𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞. | ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴏɴᴇsʜᴏᴛs

𝟗𝟏𝟏, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲?

911, what's your emergency?

"H-hello?" My eight-year-old voice trembled, "Is this emergency services?"

"It sure is!" the cheerful male voice on the other end of the phone line answered. "What's the trouble, young man?"

I frowned. 'Young man?' Weren't they supposed to say '9-1-1, what's your emergency?!'

Maybe it was his first day. Either way, there was no time to waste.

"Something's wrong with my mom. She fell down all of a sudden." I pressed the phone to my ear and leaned back. My mother lay where she'd collapsed just minutes ago.

"Oh no! That's too bad! Someone will be over right away." Click!

I dropped the phone and crept over to my mother. The faint rise and fall of her chest was the only way I even knew she was alive. Wait...I hadn't told the ambulance people our address!

I ran back to the phone and dialed 9-1-1 again.

"151 Cliffmore Way! 151 Cliffmore Way!" I shouted into the receiver, then hung up. I shut my eyes tight. I wanted to scream, to shatter into a million pieces like the glass that had fallen from my mother's grasp just before she collapsed–

But all I could do was wait, hold her hand, and pray.

It felt like an eternity before the doorbell rang. I sprang to my feet, but froze when I turned the corner. A short, brown-haired white man was peering through the window with a grin on his face. He rang the bell again, more instantly this time, and I noticed he wore a red nurse's uniform. I left out a sigh of relief. The ambulance people were here. Everything was going to be okay. I yanked the door open.

"Hello there, young man!" The smiling man exclaimed. I read the name 'marbas' on his nametag, right beside the pens and stethoscope. "Where's the unlucky lady?" he asked.

"You mean my mom?" I stammered: "S-she's in here..."

Two expressionless assistants in identical red uniforms rolled a guernsey to where my mother lay, surrounded by shards of glittering glass.

"Up, up, and away!" Nurse Marbas rubbed his hands together excitedly while my mother was loaded into the guernsey and rolled out the door. A jolt of helpless fear shot through me: they were taking my mother away!

"Uh, mister? Can I ride with my mom to the hospital?" I asked the smiling man.

"Hospital?" Nurse Marbas wrinkled his forehead, confused. "Oh, there's no need for that. We're professionals, you see."

As the assistants loaded my mother into the back of the black ambulance, I looked over their shoulders at the sharp and jagged tools hanging from its walls. They weren't like any medical instruments that I'd ever seen.

"We'll take excellent care of your mother," the smiling man went on, "and call as soon asyou can see her!"

Nurse Marbas leapt into the rear compartment, his expressionless assistants climbed into the cab, and the black ambulance began to back out of the driveway.

I ran behind it, waving my hands. I wanted to yell at them to stop, but I was just a kid: who was I to contradict the professionals?

I was still standing there five minutes later, when flashing red-and-blue lights came skidding around the street corner. The two police officers muttered into their radios and looked worriedly at the scene in front of them: a crying child, a wide-open door.

"Did you call 9-1-1?" a blonde policewoman asked.

"I did," I nodded, "but they already came. They took my mom away."

The two police officers looked at each other.

"I'm afraid that's not possible. We received a call from this location–a child shouting an address–and we're the first ones to respond..."

It's been twenty years since the black ambulance drove off with my mother.

I never learned what became of her, or of the strange nurses in the red uniforms. My foster parents said I made it all up. Trauma, they said. I had to forget, move on.

But around midnight last night, I received a strange phone call.

A woman's gravelly, rasping voice–almost inaudible over the screams and crackling flames in the background. A voice I recognized:

"They told me that I could call...we're going to be together again soon...son."