Ad Hoc Fiction

The Disappeared

It is curious that Evelyn would unknowingly find herself lost on a walk she had completed a hundred times before. But what is most curious is that she would join a search party for herself without the slightest clue she was both lost and not lost at all.

The missing persons alarm was raised some time around eleven on the eve of Evelyn’s routine walk and by half past, the search party had covered considerable ground. It wasn’t until midnight, however, when Evelyn joined the party herself.

The disappeared was now in their midst; unawares and unidentified. Evelyn was suspicious she was the missing person but sceptical about speaking up. Surely they would know by now. What was the catch? As the search dwindled, she no longer felt like Evelyn but, instead, a searcher. Their torchlights licked the earth and the thick smattering of rain soon drowned out any voices.