for it online, scrolling through picture after terrible picture, looking for any evidence that her son might be one of these children. She never found him, but in the process of searching, pieces of herself were destroyed. No human can look at photographs like these without parts of themselves dying.
This is a place meant only for monsters.
But she needed to look. She was compelled to look. If her son was one of these horrifically abused children, the least she could do was see.
The more she looked, the more she drank. The more she drank, the more pills she took. This went on for months, up until her last therapy appointment, when she’d finally confessed her secret to Dr. Chen. He’d reacted strongly to her admission about her dark net activity.
“If you ever feel you need to look, you must take a moment and ask yourself what’s causing you to feel this way,” her therapist said. “And accept that it’s your anxiety lying to you, telling you that you need to do this in order to feel a sense of control over a situation that’s wholly out of your control. Anxiety can be very convincing. Don’t believe what it’s telling you. Because looking at these images won’t help your anxiety, Marin. It will only make it much, much worse. What you’ve been doing is an act of self-harm, and I am very, very concerned.”
Dr. Chen is half right. Anxiety does lie. But the situation isn’t out of Marin’s control, and as her computer finds its way, she examines her hands. Hands that look normal; hands that are strong; hands that can wield sharp shears, turning hair into something beautiful; hands that can cook, clean, hold, squeeze, caress, and show love; hands that gesture when she’s emotional; hands that protect.
Hands that let go of her little boy in a busy, crowded market on the Saturday before Christmas.
She’s thought about the horrors that were likely to have befallen Sebastian in the hours after he was led away by Santa Claus. She’s read the stats, and she knows that children his age—if they’re not found within twenty-four hours—are likely to be dead. And if they’re not, surely there are more horrors awaiting.
It’s Marin’s fault. All of it. Including everything that’s come after. Her goddamned hands. She’d been tempted to slice them off a few nights ago, but then Derek came home with an anniversary card, and asked if they could try again.
“You came home,” was all she’d managed to say.
“I always come home,” her husband said. “And I always will come home.”
Derek has never punished her for grieving the way she grieves. Maybe she shouldn’t punish him for grieving the way he grieves.
The thoughts never leave her, though. But they’re only thoughts, and she’s better at keeping them to herself; otherwise, people become concerned and feel the need to intervene for fear that she might self-harm due to her fragile emotional health.
After her hospital stay, she promised Derek she would never try it again. And at her last appointment with Dr. Chen, she promised her therapist she would no longer visit these sites.
She’s going to break one of those promises now.
She starts scrolling, searching for the birthmark, the crescent. Searching for her son. She doesn’t know these children, but she cries for them, she cries for their mothers, and later, she’ll cry herself to sleep.
Sometimes, in her dreams, Sebastian is with a new family. Some poor woman who was desperate to have children took him from the market and is raising him with all the love that Marin and Derek would have given him. And with every passing day, Sebastian forgets about them, about Marin, and he grows to love his new mother. He is fine, he is safe, he is whole.
And sometimes, in her dreams, Sebastian is screaming for her. And no matter what Marin does, she can never get to him in time. Her little boy simply vanishes, like a puff of air, there one moment, gone the next, snatched by a face she can’t see and brought to a dark place where the monsters hide.
“See? There are no monsters in Mommy’s house,” she had once said reassuringly to her son when she finished reading him The Monster at the End of This Book. It was one of her favorites as a child, and it stars lovable Grover from Sesame Street, who’s terrified about a monster he’s certain will appear at the end of the book, only to discover that the monster