Mark Came Home to an Empty House: His Wife Was Nowhere to Be Found, and Moments Later He Discovered His Son at the Neighbor’s

Martin returned to his terraced house just as the sky was folding itself into a mauve London dusk. The air tasted faintly of toast and mystery. Stepping inside, he was immediately unsettled by the silence: his wife, Clara, and their toddling son Alfred were nowhere to be seen. A low hum of unease prickled at him, the kind that creeps in through the letterbox when youre least expecting it.
Driven by a curiously urgent resolve, Martin crossed the creaky halls and bustled through the front door, slippers slapping softly. He knocked at his neighbours, Brendas house, hoping for some news. But to his bewilderment, it was Brenda herself who opened the door, a dreamy smile on her lips, gently bouncing Alfred in her arms as if hed always belonged there.
As if reading some invisible script, Brenda revealed that Clara had entrusted Alfred to her care before vanishing into the snarl of the city on pressing business. Surreal as it was, none of this explained the growing sense of strangeness, like being lost at Piccadilly Circus, only more silent and less colourful.
Although Martin had cobbled together a passable knowledge of nappies and bedtime stories, shadows of speculation chased round his mind. What could possibly have spirited Clara away so briskly? His stomach rumbled with a hunger he couldnt name, half appeased when he discovered a plate of shepherd’s pie waiting in the microwave, left there by Claras invisible hand.
Time in the dream bent and stretched in odd directionsthirty minutes passed, then an hour, and then five, blurring at the edges with nothing to measure it but the tick of the kitchen clock and the thudding in his chest. He rang Claras phone so many times it began to feel like a charm against bad luck, but no answer ever came. Evening bled into night as he rocked Alfred to sleep, the childs breath a soft tide in their little blue bedroom.
Just as Martins mind began folding in on itself with worry, the telephone trilleda sourceless, old-fashioned ring that seemed to echo from the past. Martin seized it, nerves jangling, and showered Clara with questions about her whereabouts, about what had woven her into the wild tapestry of the day. She, though, became slippery as a dreamher words dodged his, her voice refusing to land. She said, in a gentle tone that chilled him, she had no wish to return, and that Alfred was Martins charge nowforever.
Stunned into a hush, Martin clung to the telephone as if it might root him back in reality. The walls fluttered with echoes. Alone in the sepia-lit kitchen, Martin stood among shadows, facing the vast and peculiar notion of being both mother and father to Alfred. The night tiptoed in, bearing with it a strange, lucid sense of responsibilityhalf sorrow, half fragile, uncertain hope.