Captain Kangaroo was conversing back and forth with both Mr. Green Jeans and Mr. Moose on the television while Isaac spoke in a low, overcast tone to his father over the phone.

Dressed in the same clothes from the night before, Isaac watched Isaiah crawl and romp about on the floor with his Fisher Price toy phone while he sipped away on his fourth cup of coffee for the morning. Isaac's mind was from the TV and drifting even further away from his son.

Every so often he would stare down at his scarred fingernails that felt as if someone had pierced each of them with sharp needles.

"Isaac, are you still there?" Mr. Mercer worriedly asked.

Shaking himself awake, Isaac replied, "I'm fine, dad. I just got a bad headache. Did the fuzz bring your car back yesterday?"

"Yeah, they brought it back last night. I think the carburetor needs replaced."

Just then, a long pause prevailed. The pause was soon followed by a moan from Isaac's father.

"Son...is everything alright with you? You sure don't sound fine."

Just judging by his father's stretched out gap in speech Isaac could sense that he was stressed over his grueling ordeal. All the young man could do was sit and shut his eyes in angst.

"Yeah, dad, I just need some time to...to work things out."

"Where's Lynn at?"

"She went out to get some more medicine for Isaiah. She said she'll be back before nine."

"Isaac, just relax and let the good Lord take care of everything. You've got a friend in him."

Out of helpless frustration, Isaac threw himself backwards into the couch where he

"Dad...I got something to tell you later on." He flinched, trying with all his might not to sound like

"I get off from work at five, come down to the church

hesitantly said, sitting back and wiping the wetness away from

go to work now. Be

"I will, dad," Isaac sniffed before hanging up

shakiness in his father's tenor that he hadn't heard before; it startled Isaac enough to where he

the child squealed out as he handed his father his toy phone to

Isaac's battered face before taking the

hands as though a parade were trolling right through the living

on the television re-ran reports of the murder of the kidnapper, the dead bodies in his

There were the usual speculations from the usual talking heads on just what kind of animal could have possibly killed all seven people in one night,

With Isaiah frolicking in his arms Isaac's eyes were locked firmly on the TV as the screen scrolled through every

he concentrated on the screen.

Isaiah blurted out, handing his father his red View-Master to play

generous man offering him a ride two days earlier, but what seemed to cause Isaac's head to ache even more was the shock of knowing that he ended his

aching body from off the couch, "your mom wants

body, cut on the warm water and then placed his boy inside the tub. With only a bar of soap Isaac scrubbed Isaiah from

Isaiah. The child actually enjoyed being wet; just splashing about in the water was all playtime for him. He knew that he should have been paying close attention

in his head in a high pitched tone. Much like the proverbial 'fingernails across the chalkboard', Isaac couldn't help but to drown in the hellacious notion that everything that happened two nights earlier was nowhere to be found in his mind. Even the remembrances of the grueling strain of his physical transformation had ostensibly been erased, which was hard to fathom considering the pain that he had been in since waking the

adults to children, and yet, had it not been for the TV, not one person's face could materialize inside the

Isaac's dead face,

turn into a habit." Isaac

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