A Game of Hide and Seek

Most little girls Heidi's age kept diaries to write about their own lives, dreams, and passions. Heidi's diary was different. It held none of her own stories. Instead, the diary was a never-ending book that held the literal lives of anyone who found her. It was not her own in the sense of having her stories written inside the delicate pages, it was hers because she was the reason it existed.

Heidi held a stranger's photo in her trembling, cursed hands. She placed the image between her teeth, and ripped out the section of the paper with the stranger's face. Holding her heart shaped locket in one hand, she ran her thumb along the clasp, and the locket popped open. She gently placed the torn piece of paper inside the delicate silver heart, then snapped the locket closed.

“He will be safe now,” she thought, looping the locket's chain around her neck.

She stared at her locket, cupping it in her palms. For as long as Heidi could remember, the tiny piece of jewelry had hidden her and her curse from anyone whose pictures she put inside the locket. She didn’t know how, but she didn’t really care, as long as the locket continued saving lives.

As she tore the face off another photo, she glanced up at the time. A big round clock hung on the wall. Heidi realized she only had a few more minutes before people started to arrive at the department of records. The department’s closing time gave her an opportunity to do important stuff, mainly collecting people's photos from their records. She shoved a pile of photos into her flower-patterned backpack, then grabbed a few more random pieces of paper, and slid them into her dress pockets. With no more room to stash photos, she hauled the rest of the pile of papers into an empty file door, and slid the door closed.

“Time to hide,” she thought, standing up.

Suddenly she felt a presence behind her, and saw a looming shadow smother her own tiny one. Tears spilled from her eyes as she turned around.

“No,” she thought, holding her breath.

There was no one there.

“I did it again,” she thought weakly as she fell to her knees, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I just killed another one.”

She yanked her diary out of her backpack, terrified to hope that the human shadow behind her had been nothing but her imagination. She turned to the place she had left her bookmark. That morning, the strip of pink ribbon had separated the pages of full paper from the empty ones. Now there was a new story written on the once-empty sheet of paper. It now held the whole life of a man. He had seen her, and whenever a person looked at her, the curse took them, and hid their life inside her diary.

Heidi sobed, her tears becoming dark circles where they hit the paper. Frustrated, she closed the diary, hugging it tightly to her chest.

“How did that man find me? Why was he even in the building?” She thought angrily. She looked up from her diary and stared accusingly at the security cameras. The cameras on the desk were used for taking and printing out a person's photos, that way the hunters had faces to go with the personal information of every person in the city. However, there was one person who lived in the city, who had no such records.

Suddenly it clicked. She knew why the man had come here. Heidi didn’t need to read his life to know that he was a hunter. The only people who could travel outside of the curfew hours were the hunters.

“That probably means he was sent to look for me,” she realized.

Furious, she grabbed the nearest throwable item, which turned out to be an empty office trash can, and hurled it at the desk camera. The trash can hit the desk camera, and the two objects clattered to the ground.

“Have fun taking photos for your stupid records. I wonder how you’ll do it without this,” she thought, shoving the camera into her backpack. Still angry, she glanced around the empty room, noticing the stray photos that littered the floor. She glanced back at the clock. She didn’t have time to clean up anymore than she already had. If one hunter was here, there were probably others on the way.

“Stupid hunters,” she thought, shouldering her backpack as she dove for a vent opening. She hooked her fingers under the cover, and slid it off. She crawled into the shiny square tunnel, then slammed the cover back over the opening. When she got to the main tunnel that hung directly over the main room, she stopped and waited.

“Stupid curse!” she thought as she settled down. “People have been randomly vanishing from this building. Of course the hunters are going to come and investigate!”

The hunters were the men who policed and lead the country. They had installed special cameras everywhere, and created all kind of dumb rules that everyone had to obey, such as curfews, checkpoints, and even passports that were required to leave your designated city. For their own controlling reasons, hunters had become obsessed with wanting to know where everyone was at all times. It was hard enough living with a curse that killed anyone who saw her, but hunters made it ten times worse by constantly seeking her out.

Heidi jumped suddenly when she heard the record center’s front door squeak open. She laid still, hoping that no one had heard the thump of her weight hitting metal. She quietly settled onto her belly, listening to the group of hunters below stomp around. They were likely blocking off the main room with their bright yellow hunter wire.

“It appears the murderer walked right out of the crime scene.” One of them started. “Shall I begin typing this one up for the captain?” he asked his friend as he moved around the room. Heidi winced at the use of her criminal title.

“Would you zip it ?” the other man said. Hiedi heard him take a camera from his belt and snap a few pictures of the room.

“No sir, I shall not.” the first replied.

“Then perhaps it would be a good idea for you to suck that sarcasm. We don’t actually need it right now.”

“Ah. Shall I be straightforward and simple? Would that calm your soul sir? Very well. It appears that the murderer is… hmm not here.” the hunter said as he shuffled the papers around the room.

“Thank you very much for that accurate observation. I would suggest you keep looking for clues now that you’ve gotten that off your chest.”

“Ah.” the hunter mused. “It appears that I must simply stop existing altogether, or else you shall have a complete tantrum.”

Heidi slowly crawled backward into the deeper shadows of her hidey-hole. She moved with exaggerated slowness as the two hunters continued to squabble below her, searching the building as they argued. It quickly became apparent that they were going to tear this place apart before they quit looking for her. One of the hunters moved towards the direction of the vent, deepening Heidi's anxiety.

Suddenly she heard the vent cover squeak open, metal sliding across metal. Heidi's eyes went wide.

“No!” she pleaded mentally. “Ignore it, please just ignore it!”

“Ah... What do we have here?” a hunter muttered, whistling for the second hunter to join him.

“Looks like we found our ghost.” the gruffest one commented. Heidi heard the cover hit the floor as the hunter climbed into the vertical part of the tunnel.

“No! No! No!” she shrieked. “Don’t bring him up too!”

It was only a matter of time before they both crawled up the vertical shaft and found her trembling in the overhead vent. As the second investigator joined his buddy, Heidi knew she had to think fast.

She looked around. There was nothing here, and no way to escape. She had seconds to come up with some place to hide, or a lot more people were going to die. But hiding would be impossible. Why did hunters have to be so obsessed with finding her? How was she going to save them? True, they made a lot of people's lives a whole lot harder, but weren’t they just as much a person as she was?

Click-click! Heidi heard a hunter take another photo of the room with his fancy camera.

Suddenly an idea hit her.

“The camera! Of course!” Hiedi dug the camera from her backpack. She had a plan to stay hidden, and stop the hunters from seeking her out. All she had to do was count to ten.

She slipped her diary out of her backpack. The fabric rustled gently as she pulled her book out, and opened it. The hunters would hear her, but they were going to find her anyway. This way, they had a chance at surviving. She found a blank page, and with a loud ripping sound, she tore it from the book.

“Ah!”One of the hunters shouted excitedly. “Something is in the vents! Get a flashlight!”

“One,” she thought. Determined, she gripped the camera in one hand, and fed the torn sheet of blank paper into it.

“Two.” The hunters shuffled around below her. “Get out now! We know where you are!”

“Three.” Heidi aimed her camera at the entrance of the vent tunnel. She rolled the zoom button around, focusing on the point of the tunnel where the hunters heads would pop up in a few seconds.

“Four.” The hunters fumbled with their pistols. Thank goodness the tunnel was too dark for her to be seen clearly right away.

“Five.” The now well-armed hunters squirmed into the vent. Click click! Her camera flashed, their pistols cocked.

“Six.” The men screamed for her to put her hands up. She fumbled with the photo as the camera printed it out. After a moment, the photo showed the two men, screeching and pointing their weapons right at her.

“Seven.” She put the paper between her teeth.

“Eight.” She ripped the photo, making sure to leave the faces of the hunters intact.

“Nine.” The men ran their thumbs over buttons of their flashlights.

“Ten.” She shoved the tiny pieces of paper into her locket. She snapped the silver heart shut as bright light surrounded her. She closed her eyes, praying none of them had seen her yet.

She cracked an eyelid after a moment of the men’s stunned silence. Then the light surrounding her floated to the walls, exploring the rest of the vent. The hunters searched for the missing murderer, while Heidi held her breath.

“There’s no one there.”

Hiedi let out a sigh of relief, grateful that the hunters were safe. Now that their pictures were in her locket, it would be impossible for them to see her. One day, she hoped to have the picture of everyone in the whole world inside her locket. The day that she could live without hiding, would be the greatest day of her life.

Cautiously, she began to crawl out of the vent, following the hunters as they backed out of the square tunnel. Before she reached the exit, one of the hunters pulled out a communication device. Heidi froze.

“Ah. Good day to you as well sir. Is this central?” He paused as the man on the other line replied, then the hunter continued. “We need backup at the records department. Would it trouble you too much to send a search squad over here?”

After he ended the call, he turned around, and faced Heidi. For someone who couldn’t see her, he seemed to be looking directly into her horrified eyes.

“Apparently,” he said as walked towards her, “We’re gonna play a little game of hide and seek.”