Safe and Sound
Dramatic/Dystopian short fiction: Lora escaped a greater evil than she ever imagined
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”
Rabindranath Tagore
The silence was unsettling. The man stared down at her, his nostrils flaring, his breathing heavy. The only thing Lora could hear was that breathing — the forest birds had stopped singing, the animals had paused midstep, the trees had halted whispering secrets to one another.
Silence reigned.
The boys in her arms trembled, but they didn’t say a word. Not a whimper came from their mouths, nor even the usual nervous giggling.
The entire world had held its breath, waiting for the man to speak.
“That place!” the man thundered, his deep voice echoing across the forest, shaking the voice back into the birds’ throats, the agility back into the animals’ feet, and the gossiping mood back into the trees’ souls.
The twins hiccupped. They sobbed quietly, and Lora hugged them tighter.
“That place should remain a secret!” the man insisted. “Do you understand, girl?”
“Yes, sir,” she swallowed. Her body felt more relaxed now. The worst had passed. She had made her plea. Now he could help her, throw her out, or kill her — kill them — but anything was better than not knowing. “We haven’t told anyone, sir.”
“They’ll say it’s the municipality’s fucking property and kick me out. That’s my life’s work. I can’t let that happen. Do you understand, girl?”
“I don’t see why you worry, sir. I just told you we want to hide from our parents. Pa beats my brothers half to death every day, and Ma beats me. They drink. They might kill us soon. Why would I tell anyone about our hiding place?”
“Why didn’t you just go to the socials?”
Lora couldn’t help but notice the edges of softness gnawing at the firm plate of his voice.
“They’ll put us in foster care. They’ll separate us. We can’t live without each other.”
Mark and Ben started nodding vehemently. Their sobs were more audible now, accompanied by small, guttural sounds and louder hiccupping.
The man took a good look at the three of them. The thin lines around his eyes and mouth smoothed out, but a deeper one, between his eyebrows, formed. His gaze moved upward, to the green tree crowns outlined against the blueness of the sky.
Then he blinked and turned his head away, as if…
…to hide tears?
“So,” he said a moment later, coughing and shifting his big backpack from one shoulder to the other, “you say you’ll work for me, eh? If I provide shelter and food?”
“That’s right, sir! I can help with house chores, and the boys can work in the woods, or in your… your construction work, if you need it. They might be only six, but they’re strong.”
“Okay, girl. I think I can’t say no to that. I need some extra hands here.”
“So you agree?” She could feel not only her face but her entire body beaming, as if she had turned into a small sun. She had followed and watched this man for months, and what she saw in him had made her gather the bravery to turn to him — but she had never really believed he would take them.
Is it really safe to be with him? she thought suddenly. Haven’t I been deluding myself?
“Aren’t you afraid, though?” the man said, as if reading her mind. “You don’t know me. You’re putting yourself and your brothers in my hands. That’s serious trust, girl.”
“I’ve seen you,” she said, fixing her gaze on his dark eyes. “I’ve seen you in the forest. The way you walk. The way you work. The way you talk to trees and animals. And that one time, when you took care of the wounded deer. I saw you reading books. You’re a good man.”
“That’s a lot of seeing.” The man frowned, but at the same time, a small smile formed at the edge of his mouth. “I haven’t noticed you even once. You must be pretty stealthy. Should I be afraid now?”
“I did it out of desperation,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“But you definitely did. Well… let’s do it then, girl. If they catch me, they might accuse me of kidnapping, but I guess I can’t leave you now, after what you’ve told me. What was your name again?”
“Lora. And the boys are Mark and Ben.”
“I’m Joe.”
“You want me to call you Joe?”
“Yeah, please. Drop that sir. Now, come over, and let’s get to work!”
Months passed.
Joe lived in an enormous cave. Lora had never seen anything so big. It had several rooms, most of them used as storehouses — full of canned and packaged food, water bottles, medicine, and endless tools she couldn’t recognize.
The living room was equipped with a sofa, four armchairs, and a bunch of ottomans. There was a monitor, hooked to a computer, hooked to a diesel generator that, as Joe explained, provided electricity for the whole house. “It could last us for thirty years, and I have another one in store,” he said.
The kitchen had its own cooker, although they never used it — they cooked everything outside. Joe and the boys hunted small animals and gathered wild plants, and she would cook soups and bake meat on a small, makeshift barbecue whose traces they carefully covered after use.
“Why don’t we use the cooker inside?” she had asked once. “It has a chimney and all. You said the smoke won’t go outside, that it’ll gather in a special big space under the roof so we won’t be noticed!”
“The cooker is for later,” Joe had answered. “Much later.”
The same went for the special toilet and bathroom, which used a self-made underground plumbing system. Joe said it would overload if they started using it now, so they did their business in the forest.
Many things about Joe and his home puzzled Lora. She thought she was quite clever for a ten-year-old girl, but she couldn’t understand why Joe wanted to isolate himself from the world to such a degree — or what that later was he kept mentioning.
They would play cards or read books in the evenings. Sometimes Joe would read to them. Once, after finishing a story, he closed the book and turned his head away — but not before Lora spotted the tears in his eyes.
She got up from the armchair and walked over. Sat on the armrest of his sofa.
“Why are you crying, Joe?”
“What?” He quickly wiped his eyes. “I’m not crying. My eyes are old and tired, is all.”
“Bullshit. You’re only thirty-five. That’s not old. Ma is forty and her eyes are never tired. And she never cries — well, maybe only when she’s drunk and cursing. You cry because you’re sad, Joe.”
And just like that, he told them. He had three kids of his own — three girls, triplets, Lora’s age. Their mother had won custody and taken them far away. He hadn’t seen them in years.
“She left me because she thought I was crazy, doing what I was doing here in the woods. She never knew exactly what I was working on, of course — the cave, the whole thing. I tried to tell her, to explain my viewpoint, but she wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t stop yelling at me. And yeah, she was right, I couldn’t hold a job. Any job. I wanted this life here, in the wilderness. So I let her go with the girls. I never knew I’d miss them so.”
“Why don’t you go to her? Explain. Ask to see them?” Lora said.
“That’d mean I’d have to leave my work here. And I… I can’t. Not even for them. I need to save whoever wants to be saved. Turns out it’s the three of you. I didn’t even have to look for people — you… well, you just came.”
“What do you mean?” Again, Lora felt a tingling in her arms and legs. Sometimes she got scared of Joe. A flickering thought crossed her mind — what if he was some kind of psychopath, waiting for a special full moon or something, to shut them down in that cave and eat them piece by piece, cooking their flesh on his special cooker?
“I’m not sure you’ll understand what I mean,” Joe sighed, and that sigh immediately chased all her fears away. “My wife didn’t understand. She divorced me.”
“You’re afraid we’ll leave you if you tell me?”
“No. I don’t think you’ll leave me. You just won’t understand. You’re still too young to grasp the complexity of this world, let alone have an opinion on it.”
“Try me,” Lora said.
He raised an eyebrow, got up from the sofa, and went to the wooden kitchen island to pour himself a glass of wine.
“I won’t try you, Lora. You just stick around, and you’ll see for yourself. Time will come when I’ll tell you, ‘We secure the exit now and remain inside for a long, long period.’ And you’ll know why.”
A year later, still nobody had found them. Life with Joe had turned idyllic — he even had schoolbooks stacked in the storeroom, so homeschooling joined the daily rhythm of chores and cooking. Lora felt she was blooming. Her brothers were growing up in the first healthy environment they’d ever known. They had become so beautiful. She had become beautiful, too.
But Joe grew uneasy.
Lora often caught him staring at the evening sky, as if its deepening colors held a secret only he could see. When she asked what was wrong, he would mumble, “Listened to the news today. Not good. Not good at all.”
Then he started urging them to spend as much time as possible outside. Their second summer in the woods was coming to a close. They hunted, gathered plants, cooked, ate, and played in the open air until even the crickets got tired of singing their lullaby. Then they all went to bed.
One autumn evening, as they were putting out the cooking fire, the sky changed.
Its deep violet gave way to bright pink — so bright Lora had to half-close her eyes, freezing mid-motion with a bucket of sand in her hands.
“Oh, sis, what’s that?” Mark’s voice came low beside her, as if something about what they were seeing had pulled him across the threshold of childhood in one sharp step.
“I don’t…” she started — but then went silent.
A humming sound rose from all directions at once. And against the pink sky, a giant yellow-red shape appeared. It was huge — its top broke into the firmament, fracturing it, scattering jagged shards across the atmosphere.
It was the shape of a mushroom.
Joe came out of nowhere. He snatched the bucket from her and hurled it onto the glowing embers. Then he grabbed the twins — one under each arm — and yelled at her:
“Hurry up! Hurry up, Lora!”
She ran.
She had thought Joe was the kind of man who couldn’t be scared by anything. But he was scared now. His whole body trembled. His voice hitched with panic. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead.
They entered the cave. Joe set the boys down, panting. He looked at the children.
“Now,” he said, his voice hollow. “We need to secure the exit.”
The story was first published in First Line Fiction, on Medium.
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Thank you for reading!
I remember this story, and it impressed (and scared) me just as much as when I read it the first time. Such great storytelling!
Ah yeah, this touching story again. That thing at the end sounds like an atomic bomb. I hope not. Either way, it sounds very serious. :o