Good morning, House of Madness occupants:
At one time or another in our lives, we've all lost something dear to ourselves; whether it be something sentimental with a value only you can attach to it, all the way to your misplaced Wayne Gretzky rookie cards, which have you tearing your bedroom apart in search of the 3" X 4" rectangles of gold. More often than not, your misplaced valuables turn up one day or another, usually when you least expect it, just so life has another opportunity to show you who's boss. Have you ever gotten yourself lost? That's a completely different experience altogether, and if you've never gone through the ordeal, I say consider yourself lucky and be thankful that you've never had to experience the feeling of total and complete helplessness. If it's a loved one who's gone missing, they say the first 48 hours are crucial in their retrieval, and then the percentages of a happy ending drop considerably.
Ben isn't your regular teenager, his leg will never be the same after a long forgotten car accident, and he towers over most people he encounters with his height and considerable weight. Ben spends his days looking after his three year old brother Eric, while his stepmother works, and his father Clint sleeps the days away after working the night shift. On a day as regular as any other, Ben is going through the motions of playing hide and seek with the enthusiasm of a monk in deep meditation, when he halts the game in order to take his brother with him to the store and retrieve the groceries he's been tasked with getting. After Eric exclaims he absolutely doesn't need to pee, the two brothers head down the road to the local grocery to collect their wares. Once everything is gathered and they're next in line to pay, Eric chooses this moment to let Ben know that he indeed does have to pee. A stranger offers to take Eric to the bathroom, but Ben declines, temporarily abandoning his groceries while he takes his brother who didn't have to pee fifteen minutes ago to the washroom. Ben's patience has worn out, and as he stews in his own anger, he loses track of time. Only minutes have passed, but it's enough that Eric is no longer in the bathroom, and Ben begins to panic. Ben searches every aisle casually at first, but as every corner leads to a place Eric isn't, Ben's anxiety becomes abundantly clear as he screams his little brother's name at the top of his lungs, while fellow shoppers stare with puzzlement. It isn't until the police arrive, however, that Ben's feeling of being trapped inside a dream becomes reality, and his life will never be the same.
Five years pass, and still no Eric. Ben's stepmother is a mess, and instead of working and contributing to the family, spends her days and nights longing for her long lost son, while Clint tries to make ends meet by delivering newspapers on the overnight shift. Since Ben is now fifteen, he decides it's high time he got himself a job and helped keep their house and belongings from being possessions of the bank. No one in Ben's family has stepped foot in that grocery store since the day Eric went missing, but as Ben makes his way there in search of a job application, he can't help but feel like the store is his new calling, and might hold the key to Eric's disappearance. Ben gets the job, and it's not long before everyone he comes across there seems to be hiding something, or covering up some secret he's not privy to. While everyone else has seemingly given up hope on ever seeing Eric again, Ben is doubling down and not making friends in the process. Does the store actually have its own aura, and does it really hold the key to finding Eric, or is the fact that everything pointing at the store is telling him to stop, and Ben is simply inventing things in his mind? Either way, things seem grim, but if everyone on the planet was half as determined as Ben, people would think twice about taking things that aren't theirs.
Dathan Auerbach does it again; if you're unfamiliar with his previous work entitled "Penpal", you should absolutely rectify that immediately.
Madness Meter: 8.3/10
NB
