Jasmine screamed once more, “Baby! Please come here!”

She frantically sprinted back into her home and began her search once again. It was the second time she had looked through her home, but she didn’t know what else to do.

Her boyfriend, Jeremy yelled from outside, “Jasmine! Let’s go!”

While swinging open a closet and tossing the coats aside, she screamed, “And what? Leave my son behind?” She scoffed at the absurd idea.

“If you can’t find him, then yes! No one is going to be the reason I die, not even a kid! Especially if he ain’t mine!”

Jasmine straightened her spine upon hearing those words.

She marched out the door and straight up to Jeremy. He smiled at her thinking she had finally come to reason.

However, when she was close enough, she raised her hand and slapped him across the face. Her manicured nails left three angry red welts on his cheek.

Her boyfriend recoiled and stepped back from her, surprised by her reaction.

“Get in your fucking car and leave. Don’t ever speak to me again,” Jasmine’s words were a guttural growl. She looked ready to maim the man she once called her lover.

As if to further prove her point, she spat directly on his face. “Get the fuck out of my life you spineless twat.”

Jeremy gapped at her for a moment.

“B-but, you don’t even have a car,” he stuttered.

“I’ll walk to the ends of this damn planet before I get in a vehicle with you. Especially without my son!” She stepped closer to him, a warning to leave before she attacked again.

“F-fine! Fuck you,” he said as he jumped in his car and revved the engine.

Jasmine didn’t spare his car a second glance as she spun back towards the house.

“Who the fuck does he think he is?! Leave my child behind? What the fuck kinda moron is he?” She muttered the string of questions to herself, baffled by what had just transpired.

She knew Jeremy wasn’t her son’s biological father, but she had assumed he cared about him, at least enough to help look for him in a dire situation. She hadn’t anticipated the complete lack of concern for her only child.

She slumped a little, discouraged by her horrific luck in men. She had never been in what one might call a healthy relationship. Jeremy hadn’t laid a hand on her like some previous men dared to, but she hadn’t realized until that day just how toxic he had been in his own way.

She took a deep breath before regaining her composure. “We’re better off without him!”

Jasmine stepped back into her small two-bedroom house.

She had a new sense of urgency in her actions, she wanted to leave, she needed to leave. But she refused to do so without her son. Without a car now, things would be a lot more difficult.

“Baby! Where are you, kiddo?” She called out, entering the kitchen.

She looked in the fridge, the pantry, under the table.

Jasmine checked behind the shower curtain, under all the beds, behind all the doors, in the cupboards and in the washing machine.

But, her five-year-old son was nowhere to be seen.

He had never been the best at listening, Jasmine knew it was probably because she’d been too relaxed in raising him. She didn’t want to be hard on him because she knew he didn’t have a stable father in his life. She had hoped she was giving him enough support and love to count for two parents.

In that moment, however, she felt like she had betrayed him. She hadn’t taught him the difference between serious and joking moments. He probably thought they were playing hide-and-seek.

With defeat weighing down her bones, Jasmine collapsed to the floor in her son’s bedroom.

She leaned up against the blue-painted wall and stared around the room, hoping for something to spark her imagination. She was out of ideas.

Jasmine looked at the framed photos of them together through the years. His cheerful face and brown ringlet curls present in every photo.

There were photos of birthday parties and zoo dates. Photos of ice cream shenanigans and baking lessons. Photos of the life she had built for her son. She hoped he was happy and that she’d done enough for him. Raising a little one alone was never easy, but she took pride in being a good mother, at least better than her own had been.

A silent tear slipped down her cheek.

“Oh, baby. Where are you?” she whispered into the empty room.

Suddenly, she sat up. A picture on the wall stuck out to her. It was from a birthday party her son had last year. He was smiling gleefully with their next-door neighbor. Her son always loved playing with their neighbor’s son. They’d spend hours playing together.

Jasmine stood up and sprinted towards the door so quickly she had to catch herself on the wall to stop from falling.

She raced to their neighbor’s house, five houses down the road. The street was relatively dead and empty, she assumed most people had already left.

Arriving at the house quickly, Jasmine was out of breath and gasping for air.

“Baby! Are you here?” She yelled out, taking a quick glance around the front yard.

“Please be here, please be here,” she mumbled to herself, completely out of ideas if her son wasn’t there.

Jasmine called out to him twice more, her panic increasing with every syllable she spoke.

She ran up to the front door and knocked manically against it. No one answered, unsurprisingly.

Glancing around the yard she found a rock. She quickly grabbed it and threw it against a ground floor window. The glass shattered instantly. She reached in, cutting her forearm against the shards as she unlocked the window from inside.

She pushed the pane up and climbed inside.

Had there been anyone on the street, she assumed the cops would have already been arresting her, but she was desperate and couldn’t have cared less about a stupid window.

She ran through the familiar house calling out to her son. She searched up and down through all the rooms and closets once more.

It was empty, just like her house had been.

She screamed frustratedly, pulling at the roots of her hair and stomping her feet. Jasmine was out of ideas, she had no idea where to look next or what to do.

She fell to her knees and began to sob.

“Simon. Simon, where are you, baby?” She weakly cried out his name between her sobs.

She knelt on the living room floor in her neighbor’s house, distraught and overwhelmed with despair. She resigned herself to the fact that Simon was missing and there was nothing more to be done. Tears cascaded freely down her face as the realization settled.

She never checked the treehouse outside where her son was playing with his Legos. She also neglected to notice the Remdian plane in the distance closing in.