Short Stories by Hope/Children for hire
I am really nervous as I turn into the road by the park. My head is on a swivel as I look around for hidden cops or hidden anyone, but there’s no one in sight. The old Victorian cemetery is next to the park and I drive past. Still no one. The guy said any time between four and five, and it is just after four as I circle, back to the cemetery gate and blip my horn once. I’m so nervous my hands are gripping the wheel and I lay them on my thighs, trying to relax.
“Once for a boy, twice for a girl,” the man had said. Well typed really, since we were on a paedophile site on the dark web at the time. We’d exchanged videos and links to sites for a while, so I did trust him.
Just as I was about to give up and drive off, a boy comes out and walks over to the car. I buzzed the window down. The boy looks to be around nine or ten years old, with black hair and a sharp face. He’s skinny, but the jeans and hoodie he’s wearing look clean and fairly new. He looks me up and down. “Fifty,” is all he says. I nod and hand him a twenty, which vanishes into a pocket.
Just as he’s about to get in I have a mad idea. “I want a girl as well,” you say. That gets me a grin and he disappears back into the cemetery, emerging a few minutes later with a small girl who looks about three or four. Like the boy, her hair is black and cut fairly short, but she is wearing a short denim dress, with white socks and trainers. “Your sister,” I ask as they slide onto the back seat. And I pull away. The whole thing took less time than it takes to read about it.
“Yeah. Carmen,” he says. I can see her in the mirror because she moved right over next to her brother. She looks almost as nervous as I feel. I don’t care that they aren’t strapped in. The rear windows are tinted so no one can see them, and I have no intention of doing anything that might get me stopped by a cop. Apart from telling me that his name is Stephan, neither of them speaks as we head out of town.
My house used to be a farm once, but most of the land, apart from half an acre or so was sold years ago