Imhotep Jr

I wrote this when I was a junior in high school (2009/2010). Be extra nice, or extra mean.

There have been rumors about a specific man around here. A child thief. A kidnapper.

These abductions aren't random. They are not sexual either so do not get the wrong idea.

Everyone is aware of this man. Everyone knows his name. Knows his face. Although there has been no solid evidence he is the criminal. Everyone knows he lives in a house only a box-office actor such as Will Smith could afford. What everybody doesn't know, though, is this man's occupation. What he really does for a living. How he gets his money.

A friend of mine, Anna, had a two-year-old boy stolen by this man. The only people she told initially were me and the police.

Anna is showering one day and her two-year-old son walks into her bathroom and opens up the curtain, speaking gibberish or whatever language two-year-old kids speak. She laughs because her son had completely wrapped himself up in toilet paper, naked underneath.

Imhotep Junior.

Even though he has made an enormous mess, Anna is not upset. How could she? It is adorable. So she covers herself up with two towels. One for her body and the other for her hair. She then runs downstairs to her desk to fetch her camera. Keeping one hand clutched to the towel above her left breast.

She thinks it would make a goofy Christmas card to send everybody. But it's June. Women are like this.

Anna finds the camera and runs back up the stairs and back to her bathroom. Laughing and excited. She pushes the barely closed door open to find only her chlid gone. Still laughing excitedly and sliding around corners, she is searching all the rooms of the house for her son.

At this point, I think she is confused.

After checking them all, she becomes nervous. No longer laughing and is now scurrying in panic. Maybe I just didn't see him, Anna thinks, and goes back to check her bathroom again. This time, she notices the bathroom window broken. Busted open. She lets go of the towel covering her body so it drops. She walks slowly to the window and looks down. There's a ladder leaning against the house, leading up to the window.

A very old-fashioned break-in. This is either how the man rolls or it was a last minute job. It could've been way more organized and professional but...whatever works.

In the United States nearly 800,000 children are kidnapped a year. Do the math and the quotient equals more than 2,000 a day. Every forty seconds or so a child is reported missing or stolen. Children who are victims of what seem to be called “stereotypical kidnappings”, forty percent are killed. Seventy-one percent of these child thieves, these kidnappers, are strangers and the rest of the percentage are faces of some acquaintance. Up to seventy-five percent of these strangers are men and sixty-seven percent of that seventy-five percent of strangers are no more than thirty. These kidnappings typically occur within a fourth of a mile from the child's house. Seventy-four percent of victims, who are eventually killed, are killed within three hours after being taken.

These statistics go and on and on.

Anna calls me before she calls the police. She is freightened and shocked. She does not know what else to do.

Never come to me with this kind of thing.

Since her fiancée died, she always has to come to me. Not that there is something wrong with that, it is just that I never know how to respond or what to say. Particularly this situation.

After twenty to twenty-five minutes of her explaining and me “comforting” and “supporting” her, I convince her to call the police.

Never call the police.

She makes the call and files the report. Goes through that awful process. They come and she re-tells the whole story. Goes through another awful process.

It has been a week now and the police have gotten nowhere. The police do nothing these days. So when I say to never call the police, you know not to.

When Anna goes out to get the mail, she finds an envelope that stands out from all the others. This envelope is beige, while the rest are all white. This envelope has no stamp on the top right, no return address on the top left, and not even a complete letterhead. Just Mrs Hart written in perfect cursive. The kind of cursive only your seventy-five-year-old grandma who signed lots of papers back when she did finances for your grandpa's radio business could accomplish. What else makes this envelope different from the others is a lump. There is a lump inside. It's not a large lump but a lump nonetheless. To find such an odd lump in such an odd envelope is odd to begin with. And in a situation like this, you get the chills.

Anna rips apart the envelope with no technique whatsoever. When she takes the object out and has it between her middle finger and thumb, she screams a terrifying scream and drops it. Crying and screaming in utter terror, she runs into the house and grabs the phone. Dials my number. Calls me.

Never come to me with this kind of thing.

I arrive at Anna's house shortly after the call and she is standing on her driveway when I pull in, pointing towards the location of the object she dropped. Her other hand covers her mouth, face as red as a can of Coke, tears leaking like a sieve. After parking, I walk on over, bend ing down to my knees, to find it. Once I do, my heart stops. My legs give out and I fall back as I cover my hands over my mouth so I would not make any unpleasant noises.

What the object appears to be is a severed human tongue. Very dry, may I add. What could be of a two-year-old boy. Anna's two-year-old boy. On the tongue also appears to be a phone number carved into it. The number shaped by scabs.

This man used a heated knife to complete this task and according to my knowledge, the tongue was cut off and set out to dry before carving the number. The carving on the tongue would not be able to scab up and make the number more legible if it was done while still in the mouth of the child or right after it had been cut off. This is because scabs can only develop on dry skin, not in a wet or moist environment.

I ask Anna to see the envelope and she tells me it is across the street.

Inside the envelope is also a little note that says Call now, no police.

We go back inside to make the call. To set up the arrangements.

Anna's ex-fiancée died due to a freak accident caused by nature. An eagle had mistaken a rock for a turtle and dropped the turtle from the sky and miraculously fell onto the head of Anna's now fiancée, killing him. Sound familiar?

When he died, he left so much money to Anna. Her ex-fiancée's father was a very wealthy man himself and left his son tons of money when he died. And when Anna's ex-fiancée died, who also made a great living financially, left Anna some money his father gave him and gave her tons of his own.

So this man, this child thief, this kidnapper, demands two million dollars for Anna's kid and no police. Two million dollars. I guess you really can put a price on your child.

The instructions were to put the money in three briefcases. One of the briefcases must be placed between the tile and “ceiling”, I guess you could say, of the phone booth that is right outside the closest thrift shop. The second briefcase is to be set underneath the garbage can next to the phone booth. The last of the three briefcases is to be handed to someone who is standing by a dumpster in the alley across the street from the thrift shop wearing a smiley face t-shirt, who Anna's kid is said to be with.

As quickly as possible, we gather the money and stuff it all in three briefcases. After hiding the first two, to their commands, we go across the street to meet the person we are to give this last briefcase to in exchange for Anna's two-year-old son. We give the man the briefcase and he instantly takes off, running.

I tell Anna to stay and I chase after him.

He gets away. I come back soon after and Anna's holding what looks like to be a scrunched-up thick green blanket. She's shaking. I can see every limb doing so. A magnitude of ten. Her eyes one squint from pouring down like Angel Falls.

I run up to her and ask, “What is it?”

Anna hands me the scrunched-up thick green blanket and when it is in my arms, a weight holds them down. Something's inside this scrunched-up thick green blanket.

After she hands it to me, she begins to slowly walk away. I figure I can see what this is and still catch up to her. So I unravel the blanket and what I see is a brief message. Carved across the child's stomach and chest. It says, Nobody said dead or alive. In scabs.

These men. These sons of bitches. They just robbed Anna two million dollars and the life of her two-year-old son.

This man, this child thief, this kidnapper, and the chief of this “operation”, as you could call it, does this to people all over. Breaks into the homes of wealthy people with young children. Steals a child. Takes him or her to his “headquarters” and severs a body part and carves a number into it with a heated knife so it scabs and the message stands out more. It is then sealed into an envelope and put in the mailbox along with a note. What he does after is the same arrangements that were made with Anna. It is always the same. Just different locations and different amounts of money. Depending on the targeted family. The child is always dead with a scabbed message by a heated knife.

This man, this child thief, this kidnapper, doesn't get caught because he has “henchmen” do the dirty work. What he does do is organize, make the arrangements, sever the body parts, kill the kids, and carve the messages. This is how he never gets caught. This is how he is never seen. His men carry out the risky parts. The rest takes place in his “headquarters”.

This man, this child thief, this kidnapper, has been doing this for seven years. Since his life was destroyed due to his own mistake. An accident, but a mistake nonetheless. He lost everything. Including his mind. A few months later, he recovers. Sort of. He comes up with this sick but obviously successful scheme. The ultimate con. This is how he got back on his feet. This is how he makes his money.

I know this because I am this man. This child thief. This kidnapper. The chief of these operations. It is how I got back on my feet. It is how I make my money.