Invisible Enemies

   Cindy Colfax loved to play pretend. She put on lavish tea parties in her room, dressing all her stuffed animals as formally as she could--she especially liked the touch of cardboard cut-out bow ties. She played out in the yard too, defying most girl-child stereotypes of fear of dirt and ruggedness. She would have majestic adventures where she killed pirates, rescued gentlemen in distress, and sometimes even saved the world. She would fasten one of her father’s ties to her head, secretly borrow one of her mother’s silk blouses, and in an instant she would become Super Cindy, defender of Earth.
    Usually Cindy played alone. Her father worked a lot, and her mother was always working from home--which to Cindy meant she talked on the phone a lot. There weren’t many other kids her age around the neighborhood, but the Colfax’s had a big backyard, and Cindy’s imagination was usually enough to keep her occupied. But when she had exhausted every stupendous plotline from her mind, it was time to go the park.
    “Mom. Mom. Mom.”
    Cindy started her rhythm, trying to get her ‘Mom’s in between the breaks of her mother’s voice, funneled into her flip phone. She added a tug of her mother’s shirt, for good measure.
    “Mom. MOM. MOM.”
    “I know! And he told me that if next quarters numbers are even a five percent decrease then we…Yes honey, just a second.” Mrs. Colfax patted her daughter’s shoulder.
    Cindy huffed and scowled her face. She climbed up one of the chairs at the dining room table, opposite her mother, and tried to use her magical mind powers to send suggestions into her Mom’s brain. You want to go to the park. You need to go to the park!
    “Alright Diane, you too.” She hung up the phone and smiled at her daughter.
    “Time to go to the park?”
    Cindy squealed.

    The park was two acres of flat grass and a playground on the edge of Mock’s Crest suburban community. It was bordered on three sides by tall, uniformly painted apartment buildings. There was little traffic on the streets, and most residents were off at their day jobs, far away from the happenings of the neighborhood. Cindy and her mother were usually the only two people on the streets for blocks. Sometimes they would see Mr. Rabinowitz walking his dog Grabit, leashed to his walker, but usually their days there passed quietly.
   
    Except today Will Sapere was across from the park, watching the two of them enter the lot, and zeroing in on Cindy. His wide skillet face was choked with emotion as he watched her, and he tried to make the moment last.
     In all walks of his life he tried to squeeze every succulence out of whatever he was enjoying. A mouthful of food was rolled around his mouth for as long as there was flavor. A hot bath was to be relished until the water was ice cold. Whatever preoccupation was before him, Will would try to stretch it and spread it out.
    And the girls; the girls he tried to make last the longest of all.
    It was the hair he first noticed. She had such radiant blonde hair. And with the May skies clear and full of sun, the bouncing pigtails glinted as though they were braided from strands of pure gold.
    Will watched her from his driver’s seat, eating a double scoop of Strawberry Passion. He had seen her once before; the previous month the little girl and her mother had come to the park, and he’d watched the girl run rampant around the playground with a towel tied around her shoulders as a cape.
    He was just out of reach of her voice, but when she climbed the slide and flew down head first, her raucous girl-giggle filled his head like the perfume of a Hollywood starlet.
    Will was snared.
   
    “Cindy! Be careful, sweety!” Mrs. Colfax called, momentarily holding the phone away from her mouth. 
    Cindy ignored her, too brave to be careful. She was walking a tight rope she’d fired between two skyscrapers with her trusty gas-powered grappling gun. The monkey bars served her imagination well, and soon she was hopping off the hard metal onto smoothly polished wood, ready to take on whatever goons might be lurking around the corner of the abandoned warehouse.
    She took off her left sneaker, pulling the shoelace with her teeth, and tossed it further down the walkway. Boom! The grenade went off, and she rushed the room.

    It wasn’t often that he brought them home. Will just liked to watch them, and usually, that was enough. But seeing the little girl with the pigtails, he was filled with an anciently familiar ache, and he knew already that he had to have her before he’d finished his cone.
    There were sweets in the glove box(a man of Will’s size always had sweets around), and he took a few brightly colored gumdrops with him as he left the van. Careful not to come into the Mother’s view, he walked wide around the edge of the park, until he entered from the side blocked by her view of the playground equipment. He was wearing his best smile, and mostly while he looked at Cindy, it was genuine.
       
    After dispatching the Gang(Cindy had never needed a more elaborate name for her ‘bad guys’), and saving the mayor’s daughter, Cindy was taking a much needed break from crime fighting. She took some rations from her utility belt, and sat in the sandbox to drink her juice box.
    She’d noticed his shadow before she saw Will. It was wide enough to block out the sun from her view, and she looked up to see if there were clouds.
    “Hi. My name’s Will, what’s yours?” His voice had a sweet quality, like that of a child’s.
    “I’m Cindy.”
    She was only slightly apprehensive; Cindy was fearless to the extent of scaring her mother with her boldness.
    “Nice to meet you Cindy. Can I play in the sandbox too?”
    “I’m not playing right now, but you can sit if you want. The sand feels really cool on your toes.” She had chipmunk cheeks and a pink sunburn on her nose, and when she dug her eight year old feet into the endless grains, her bare legs disappearing into them almost drove Will mad.
    “Ok.” Will said.
    He sat down and crossed his legs. He was sweating in the warm air and his chest heaved from his covert to the park.
    “What does ins-taaa…laysh-un mean?” Cindy asked, pointing to the company emblem on Will’s blue jumpsuit.
    “Do you have TV at home?”
    Cindy nodded.
    “Installation is when I go to people’s houses and make the TV work.”
    “Ooooh. Neat.”
    Cindy sucked down the rest of her apple juice, then pulled out the straw to squeeze the last few drops from the box directly into her mouth.
    “That’s a pretty smart way to get all the juice.” Will said.
    “I really like apple juice.” Cindy said.
    She started putting her shoes back on.
    Will was trying to keep an eye on Cindy’s mother. He could see just a sliver of her through the mess of crisscrossing playground equipment. She was still on the phone, and didn’t seem to notice he was sitting with her daughter.
    “Do you like candy?” He asked her.
    “Sure!” Her eyes lit up at the thought.
    Will took a couple gumdrops from his pocket.
    “Which color?”
    “Orange is my favorite, it’s the bestest.”
    She took it from his pudgy hand and unwrapped it.
    “Cindy, do you think we could play a game?”
    She popped the candy in her mouth and reveled in the sugary treat.
    “Ok. What kind of game?”
    “Well, you like to play the hero, right?”
    Cindy nodded, her eyes wide while she maneuvered the candy around in her mouth.
    “I was wondering if maybe I could be the hero, and you could be the person I rescue.”
    Cindy mulled it over.
    “Mmm. Ok, I guess. What do you have to rescue me from?”   
    “How about bank robbers? They’ve taken you hostage inside the bank, and I’m the first cop that gets there.”
    “That sounds fun!” Cindy shot up and her pigtails bounced in the sun.
    Will’s heart was seizing.
    “What should we use for the bank?”
    Will took a deep, excited breath.
    “Here, follow me. I’ll show you.”
   
    “See? I’ve even got a couple ropes we can use like the bank robbers would to tie up a hostage.”
    “Wow, that’s pretty neat.” Cindy said, examining the silken ropes Will kept in the van. She noticed the same logo on the side she had seen on his shirt, but didn’t wonder why there wasn’t any television equipment in the van.
    “You wanna tie me up now?” Cindy asked, and held out the rope to Will.
    He almost burst.
    “Ok. I’ll tie you up and shut the door, and then I’ll sneak my way in from the front to get the robbers and save you.”
    Cindy smiled and nodded eagerly. She didn’t much like playing the victim usually, but having the ropes and the inside of the van made the make believe that much more real, so she was happy to go along.
    Will wrapped her tight with the rope, expertly tying her up without hurting her.
    He was all set to close the door when she interrupted his routine.
    “What about the mouth-rope?”
    “Huh?”
    “You know, like on TV when they have hostages or something, they always have a rope in their mouths to keep them quiet.”
    “You mean a gag?” Will asked.
    Cindy shrugged.
    He smiled, growing more fond of Cindy by the minute.
    “Sorry, I must’ve forgot.”
    He took an excess length of rope, and tied it around her face, watching with glee as she bit her teeth down into it, completely entrenched in her character.
    “Ok, now I have to go take out the men guarding the front door, so it will take me a minute to get inside and save you.”
    Cindy nodded, chewing her rope like a puppy with a bone.
    He closed the doors.

    Will was in such a good mood, and so excited that he had finally found someone who had gone along so easily, that he was strolling around the block to the corner vendor to buy two more ice creams. He’d even planned on getting Cindy an orange scoop for being so helpful. Already, running through his mind were plastic fantasies he was casting Cindy in, becoming more elaborate with each step he took.
    He began to whistle, while he thought of how much fun he would be having soon, and how he would savor every moment.

    Cindy was growing impatient. Where was Will? How many guards could be out there? She wasn’t used to sitting around and waiting to be rescued, that wasn’t usually her style. After a few minutes, Cindy grew bored decided she would surprise Will and save herself; and then join him outside to help take out the bad guys.
    She wiggled around trying to get her hands free, but Will had done a good job tying her up. Her wrists were bound behind her back, and her upper arms were tied to her sides. But what was really starting to get to her was the gag. It made her mouth dry, and she was starting to regret asking about it. She searched the van with her eyes.
    The van was mostly empty. There were just the two front seats, and the large empty back where Cindy sat. But under the driver’s seat, she noticed a thick metal box.
    A tool box.
    She scooted across the floor to it, and tried to picture how Super Cindy would open it. There wasn’t anything around, and she knew she had to hurry:
    The bad guys could be getting Will at this very moment.
    She laid down flat, and fumbled with the flip-latch with her nose,until it popped open. She pushed lid over, and dragged the box with her chin out from under the seat.
    Inside, there was a box cutter, a tire pressure gauge, a rusty hammer, two small screwdrivers, and a flashlight. Super Cindy was calm and collected as she turned around and let her hands grasp the box cutter, carefully sawing away at her wrist holds.
   
    Will was heading back to the van with the world’s biggest smile. He’d gotten a cone of Key-Lime for himself to go with Cindy‘s Outrageous Orange. He was waiting to get back to the van to start licking at it. All that was in his mind was a sweet rhythm playing over and over:
    Cin-dy, Cin-dy, Cin-dy.
    When he rounded the corner, and the van was in sight again, he stopped in his tracks, and the ice creams fell to the concrete.
    Cindy had freed herself somehow, and was outside of the van punching at the air. She was using the rope as a whip, flailing it around her head and slapping it down against the ground, inflicting immense pain on invisible enemies.
    Will snapped from his daze and ran towards the van. His serene thoughts of Cindy were quickly being replaced with panic and fear, and he tried to bridge the gap between  himself and the little girl as fast as his lumbering body would let him.
   
    Cindy gave one last death blow and took out the last of the evil bank robbers. The whip had come in handy, and she thought to herself that she might keep it around for future adventures. She’d have to see if Will would let her have it.
    She was coiling it back up in her hands when Will reached the van. He was sweating and panting hard, trying to say something.
    “It’s okay, see? I already got em all, slow-poke.” Cindy said, showing him the multitudes of unconscious bodies around her.
    Will was heaving, the pounding from his chest rushing to his brain and filling it with a horrible requiem. He was trying to decide how to put the pieces back together; to find again the place where he had Cindy in his grasp.
    “Well, thanks for playing, but I gotta go back to the park now. It’s time to go home for lunch.”
    Cindy was already walking away, looking both ways as she prepared to cross the street when Will spoke in desperation.
    “But, don’t you want to, I mean, wouldn’t you like to have lunch with me?” He said, starting to catch his breath.
    “Nah, I’m gonna go home.”
    Will’s mouth dropped open as the little girl bounced across the street, leaving him sweating and fruitless by the van.

    Cindy tugged on her mother’s shirt, trying to get her attention.
    Her stomach was gurgling.
    “Where did you get that?” Mrs. Colfax asked, holding her hand over her phone’s receiver and pointing to Cindy’s newly acquired rope.
    Cindy beamed and held it high to show it to her mother.
    “I took it from the bad guys.”

Reviews

[Sammie]

I don't usually like reading pieces of this nature but like always you surprised me. You managed to turn something that could have been potentially horrifying into something that had me smiling at the end. Although I could have kicked that mother! All that time and see never once looked to see where her daughter was..Tsk Tsk..

[DavidRyanM]

Dig it, man. I actually enjoy the ending even though he doesn't go all out and get crazy with his "kidnapping". Well done, Sir. On to your essays.