330 Dawson Lane
Sparrow, New Hampshire
Monday 5 October 2009 8:44 AM

"Come on, Leia, you're going to be late for school," Nicholas O'Riley called down from the kitchen to his daughter. He glanced at his watch for the seventh time in five minutes and then started down the hall. Leia's door was covered in vivid drawings of superheroes and faded stickers of pastel butterflies, but what more did he expect from an eleven year old girl? Nicholas knocked on the door, waited for a 'one more minute, Daddy!' or an 'I'm ready, I'm ready!' and instead heard a song that played faintly in the background. Enter Sandman. The song that had become Leia's lullaby after her first nightmare, and ever since then whenever else she felt like the monster was after her... Suddenly, gripped with panic that he hadn't felt in months, Nicholas opened the door and found clothes strewn across the carpeted floor. He glanced briefly around the room to find that a picture frame had been broken, the bed-sheets crumpled, the small window shade broken, the windowpane cracked open, but he couldn't find what belonged most in that room, what mattered most to him. His baby girl was gone.

Nicholas frantically searched his daughter's room. He lifted up the bed covers from the light blue carpeted floor, checked Leia's blanket fort that she favored as a hiding spot, lifted the window and peered below- nothing. He ran his fingers through his cropped dark hair as he tried to regain control of his breathing. Nicholas hurried down the hall to check the bathroom, and then his own bedroom. Nothing.

Hush little baby, don't say a word/ And never mind that noise you heard/ It's just the beasts under your bed/ In your closet, in your head. Of course those lines would continue to play, with its whispered false security to fathers as well as to their children. Nicholas picked up the phone and his fingers fumbled to press the buttons.

"911, what is the nature of your emergency?" the operator asked, his voice professional and controlled.
"It's...my baby...my baby girl isn't here," Nicholas's voice was nervous and unsteady, a polar opposite of the operator.
"Sir, can you please explain the situation to me? Who am I speaking to? Where do you and your daughter reside?"
"My name is Nicholas O'Riley. My baby, Leia...we live at 330 Dawson Lane. I let her sleep in this morning while I made my coffee," Nicholas choked, "and when I realized we were late for school, I called out for her. I thought she was still sleeping..."
"When was the last time you saw your daughter?"
"Last night...no, wait, technically this morning. Around 2 o'clock, I think. Leia gets these really bad nightmares sometimes- oh my god, I think I know who took her! Her nightmares, they're about this monster and-"
"Mr. O'Riley, I need you to slow down. There are policemen on the way, but I need you to explain to me who you think has your daughter."
"My ex-wife, Jacky. Leia sometimes calls her 'the monster' because of what happened last year. She- Jacky, I mean, she would do crazy shit to my baby. The last time they were in a room together, Jacky pulled a knife off the counter and tried to slash Leia's face..." Nicholas's voice trailed off as he recounted the scene in his mind. He breathed deeply as the operator typed into his computer to run a background check, and as the sound of sirens entered the street.

8:48 AM

Detective Taylor Griffin took the 911 dispatch call about a possible home invasion/child abduction and sent two of his lieutenants with a detective to 330 Dawson Lane. Lieutenants Caroline Ford and Logan Hunter went with Detective Juda Alpert to the O'Riley's suburban home, and before they could move to ring the doorbell, Nicholas opened the front door with a fervor of a man looking for salvation. The officers observed that the O'Riley's didn't have a sign of an alarm company, or any indication that the house had protection from home invaders.

"Please, come in," the disheveled father spoke urgently and gestured for the officers to enter the house. The police noticed Mr. O'Riley's unkempt dark mop of hair, his two day old stubble of a beard, and an orange mug spilled all over the kitchen counter (its stale coffee a light waterfall to the tiled floor), all before they settled on the green-gray couches of the living room. Art supplies and action figures littered the floor by the TV and there were family pictures on the walls featuring father and daughter.
"Thank you so much for coming," Nicholas's shaken voice told the officers once they had been introduced to each other. Lieutenant Ford placed a recording device on the table between the couches which separated the distraught father from the attentive officers while Detective Alpert took out a pen and notepad to begin the interview.

Unknown Location
Monday 5 October 2009 8:48 AM

Trees zoomed in and out of Leia's line of vision, the colors swarmed together and fell apart just as easily. Blurred images gave way to clearer ones that remained equally puzzling. The car moved much too fast, and Leia was thrown off her seat, her long dark hair fell over her face as the driver made a sharp turn. Violins harmonized with flutes over the radio as everything spun out of control. The music from the radio sounded familiar although the scenery was unfamiliar, and both pieces of knowledge filled every fiber of her being with dread. Leia's head felt too heavy for her body and her chest felt tight. The scenes outside the car's window, and the car itself were new to the young girl. A dark barrier of tinted plexiglass separated Leia from the car's driver, she was either too weak to open the door or it had been set on child-safety mode, and an increased sense of fear formed in her heart as she tried to speak. "Hello?"

Leia's voice was barely audible to her own ears and her throat hurt from the effort it took to say two syllables. The disoriented girl worried that something happened to her vocal cords, and raised her hands to her neck. The outside of her throat felt fine while her insides felt sluggish, like her body was a piece of fruit stuck in a jell-o cup. Leia coughed, sat up to move back to the seat she was flung from but was overwhelmed by waves of nausea. Her inability to think properly prevented her from remembering where she was and how she got there. All she knew was that the floor she sat on was not the floor of her daddy's car, and the strange feeling of being attacked by the monster didn't seem so strange anymore.

"Daddy? Help me, please. I'm scared," Leia managed to whimper. Her last thought before she blacked out was "Don't forget, don't forget. I won't forget you and you won't forget me. Don't..."

Exit light/ Enter night/ Take my hand/ We're off to never never land.