Her hair was falling out.  She ran her fingers through its lengths, a fistful coming out and dropping to the hungry sink below, the rushing water of the faucet sweeping it off to its watery death.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Fast Forward

            Kaida looked up into the sterile light fixture above her.  A bee hummed and darted across the room to the window.  Kaida was allergic to bees.  She hoped to God it wouldn’t come near her.  The fan in the corner circled toward her, blowing cool air her way.  Her hair fluttered, sending loose strands floating through the air, eventually statically magnetizing themselves to whatever unfortunate item of clothing had enough clingy, dry, static electricity running through it to be forever practically inseparable.  Kaida shivered, the pungent aroma of the guy sitting in front of her wafting into her nose from the fan’s current of air.  Her heart beat faster. Her palms sweat more.  She closed her eyes and wished she were at home.   She felt trapped.  The obligatory office fish tank gurgled.  “Kaida Beck,” the very plump nurse called, mispronouncing her name.

Rewind

            Kaida and her sister were tired after the long day of playing in the sun.  Sora, being the fairer sister, was burned to a crisp after so many hours outside, but the summer air was too inescapable to resist.  They had been cooped up in school for so long and had only just been released the day prior.  Kaida couldn’t help but giggle herself giddy in the warm air folly.  She lay down in the damp grass, her sister beside her, watching as the dark clouds rolled in from the east.

            That night it stormed, hard. Kaida lay beneath the covers of her bed, thinking about the wind god, Euros.  “What’s the point of being free from school if it’s just going to rain?”  She asked her sister, who was sure to be asleep in the bed next to hers.  Only a soft snore replied.

Fast Forward

            “Name,” the officer asked, starkly. 

            “Sakaye.”

            “No, your daughter’s name. The one that was stolen.”

            “Sora.  Sora Beck.”  Kaida watched as her mother dabbed at her eyes; the police officer just stared at them both. 

            “And what did this one see? She was present at the time; I presume?”  He asked.

Rewind

            Kaida and Sora lived in a small house with their mother and father and Granny Mei.  On nice days, the two sisters would wake up with their beloved sun shining in on their faces in their tiny shared room at the back of the house.  Before bed, their family would drink tea and their father would create hand puppet stories for the young girls in the candlelight.  They had electricity, of course, but on those special nights when their father was home from the city, the candles provided an ambient sanctuary atmosphere.  Kaida loved these nights.  The tea warmed her belly in the cooling evening and the stories warmed her mind.

Fast Forward

            “I don’t know why I came.”  The hard, pleated leather chaise lounge offered little support to Kaida’s small frame.  Her eyes had looked more sunken when she looked in the mirror that morning.  She had become an insomniac in her adult life.  Her work had suffered because of it.  She was finding it harder and harder to prop her head up far enough on her neck to focus.  Her mother had always told her that she looked like a droopy-faced dog, but now she looked even worse. 

            “Perhaps you need closure,” offered the woman in the padded gray armchair.  She looked down at the notes she was taking every now and again, and then back at Kaida.  Kaida wondered if the therapist had indeed spent so much time in here that she had memorized the room entirely.  Her eyes never strayed from her patient.  Kaida also wondered if she should add hypochondriac to the long list of labels she gave herself. 

            This appointment had been made in a moment of desperation, when Kaida felt most lonesome.  It had cost her most of her meager savings.  Her bank account had never had a comfortably padded cushion of money that she could frivolously spend, but she made do, as a young college girl should.  The hours she was going to have to work to make up this expenditure made her stomach churn, not to mention the fact that she had given up eating that morning. 

            “It’s not uncommon for someone in your… situation to remember details years after they happened.”  Kaida hadn’t known what had happened that night, although she could remember flashes of light and indistinct shouting. 

Rewind

            The flashlight blinded the boy holding the pick.  “Back off,” he whispered tensely to his accomplice.  He waved his hand, motioning for the other man to step back from the doorway.  The older of the two crept back a few steps, almost instantly getting re-drenched by the downpour of rain.  The boy, lock pick in hand, knelt to the low doorknob, opening it in a matter of seconds.  He was always the best at it.  His older brother had practiced for years, but could never quite figure it out.  They had been given strict orders.  They messed this up, they would never eat again.  The floor plan had been exactly as he had said it would be.  He, their semi-anonymous benefactor; he, the unseen job hunter. 

            Kaida had finally fallen asleep.  Her brain buzzed with all the incredible things she hoped to accomplish in the coming vacation from school.  Sora woke with a start.  The cat had leapt onto her bed, making her whole body jolt from the ripple effect.  She could hear the soft purring of the motor that seemed to be inside the scrawny, black Cornish Rex.  “Come here,” Sora beckoned, quietly, reaching out into the blackness for the soft shadowy animal.  The cat nuzzled the young girl’s face, curling into her side.  Sora wrapped her arm around him and snuggled into his warmth, dozing off into ethereal consciousness. 

            Suddenly, a blinding light burned her sleepy eyes.  The cat, just as frightened as she was, bolted under the bed.  “Is that her?”

            “I don’t know.  It was such an old picture that he gave us.”

            “He should have been more specific, or should have done it himself.”

            Sora looked into the light, but couldn’t make out the faces behind it.  One of the faces lunged at her, grabbing at her face before she could scream.  Kaida slept peacefully in the other corner of the room, somewhat hidden by the mountain of blankets she insisted on having. 

            When the Beck family woke up, they found their front door hanging open, their china cupboard where they stashed those few valuable items raided, and only one daughter in their midst, when there should have been two.  Oddly, their cat went missing for two whole weeks, and then magically returned, looking scrawnier than normal and practically plastered with those pesky seeds whose minute hairs clung to your clothes.  He was given a bath and some food and some love and soon was doing alright again.

Fast Forward

            “My sister is still missing,” Kaida told the therapist.  “She’s probably dead by now.  God only knows what happened that night.”  The woman bent studiously over her notepad.  She shook her pen furiously in the air, willing more ink to spread like honey from its tip.  She threw it to the ground and shuffled through her pencil cup beside her.

            “I can see why that would be hard.  You coming to me today was a valid thing to do. Do you want to talk about what you do remember at all?”

            “Like I said,” Kaida mentioned, “I don’t remember much.  For some reason, I just hear buzzing when I think about it.”

            “Buzzing like a bee?”

            “I guess that would be what you would call it.”

Rewind

            “If this isn’t the one he wants, then fuck ‘im.”

            “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Nos.”

            “Don’t call me that!” Nos said.  His brother immediately shushed him. 

            “Do you want to get caught, Noseeum?”

            “I said, don’t call me that,” he whispered, remembering himself.  “My name is…” but he was cut off by the howling of a coyote making a fresh kill nearby.

            “Bzzzzzzz,” his brother mocked. 

Fast Forward

            After her therapist appointment, Kaida treated herself to a cheap piece of pizza that she bought with the pocket change she could manage to unearth from her purse, and called her mother.  “You haven’t spoken to us in so long; how are you, Dragon?  Are you keeping up in school?”  Kaida hadn’t managed to go to class in over a week.  She didn’t understand why the depression hit so hard then, years after her sister’s disappearance. 

            “I’m fine,” she lied.  “Just haven’t told you I loved you in a while.”

            “That’s sweet of you.  I love you too, Dragon.”

            “Why do you keep calling me that?”

            “Dragon?  Didn’t realize that I was.  Old habits die hard.  Do you remember Granny calling you that?”

            “Yeah.”  Her grandmother’s death still hurt.  She was strict and domineering, but always had the best dirty jokes that she told the girls when their parents were out of earshot, or so they thought.

            “Call if you need anything.  Your father and I love you very much.”

            “Bye.” Click.

Fast Forward

            “Dammit!” Kaida shouted at the mirror.  Salty tears burned her eyes and mixed with the running water below, each teardrop indistinguishable from the water.  She watched as her beloved soft brown hair stuck to the dirty vitreous china. She clawed at her head, each time coming away with more and more follicles.  A bald spot started to form above her ear.  At this point she only had one choice.

Rewind

            When Kaida woke up, the house was eerily silent.  Her sisters bed was empty.  Her grandmother was asleep on the couch and her parents were absent.  She looked out the small window at the front of the house and saw them speaking softly to each other under an umbrella outside.  Her mother was folded into her father, his massive body hiding her small frame. Her father had been away, working in the city; he wasn’t supposed to be home for another week. 

            Granny Mei was awake suddenly.  “Come here, little Dragon.”  She sat up on the old cloth couch she was sitting on.  Kaida sat down beside her.  “Your sister is missing.  We think she was kidnapped last night.”  Kaida didn’t know what to think.  She looked down at her fingers and studied a hangnail.  The large grandfather clock chimed 8 am.  “Do you remember what happened at all?  Do you remember anything from last night?”  Kaida shook her head.

            Later that morning, her mother took her to the police station to report her sister’s disappearance.

Fast Forward

            The small cordless razor buzzed on her scalp.  She watched the hair flutter to the floor, most of it missing the sink where the water was still running.  Steam rose from the faucet, warming Kaida’s face.  That was the thing about this apartment; the water always ran unreasonably hot and would turn so ridiculously quickly.  Many times it had scorched Kaida’s body while she had been in the shower. 

            She looked into the mirror, tears streaming down her face.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  Years after her sister’s kidnapping and she was struggling with PTSD-induced hair loss.  She had read about it in her psychology class.  It had always been interesting to her how the mind and body were so intertwined.

            She rubbed her now almost bald head, the small hairs prickling her palm, then set the razer down and turned off the faucet.  She slowly undressed, revealing the supple breast, but ribcage emerging from tan skin stretched tightly, the small, bone-showing thighs with the much envied thigh-gap between.  In an apocalypse, the cannibals would starve.

            She turned on the water in the bathtub, plugging the tub to flood the bottom with the warm water.  Her head spun, still feeling the ghost vibrations from the razor.  She lowered herself into the tub, careful to sit nearest the faucet so that she could quickly turn it off, should it decide to start scalding her.

Rewind

            When Sora was born, Kaida was two years old.  She remembered being thrown out of the house with her father while her grandmother helped her mother.  Her father, being a kind man, bought them both ice cream from the corner store, then took the youngster to the park.  Kaida cooed loudly.  She didn’t understand what was happening at the time; but her mother suddenly had a new baby when she was allowed back in the house. 

            Kaida was fourteen when her sister went missing, both on the cusp of womanhood.  Kaida grew breasts before Sora did.  In school, Kaida’s only male friend teased her for her “mosquito bites,” as he called them.  Later, during junior year of high school, that same friend would push her into the men’s locker room at school and put himself inside her while two of his friends held her down.  Men weren’t to be trusted.  She never did report his abuse. 

Fast Forward

            With her newly shaven head, Kaida put on a beanie and a warm sweatshirt and walked to the bar down the street, being sure to lock up her apartment tight.  She ordered the cheapest glass of wine that she could. 

            “Hi” a deep voice said behind her.  She swiveled to see who it was.  “I like your hat.”  Kaida touched the navy threads, fluffing the pom-pom on the end. 

            “Thanks,” she said.

            “I’m Nicholas.”  He looked puzzled.  “Aren’t you in my chemistry class?”

            “Yeah.  I know you.”

            “You haven’t been there in a while; are you okay?”

            “It’s a long story.”

            “I’ve got time,” he said.  Kaida felt like she was in a dollar store romance novel. 

            “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

            “Hey.  I’m just trying to be nice.  Jeesh.”

            “I’m going to go.  I’ll see you in class, alright?”

            “Bitch.”

            She left quickly after that.  Somethings never change.

Rewind

            Sora half- dreamt.  She was in that weird mindset half between sleeping and being awake where anything was possible.  The cat was still purring beside her.  Suddenly, a blinding light forced her awake again.  “Mom?”  she asked.  Her mother sometimes snuck into her daughters’ room to watch them sleep.  In a way it was creepy, but the girls always knew that it was done out of love. 
            “Is that her?”

            “If it’s not than fuck ‘im.” 

            One of the faces lunged at Sora, grabbing at her neck and face so that she could not scream.  The face put a cloth over her mouth.  It burned her. 

            She woke up on the floor, encased in an airy metal box.  She was wrapped tightly in a blanket, but her hands were tied and there was something over her mouth that tasted bitter when she swallowed. She could hear muffled voices around her.  One of the sides of the box opened.  So she was in a van.  The faces from before peered at her, along with a new one as well.  “I’m sorry, Sora,” the new face whispered to her.  It sounded like her uncle. 

            “How old is she?” Someone else from behind the whispering face that had betrayed her said.

            “12, I think.”

            “Has she bled yet?” It asked.

            “No.”  The two faces unwrapped her from the blanket, throwing it back into the vehicle to be dealt with later.  One of them slung the young girl over their shoulder, carrying her to another running vehicle parked across the road.  Instantly she was drenched from the summer rain.  She was laid down in the backseat of the car.  Whispering Face got in behind her, resting her feet on his lap. She could see, in the light coming from the radio in front, that Whispering Face was indeed her estranged Uncle Michael that she or her family had not seen for years. 

            Eventually the rain stopped and the vehicle that she was now in drove into the foggy, grey morning.

Fast Forward

            Sora woke in the dawning sun.  Golden light streaming into her bed.  “Come on, get up!” She beckoned her sister, scaring the sleeping cat from his place next to her.  “It stopped raining!  Let’s ask mom to take us to the beach!”

            “Five more minutes,” Kaida mumbled. 

            “We’ll leave without you.”

            “Fine.  It’s time to get up then.”  Kaida blinked in the warmth of the summer sun.  The open window let in the sweet smelling breeze that hung heavy with the moisture from the previous shower. 

            Kaida woke with tears in her eyes to a soft rain pattering her rooftop.  Plink plonk plink, it chimed.  Her trimmed hair prickled the back of her neck.

– Saige Thornley

Author’s Note: “A Cry in the Night” wasn’t one of those stories that I really had to think about.  It began as a piece for a college writing course, but when it came time to work on the assignment, I simply sat down and it was there.  It tumbled out of me and that was that.  Although this isn’t a true story, perhaps in some way it is inspired by real life or at least real people, or maybe this was just the story I needed to write.