The Story Begins Read Free Page A

sure to bring in all the toys you have out there, okay.”
    “Okay,” he shouted back while dunking a basketball in the hoop.
    “Daddy will be home soon and we want you all cleaned up for the dinner table, okay.”
    “Okay, I’m coming, Mommy.”
    The priest ought to have passed by already but hadn’t as yet. Jaden thought he must have had a very busy day. He looked at all his toys scattered all over the yard. He disliked cleaning up after himself. As often as his mother and father had said to him that if he didn’t care to bring his toys back inside then he ought not to take them out at all, he still did; the routine was unchanging. And because he was always impatient when he had to clean up, he’d inevitably miss a toy or two, which his father would then bring in on his way into the house once home from work. And whenever queried as to whether all of his toys were accounted for, he’d answer yes, so sure of himself, until his father would teasingly prove his son otherwise; Jaden’s predetermined response would then simply be to place blame on the toy, accusing it of not being somewhere a little more obvious.
     
    AFTER a long day of hard work for both Mom and Dad but all too short a day of mostly play for Jaden, the family sat down to dinner.
    After dinner, and after brushing his teeth, his parents tucked him in, read him a story, and then kissed him goodnight. Having been hard at play most of the day, he fell asleep almost immediately after the light was turned off; this, despite his protestations while being tucked in, that he wasn’t tired at all, let alone sleepy.
    “HEELLOOO! Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said a voice.
    Jaden sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He was sure that he had heard something. “Who’s there?” he asked sleepily. Like many children, Jaden was afraid of the dark; however, he was a bit too tired tonight to remember that.
    “Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said the voice again.
    He was about to pull the cover off him and reach for his night lamp when he realized that he wasn’t in his room. The realization, however, did not bring with it a sense of panic or fear. He simply wondered where his parents had taken him during his sleep, and where they had gone off to. Did they have another fight and take him over to his aunt’s apartment, he wondered. But after waking up a little bit more, it was quite clear that he was not at his aunt’s place.
    His surroundings, or the lack thereof, distracted him. He was almost certain that he was outside but then it felt as though he might be inside somewhere. Observing his surroundings more intently, he realized that as far as he could tell there actually seemed to be neither an inside nor an outside. It was simply somewhere. There was light all around him but the likes of which he’d never seen before; it was a glowing twilight of sorts. He looked down to his feet and saw that he appeared to be standing on nothing at all. Seeing nothing but believing that he had to be standing on something, he decided to feel beneath him with his hands. He felt absolutely nothing, not even right beneath his feet. Yet there he was, somehow standing. Another aspect of this decidedly very different place that struck him was that as much as he believed that he was, in fact, somewhere, he really seemed to be nowhere at all; stranger still was that he felt as though he was actually everywhere. What an odd feeling, he thought. The only thing he was very certain of was the voice, which repeated its greeting. It was close. Not at all apprehensive, and fascinated by seeming to simply be floating, he mused, “Whoa! I’m like super-kid or something.”
    Greeting him again, the voice interrupted his musing. “Heeeeeeellooooooo!”
    “Mommy and Daddy always tell me to never talk to strangers,” he said.
    There was no response. Then he remembered his parents. “Where are my mom and dad?”
    There was still no answer. Just as he was about to call out for them, the voice in the dark chuckled