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Thanks to Alistair at Sunday Photo Fiction for hosting. If you’d like to participate, click here.

Invisible

This is where I was kidnapped. A nondescript part of town people hurry through on their way to somewhere else. That’s why it had to be here. An unnoticed girl in an unnoticed part of the city.

A full day passed before my parents contacted the police. Odd, you might think, except they had nine other kids and didn’t notice I wasn’t there until the dishwasher wasn’t emptied, and they needed a babysitter.

In an interview, my mother stumbled over my name and age, which she blamed on her pregnancy, but she would have had a hard time remembering if she hadn’t been pregnant. My younger sister Rachel and me, the fourth and fifth kids, were interchangeably forgettable.

“That poor woman,” they all murmured, especially when there were no ransom demands.

“Could she have runaway?” a reporter asked.

My father scoffed. “Our house is chaos but it’s filled with love and Jesus.”

My parents made money from my disappearance. A book deal which was a memoir about them and TV appearances to talk about a fictional me who, coincidentally, loved everything their oldest child loved.

My parents tell everyone my disappearance was God’s will.

Actually, it was mine.

end

9/23/2017