Hidden Cliques (WIP)

Prologue

September 21st, 2011

—

Music: Ghostly Garden - Pac-Man World

A young girl and her father are playing around in their backyard. The mid-afternoon sunset has begun, and most households are either getting set up for dinner, or their occupants have left to eat out.

"Come and catch me, daddy!" the little girl squeals, frolicking around the yard. The grass nps at her bare ankles, and the soles of her bare feet are covered in dirt.

The father runs behind her, pretending to have trouble catching her so his daughter has a chance. "I'm gonna get ya!" he says, grinning.

The girl starts laughing, then trips over a rock and tumbles into the grass. This allows the father to finally catch up to her, at which point he starts tickling her all over her stomach and arms. Despite now having a couple of small cuts on her legs from the fall, the girl continues to giggle. She's got a lot of tolerance for pain, especially for a nine year-old. "Stop it, daddy!" the girl manages to get out through her laughter.

The dad grants her wish and lets go of her. He examines the cuts on her knee and asks her, "You need a Band-aid for that?"

"No! No Band-aids! I'm a big, strong girl!" she exclaims, crossing her arms and standing proudly.

"Yes, you are," the dad chuckles, shaking his head in amusement. His daughter has always been one to stare down any challenge with dignity, to never accept defeat, to always reign victorious over her battles. "You're my tough little Brookie-Cookie."

"I love you, daddy."

The dad's smile grows. "I love you too, Brooklyn."

Brooklyn begins giggling again. "I'm hungry now," she says.

"Okay. Let's go inside and get you cleaned up, then we'll see what Mom's fixing for dinner." The father takes her hand and pulls her up. Just as they start to walk back towards the house, however, they hear a rustling from behind them.

"Daddy, what's that?" Brooklyn asks, holding onto her dad's shirt in fear.

"Go inside, honey. I'll check it out," her dad tells her.

Brooklyn nods, then runs inside the house through their back door. Her dad slowly approaches the thicket behind their house, which merely exists as a partition with the house behind theirs. Brooklyn presses her face against the sliding glass door and watches as her dad disappears through the myriad of trees and grass. She's mature enough to know that there's no way it could be a monster or some other fictional creature, and that it was probably just a rabbit or a squirrel that made that noise. Her dad will be back in no time.

Five minutes pass. Then ten minutes. Then twenty. A half hour goes by, and her dad has not yet returned. Her mother is upstairs, so Brooklyn takes it upon herself to investigate. She puts her socks on, quietly creaks open the door, and tiptoes outside. She carefully makes her way to the thicket and navigates through it, avoiding the branches and leaves that scratch at her skin and clothes.

When she reaches the other end, she finds herself in an empty space between the two houses behind them. Their backyards are empty, with no sign of her dad anywhere.

"Dad?" Brooklyn calls out. She looks all around her in search of him. He's not talking with the neighbors, he'd be home by now if he chose to walk home via the sidewalks, and he's not still in the thicket looking for anything. She considers asking the neighbors if they saw him, but is too shy to go up to them. His body isn't laying down anywhere, and there's no indication that he was attacked by something or hurt.

Brooklyn re-enters her backyard, shuddering. As she runs back to her house to tell her mom, theories of what happened to him go through her mind one after the other. She saw her dad go into the thicket, and she didn't hear anything (granted, she was far away and indoors), so what could've happened? Did he fall into a hole and get knocked out? Did someone bad come and take him away? It's like going through that thicket just made him magically vanish into thin air.

Whatever it was, all she knows is that her dad isn't here.