THE MISSING

At first, the ladies with their lap dogs disappeared gradually, once every few weeks, leather leashes and expensive clutch bags, roomy purses and studded collars found sunken into snow drifts, looped on icy sidewalks, in the middle of ridged divots of frozen mud, or floating in puddles, partially submerged in black slushy water. That first winter, rubber-skinned divers dragged the small pond in the center of the park where the women had liked to sit with their paper cups of coffee, their little dogs lying limp across their laps.  

By spring, women and their dogs of all sizes were disappearing daily from every borough of the city. Police drew radii on street maps, diagramming cases which ultimately were found to have no actual pattern, like crop circles--random, alien, unknown. Across the city, women stayed locked inside, letting their dogs whine and scratch at the doormats until men came home to walk them. Children too were kept close. Still, more women and their dogs disappeared. From back yards, from car seats, from benches in front of schools. Slack leashes, shoes with worn heels, a knit cap. Witnesses questioned. Suspects lined up but never ID'ed.

That fall, the dogs began reappearing with hang-dog expressions, tails between their legs, sad-eyed on doorsteps and stoops, waiting to be let in. Some brought tokens—small birds, hearts still beating beneath feathered breasts, or tiny chipmunks that ran off as soon as they were set down. Hope grew, everyone believing the women would soon follow.

But the dogs knew differently, would not eat and did not bark, except in sleep when they whined and growled and pumped their legs. More weeks passed, a year. The few women still left formed committees, organized marches, took in orphaned children. Lonely husbands met in church basements, in corner bars, at front yard gates, and waited for spring.   

As the rains cleared away the last of the snow, a broach was found, a woolen scarf, a buckled strap from a shoe—items forgotten in the files of the missing—a stopped watch, a ring with a diamond as big as a baby's eye. Crowds gathered at dusk in places where the women were last seen, candles and fireflies flickering, summer days lengthening in the gloom. Where have you gone? they called out, to the trees, the lamp posts, the sky.

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Click here for Julie Innis' bio