New Adventures

Taking a Dip Into Memories

 I felt a ping of cool water hitting my skin with great force and the icy vibration that went through my steamy, sweaty body.

The water was so calm and quiet like the day my father had taken Jack and I to this lake to teach us how to swim. It was Jacks first time but I knew how to swim the minute my skin touched the water. I swam underwater and stayed there so I could capture the moment and keep it with me forever.

My father was Edwin Tobias Mallery, the famous writer/explorer whom everyone admired, especially me. When I was 10 he was given a huge job offer to scour the entire jungle of Canabra and write about his findings. Of course he couldn’t resist, my dad could never resist an adventure. He set out on the spectacular opportunity, more excited about this than any other adventure he had gone on (and that’s saying a lot because my dad went on adventures for a living) but soon mysteriously disappeared. He made it through the flight and into the jungle, that much we know but everything else is a complete mystery.

Some people say different tribes that live in the jungle captured him. Others claimed he died of starvation or was eaten by gorillas, but I have the same feeling every child has who’s parent goes missing.

He is alive.

I can feel it.

But even with my hunch I missed him more and more each day, and my mother was making it unbearable. The minute my dads disappearing became official, my mother went nuts.

It’s not your typical drunk who says weird things, beats her children senseless or, just passes out. No, she says and does the most violent and stupid things than any other drunken person I have ever encountered.

She’s the one who told Jack stories about all the ways our father could be dead.

She’s the one who beats me until I either can’t feel any part of my body or can feel every part of my body with the sharpest pain.

She's the one who starves Jack by refusing to give him food or water.

She's the one who set the house on fire.