Explorer of Edregon

John leaned back at his desk, resisting the urge to put his feet up as he frowned at the paperwork he was supposed to fill out for picking up that kid from Mr. Jones' property. Despite the fact that he'd never even done anything with all that land besides nail up a few No Trespassing signs, the old badger was fiercely territorial of his woods. Claimed he was planning on building a hunting lodge one of these days, and that he 'didn't want no squatters getting in the way.'

John had worked at this station for twenty-seven years now, and he was still waiting to see this hunting lodge get built.

As it were, it had taken John nearly half an hour of convincing and even going so far as to promise Mr. Jones a loaf of his wife's freshly baked pumpkin bread to get the man to agree not to press charges.

"Poor kid," John muttered, thinking back to the startled and dirty face of the drifter when he'd first discovered him sleeping in one of Mr. Jones' old hunting stands. The boy looked like he'd needed a hot meal and a warm shower more than anything, but John had been forced to bring him to the station instead. If Terrance hadn't been out on patrol with him, John probably would have just brought the boy back to his place. Lord knows Annie wouldn't have let the boy leave until he'd had some of her home cooking and was clean enough for church.

John sat there, wondering how Vinnie had even gotten to their little town in the first place. Based on his arrest record, he'd spent the last six years travelling all over the country, never staying in one place for more than a few weeks from what he could tell.

John and Annie had never had children of their own, so he couldn't exactly claim he would have done better, but John couldn't shake the feeling that it should have been the boy's parents sitting in that cell right now in place of him.

Shaking his head, John picked up the paperwork required for Vinnie's arrest and tossed it in the trash. Getting to his feet with a groan, he headed into the kitchen that consisted of little more than a closet with a coffee maker and put on a new pot. He figured by the time he finished his coffee, Terrance would be asleep at his desk again, and he could slip the boy out and over to his house without his partner ever knowing. If Terrance even remembered the boy in the morning, he'd just tell him he released Vinnie a little early.

While John waited for the coffee to brew, Terrance finally reappeared, scowling as he walked over to his desk and planted himself behind his old computer.

"That brat needs to have the book thrown at him," Terrance spat, shaking his mouse far harder than necessary and waking his computer up. "I told you not to talk Mr. Jones out of pressing charges."

"Terry, he's just a kid," John sighed, frowning at his partner. Terrance had been transferred to their small station from a much larger one a few years back, and the man was a bit more of a stickler for the rules than the rest of them. "Everyone makes mistakes when they're young. It's not like he robbed a bank, the kid was just wandering through what looked like some abandoned woods."

"You call it wandering, I call it what it is. Trespassing," Terrance shot back, giving him a pointed look. "Might be trespassing today, but who's to say it's not murder tomorrow. It always starts somewhere."

Before John could point out how ridiculous he was being, Vinnie's voice called out faintly from all the way down the hall.

"Hey guys… Either of you seeing this?"

"Figures. Bet he's on drugs too," Terry scowled, his chair creaking under his impressive weight as he forced himself back to his feet. "Still think we shouldn't have tested him?"

"For crying out loud, he's not on drugs," John sighed, putting down his mug and shaking his head. "Seriously Terry, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry we pick up is a serial killer in the making."

"Not if they're held accountable," Terry shot back, motioning for John to go first. "After you. But if we find him naked and smearing his own crap on the wall, you're the one cleaning it up."

"Good lord, Terry," John frowned, wondering just what the man had been forced to deal with working as a cop in the big city. Not wanting their disagreement to turn into anything more, especially not in front of the kid, John forced himself to let it go and head into the hallway.

Focused on getting his keys out of his pocket as he walked over to the one cell their tiny station had, he heard Vinnie shout one more time, before he was abruptly cut off.

"SONOFABI-"

"Hey now, careful with the language young ma…" John's words faltered as he looked up, finding an empty cell in front of him. John blinked, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. Despite that, the cell remained completely empty. Free of any recently picked up wanderers.

"Well? Is he decent?" Terry called from the main office.

"Uh… Terry, come here a sec."

"I told you, I'm not helping clean…" Terry walked over to him, stopping as he finally realized what John had. "...where the hell is the kid?"

"I was about to ask you that," John said, glancing at his partner. "You're the one who put him in there. Did you forget to lock the door or something?"

"What? Of course I locked the door! Look at it, it's still closed!" Terry said, pointing violently at the locked cell. "Did you let him out early again like you did with that hitchhiker last month?"

"How could I have, I was in the office the entire time!"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, before turning back to the empty cell.

Like the rest of their small station, the cell was pretty bare bones. Other than an admittedly less than comfortable cot, a blanket that was more for show than actual warmth, and a sealed window about half a foot wide, there wasn't much to look at. The bars were only a few inches apart, and there were vertical ones running every two feet from floor to ceiling, so it wasn't like he could have squeezed his way out.

John and Terry continued staring into the empty cell, neither of them quite sure what had happened.

"We just heard his voice a few seconds ago," John said, talking out loud more to himself than his partner. "Even if you had left the door unlocked, it's not like he had time to run away."

"Not that it matters, because I didn't leave the door unlocked," Terry scowled. "Kid was pretty scrawny... Maybe he slipped between the bars somehow?"

"I don't think anyone's that scrawny," John said, scratching his head.

"You got any better ideas?"

Rolling his eyes, John walked over and tried sticking his torso through the bar. Admittedly he was a bit… rounder around the gut than he'd been at Vinnie's age, but he couldn't even fit his torso through, let alone his midsection.

"No, definitely not through the bars," he wheezed, carefully pulling himself back out, his frown deepening. "What if he's one of those tubers Jim keeps going on about? And this is some sort of weird prank."

Jim was their youngest and newest member to join their four person strong force, and he was always going on about the videos he watched on his phone when things were slow.

"Kid didn't even have a phone on him, no way he was any sort of viral star," Terry said, shaking his head. "Maybe Jim or Francine stopped by without us knowing and took the kid for some reason?"

"Those two couldn't sneak their way through a graveyard," John snorted. "Besides, the kid just shouted something as I was walking toward him. I swear, one moment he was barely ten feet from me, the next, he was gone."

The two of them were silent, both staring into the empty cell as if it somehow held the answers. After nearly a full minute of silence, Terry finally whispered.

"What if we're on drugs?"

"What?" John said, looking at his partner like he'd gone mad.

"No, think about it! People don't just up and vanish out of locked cells! What if the kid somehow dosed us with something, and while we were hallucinating, imagining he was here all this time, he'd already taken off! That would explain everything!"

"Terry, when exactly would the kid have dosed us with something?" John said slowly, raising an eyebrow. The big city had certainly given Terrance a different viewpoint on things, but sometimes it caused him to go a bit far.

Like the time he'd found a pile of viscera out in the woods and had been convinced their town had a wandering cult preparing for a mass ritual, when it was actually just Margaret's dumping spot for all her taxidermy waste.

"Think about it! LSD can be absorbed directly into the skin, and the smallest of doses can cause you to start tripping. Maybe the kid had done so much of it there was some residue on his clothes, and we accidentally dosed ourselves. I've seen it before, that's got to be what happened!"

"So that's your theory?" John said, staring at his partner. "We're tripping on acid?"

"Yeah, I think so," Terry nodded, seemingly relieved he finally had a possible answer to how the kid had vanished.

The two of them looked at each other for a few more seconds, before John turned back to the empty cell, scratching his chin. Taking in a deep breath, he slowly let it out, counting to five and waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he frowned.

"...acid is kinda boring, huh?"

"No two trips are ever the same! So I've heard," Terry argued weakly. "If we're not hallucinating, what could it possibly be?"

The two of them continued staring into that mysterious empty cell, struggling to come up with an answer when John suddenly snapped.

"Ah, I think I got it!" He grinned, pleased with finally figuring out what must have happened.

"What?" Terry asked, practically pleading with him. "What do you think happened?"

"Only one thing it could be honestly," John shrugged. "Kid was raptured."

Terry stared at him, slowly closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. After a moment, he spoke, his eyes still firmly closed. "John… You go to church every Sunday, right?"

"Mhm."

"You'd call yourself a rather pious man, right?"

"Sure would."

"You and Annie even volunteer down at that soup kitchen the next town over, don't you?"

"Oh yeah, whenever we have the time."

"Then please, by all means, tell me why it is you think that dirty kid with an arrest record longer than some books got raptured, while you, annoyingly the most selfless man I know, who would give a homeless man the very shirt off his back, got left behind?!"

Terry's voice had slowly increased in volume until he was shouting by the end of his rant, spittle flying from his mouth and his eyes wide open and bulging as he stared down his coworker. For his part, John merely wiped his face on his sleeve, patting Terrance gently on the shoulder and giving the furious officer a sad chuckle.

"Oh Terry… You haven't been with our station all that long yet, but I wasn't always this way. I've got skeletons in my closet just like everybody else, and if God saw fit to leave me behind because of them, who am I to argue."

"You're joking." Terry said, staring at him in shock. All his anger seemed to fade away the moment his most frustratingly upstanding partner admitted he wasn't quite so perfect as he seemed. "What 'skeletons' could you possibly have that I don't know about?"

John's face suddenly lost its smile, turning hard and cold so fast Terry nearly flinched. He'd never seen the officer look like this before, and he gulped as the older man slowly leaned forward, his breath tickling his ear as he whispered.

"...I smoked a reefer once."

As John leaned back, giving him a conspiratorial wink, Terry could do nothing but let out an exhausted sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose and shooting the empty cell one last look.

"You know what… I don't even care anymore. Wanna toss the kid's paperwork in the trash and pretend like he never existed?"

"Way ahead of you," John chuckled, putting his arm around his large partner and steering him back into the office. "Come on, coffee's almost done, and I've got a brand new loaf of pumpkin bread Annie made me."

"Mr. Jones will just have to wait for the next one."