Little David

by Charles Roland

About the Author: Charles Roland lives in an area convenient to several major southern cities. His work has appeared in Workers Write! Tales from the Casino and Mystery Weekly Magazine, and is forthcoming in DeadLights Horror Fiction Magazine and Broadswords and Blasters. He can be reached at charlesrolandauthor.com or charlesrolandauthor@gmail.com.

Excerpt

In the six years I spent looking for David Alamont, it never occurred to me that I might actually find him.

I could tell that it had never occurred to him, either, as he stared blankly back into my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it.

I had first read about the Alamonts sixteen years ago, along with everyone else in our part of the country. It was the kind of thing that made you shake your head. A nice family, three young children. In the pictures they all looked healthy, sturdy, happy. They looked like people ought to look. Like families ought to look.

Their fourth child, David, was born at 4:17 am, after almost sixteen hours in the hospital. David’s mother held him in her arms, his father cried a little. Mrs. Alamont’s parents were in town, watching the other three children at home. The nurses took little David, just for a short while. Dad was welcome to come along, they said, but he just wanted to hold his wife’s hand and smile into her eyes. They fell asleep like that, she in the bed and he in the chair, holdings hands and smiling. In that moment, everything was perfect.

And then the moment passed.

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