Time thief

A woman and her two children, a boy and girl, are in a Woolworth’s in a city. They’re Japanese. The boy is around four years old and the girl maybe seven. The mother looks away for a moment and when she looks back, her son is gone. She runs to the window overlooking the street. She’s on the third floor and can see her son holding hands with an older man, walking away. She frantically calls out for help but nobody pays any mind. She grabs her daughters’ hand and runs to the down escalator to get to street level. As she runs out of the store she realizes her daughter is no longer with her. The woman goes in to shock. As she stands outside the store looking around her, all motion freezes to a stop. Only she has movement and she looks around her carefully trying to see her children. Even though nothing appears to be moving, she can hear the sounds of motion. The rubber tires of a car on pavement. Beating of a birds wings overhead. Crackle of paper being crumpled. Each sound clear like a note of a ringing bell.

Now the woman is home. The policemen are asking her questions about her children. There is a man in a business suit. Her husband? They are holding each other as the woman answers the policemen’s question as best as she can but it feels hopeless. She has no idea where her daughter could have gone and the man who took her son was a stranger.

A good period of time has passed. Maybe years. Two agents in black suits are at the door of the home and between them is a boy of maybe six. The boys face has been cut like the Joker’s face – a big scar smile so even crying, he looks like he’s smiling. The father opens the door to their knock and the mother comes running from further inside the house and grabs up the little boy in her arms. The agents inform the couple that the grandfather has kept the child in captivity for all this time and is responsible for the scars. It was sexual abuse and that’s why the grandfather cut the boys face into a permanent smile.


An awful dream emotionally. The part where the woman was on the frozen street was amazing though. The sounds were so clear and precise like at the beginning of the world.