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."

threw himself backwards into the couch

something to tell you later on." He flinched, trying

work at five, come down to the church and we

Isaac hesitantly said, sitting back and wiping the wetness

"I gotta go to work

"I will, dad," Isaac sniffed before hanging

Isaac noticed a frightened shakiness in his father's tenor that he hadn't heard before; it startled Isaac enough to where he even lost track

as he handed his father his

Isaac's battered face before taking the plastic receiver, holding

would just sit and clap his tiny hands as though a parade were trolling right through the living room. The boy was happy

played until the newsbreak on the television re-ran reports of the murder of the kidnapper, the dead bodies in his basement and the mutilation

talking heads on just what kind of animal could have possibly

scrolled through every little Sanders girl. Their angelic faces were alive with

down and out of Isaac's bottom lip the longer he concentrated on the screen. He was completely void of any emotion at that instant, as

out, handing his father

the television. He remembered the 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

aching body from off the couch,

from off the child's body,

Unlike most children, it was never a strenuous chore to bath Isaiah. The child actually enjoyed being wet; just splashing about in the water was all playtime for him. He knew that he should

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

that of adults to children, and yet, had it not been for

into Isaac's dead face, alerting him to find his son fiddling with his own private

a habit." Isaac scolded, shoving the child's right hand away from his submerged

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