The Bluish Story of Dot

She disappeared at Pentecost

"The Bradbury" 

Dot was a champion nose-picker for three consecutive years, and she was proud of it. The four trophies, two golds, one silver, and one honorable mention, lay shining in plush in her bedroom cupboard, never to be touched because that would mean bad luck according to her friend, the green city parrot, a stuffed animal of gigantic proportions.

They both would lie on her Princess sofa, her father bought her for her third birthday, eating popcorn and drinking Coke Zero out of glass tea cups, giggling and talking like friends used to, without a care in the world.

There was a word for this innocent, dreamlike state of being, where they were tucked away and hiding from the big, bad world outside the room of her parents’ four-bed condo in the state of Kentucky. It sounded like padam, padam, padumdam, but she never seemed to remember the exact phrasing.

Did it matter?

This morning, it was the day of Pentecost in most Western countries, she and the parrot, whom we shall name Xylo-phone for unmentionable reasons, enjoyed their breakfast, crumpets and all, under the open bay window looking out over one of the US lakes, the thin curtains moving gently by the winds, with dust particles drifting upwards under the guidance of the already brightly shining sun.

It was still early. The possibilities seemed endless.

Somewhere in the desert of the land of Mesopotamia, the movement of a big rock gave people a scare, a real fright.

The two worlds were connected in time, although few could fathom its significance.

When Dad knocked on his daughter’s door at 6:44 in the morning, she was gone, the gigantic stuffed animal alone on the bed, a reminder of the better days he would always remember and cherish.

The police searched the room, the premises, and the surrounding land, but there was no trace of her; she had vanished into thin air.

Dad and the family searched for decades, with the cardboard flyers wrapped in plastic stapled to electricity poles in dormant towns around the city as a silent reminder. Sometimes, years later, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, somebody would visit a pub with his dog and ask, "What’s the story of that missing kid whose face is on that pole outside?”

And they would tell the tale.

Xylo-phone, the gigantic parrot, moved on in life.

From Dot with love to a family with three kids, with two kids, with one kid, where he slept on shelves, hid in cupboards, and was abandoned in a zoo to be discovered again at the Lost and Found of a big tech company in the middle of the country.

Green Grubs, as his nickname was, because he was used to using his grubby little fingers, read claws, to use as a weapon in combat, fathered two wooden birdy birds on a shelf. The kind with feathers, two big, round eyes with that same extra special question in them: what is the meaning of life, and where do I come from?

He could never totally forget Dot and the time he had spent with her and the family. The thought of innocence, combined with feelings of excitement, adventure, and friendship, brought tears to his eyes.

And he wondered where she was, still alive, and well or kidnapped and broken?

As a bird with a passion for gambling, he made a promise to himself to invest 40% of his winnings in games and whatnot, to search for Dot when he retired as a leisure bird.

He smiled, looking into thin air, and admitted that his crush terminator still applied to Dot. The clouds in the sky were especially lovely when he thought about her. There was a sadness, but in the end, there was only joy. And he made a promise to himself to go look for her when the time was right.

For now, it was a sensational concert on Saturday Night that kept him busy. The crowds, thrilled and all over the place with their phones in sending mode, light up the skies. The equipment was brought on time by an airliner, teams were ready, and the mood was perfect.

As their official mascot to the band, he had a special place in the front row where he annoyed one part of the crowd because of his huge proportions, so he shone with his special emerald ring to others as if he wanted to say ‘Go, f**k yourself, but don’t bother me.’ All in a playful manner, of course, as part of that scene. The pop culture is a little more complicated than when he was young.

It was all about MOOD nowadays. What was the definition of mood? Was it an atmosphere, a feeling, the absence of something else, or just a party of birdsong with grades?

He looked at one of his rings, the green one with an onyx or emerald, which he wasn’t that familiar with, and rubbed a tiny cloth over it as if waking up the genie.

Where to start looking for that young girl who went missing so many years ago?

In his condo on the ninth floor, he looked out of the window onto the city below. One street in particular caught his eye, and he thought, I can do this, I can find her down there.

To do some research, he visited websites and solved several missing persons’ cases, just to be on the safe side.

On a special day in 2026, he watched the Hollywood movie Knight and Day from 2010, with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, marched up and down his hallway, and took a deep breath.

Where to find inspiration to bring this to a good close? How to bring Dot home, if she was still alive?

How to define longing?

He thought of the Portuguese word Saudade, listened to Fado, and made up his mind.

Today was the day.

He went to the hairdresser, organized and downsized his feathery appearance so he could blend in with the crowd, and got breakfast in a tiny restaurant in the city center.

When he entered, the waitress had her back to him. “I will help you in a minute, dear,” she replied.

She turned, and everything turned with it.

He looked into the beautiful eyes he remembered from back when.

YOU!

And she smiled.

The END


WC: 1061

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