatrist.

He sits in the chair across from me, one leg propped up over his knee as he scribbles away on his notepad. “You have been having this dream multiple times you said?”

“Yes, every night this month.”

"Since the one-year anniversary your son went missing?”

I swallow. He wasn’t missing, he had run away. There was a difference. If he was missing that would come with the assumption that someone was keeping him from coming home. He had run away. He had left a note saying he promised he would come back. I don’t say any of that.

“Yes.”

Dr. Reid is an older than I. His head was shiny with some kind of bald cream. I swear I could shave looking into it. The rest of his face is layered in wrinkles of a stressed old man. You would think someone who understands the workings of the mind would take better care of his stress.

“Occurrences like this can happen during anniversaries. It is a hard time.”

I rub my hand through my own thinning hair, “It felt different. The bull has to mean more than that.”

“A lot of cultures believe that dreams have meaning. Messages sent from the subconscious. There is no definite science proving that. If you are looking for meaning in something you are going to find it.”

“If this was a one-time dream, I might feel that way, but this has been the same dream every single night.”

Dr. Reid looked up at my sudden tone. He sighed and nodded, “You know I am not one to try and bullshit you. I don’t want you clinging to a dream as some form of false hope.”

I look down. He was right. The doctor was always right. I was trying to make this into something that it wasn’t. Jarred was not coming home. He would have now if he has left of his own free will.

“Thank you, Dr. Reid. I just needed something to look forward to these days.”

“Have trust in the detectives working your case, and the private detective you hired as well.”

“It’s a little hard to these days.”

“I understand. I don’t want you to lose hope entirely, you never know out there.” Dr. Reid stood, signaling that our session was at its end. I stood as well and shook his hand, “I’ll see you in two weeks Dan.”

I left his high-rise office. I didn’t wave goodbye to Sherry, his receptionist who has been hitting on me since I started these pointless sessions, although I am sure that she waved goodbye to me.

Down on the street there was a strange kind of comfort in the city bustle. The rush and hum of the cars as I walked down the street. The slight hiss of steam as I passed an alley way. The chatter of people on their phones as they passed, too busy to know that I was a shattered man with a missing son.

A year and a month ago it started a night like any other. I had finished my shift at the night security guard at a hospital. I came home late, but my son Oliver, stayed up that late playing video games. Some parents might crack down on that kind of thing saying it was unhealthy for a young 16-year-old to be up that late but, he was passing all his classes. The truth is that selfishly, I liked coming home to him. He would hear me open the door because the bottom of the door dragged on the ground a bit, and he would come out of his room with that half-smile on his face.

His mother had left us when he was four, so he didn’t remember her much and we had been living the bachelor life ever since. Pizza and burgers for dinner. Weekends out playing volleyball at the beach. Trips to the arcade since he was six. I had never felt more complete as a father then when Oliver was in my life.

That night however, I came home, and the place was quiet. I closed the door and looked expectantly at the door to his room. Nothing. The small crack below the door was dark which was strange given that his computers usually cast a small blue glow.

“Oliver?” The apartment mocked me with my own echo.

Panic gripped me, and only parents would understand the feeling of complete panic when something is not right when the child is concerned. I slam open his door with so much force it hits the wall and bounces back towards me, hitting my arm. I flip on the light and blink a few times as the light blinds me. The bed, though unmade is empty. His desk which is covered with different monitors and gaming equipment has stacks of soda cans surrounding it, a bag of chips lays open next to his computer. Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

I called his cellphone, but as soon as the ring started in my ear, I saw the slight buzz and light on his desk as my face popped up. “Old man calling.” He never went anywhere without his phone. My immediate reaction was calling the police. They told me to wait 24 hours. In my panic I knew I could not. I left the apartment and walked the streets calling his name. Multiple people shouted down from their windows for me to shut up, but I didn’t care. By morning there was nothing left of my voice. The only thing that remained was a hollowness that nothing could replace.

When the police arrived, they searched his room and found a note with only two sentences. “I have run away. I promise I’ll be back soon.”

As soon as the police had found that I knew that they would never commit the energy they would have put in if they hadn’t found that note. I dipped into everything I had ever saved. I pawned everything I owned leaving only his room untouched. I hired a private detective. The only thing we found was one video of him exiting the building and climbing into a small beat-up Honda Civic with blurred out license plates. Somehow the cameras in the city lost it in some blind spot and that was the last piece of information we had on him.

I spent months hanging up posters and pleading with the media to get this story out there. The story wasn’t interesting to them. Just another runaway teen.

That same hollowness remained with me as I walked back to my building after my appointment. I had work in a few hours which seemed the only time I almost forgot his messy hair, his laughing eyes, and his rage of pimples.

I opened the door to the apartment, the door scraping across the floor as it always did. The window was left open and a small breeze that was caught from in between the buildings pushed the sheer curtains into a lazy drift. I sighed as I closed the door behind me and imagined his door opening like it should. Only this time when I turn around, he’s there. He stands a foot taller, and his hair is cropped short. He has lost weight either from growing or not eating but I don’t care. He is right there, breathing. His expression is scared, and I want nothing more then to wipe it away for that half smile.

“Da—” He can’t finish because he is already in my arms. It feels different since both of us has changed, but there is no other feeling to explain the absolute explosion of love as I feel the warmth of his body safe at last. I don’t care that I am crying and that my tears soak his shirt. He is crying too, he sniffles. I hold him at arm’s length, almost afraid that if I left go, he will disappear. His eyes lock on mine and I can't help but notice that they have always been the same depthless night as the bull who frequented my sleep.

“Am I dreaming?” I say, voice thick with uncontrollable emotion.

He smiles and I know that I am not. His most classic feature, that damn half smile spreads over his face and there has never been a happier moment in my life as he says, “No, it’s not a dream.”

I laugh and pull him in again. When we part again his face looks worried again, “Dad look, I’m sorry, this is what happened—”

I shake my head, “I don’t care about that now, I’m only happy that you are home.”