When I got to Vivian's apartment, her door was ajar. Inside, birthday candles were broken into pieces and strewn all about. A whole confetti cake was splattered face down on the floor, and there was a letter on the kitchen counter, written in neat, girly handwriting:

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Sorry to inform you, but your scheduled celebration has been cancelled, as I have kidnapped your girlfriend. But you are in luck. Because there is one thing (and one thing only) I will accept in exchange for her freedom.

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And that thing—is you.

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Arrive at my secret hideout before the clock strikes midnight, and I will consider the universal balance restored. Her survival now depends on your ability to follow instructions, and to face your fears, and to trust in yourself, and to not die. To prove that I mean business, I have aggressively plucked five of her perfect little eyelashes and taped them to this letter, next to my signature. Call the cops and she’s dead. Tell anyone what you’re doing and she’s dead. Show up late, and you know what. (She’s dead.)

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Yours nefariously,

Nabs Abductington

It was already 8:55pm, which meant I had just over three hours to save Vivian’s life. And it was pouring rain, and I didn’t have a car. A list of instructions were written on the backside of the letter, in the same handwriting as the front.

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The first one said to feed Vivian’s fish before I left, which I’d seen her do, but hadn’t myself once done. She had three fishtanks, each with a different visual motif and special type of food. The first had a scale model of the sunken Titanic, littered with tiny corpses, and the last had a deep sea diver figurine holding a Ziploc bag with my name written on it. Through the crystal clear aquarium water, I could see it was filled with cash. I had to roll up my sleeve to grab it out.

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Instruction #2 was to purchase a rope that was at least 30 meters long, and a large horseshoe magnet. The only late night hardware store on the whole island was Zeb’s Shanty Hutch, on the north docks more than two miles away. 

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My many years as a bikeshaw rider were about to pay off big time. I sprinted out into the rain wearing only a t-shirt and cargo shorts, cutting through several gated apartment complexes, over to the winding northbound country road. The streetlamps cast gleaming squiggles atop the asphalt, and the palms bent overhead, fronds roaring in the wind. I tripped in a pothole, and I gashed my knee on a rusty can, but my thoughts never strayed from Vivian, tied up and hungry in some terrible holding cell, possibly carving rocks into chess pieces just to stay sane. 

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I'd told her once, while we were watching a movie where the almost same exact thing happened to the main character, that I'd never abandon her to a fate like that. Not so long as my shoes still fit. 

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It took me less than 13 minutes to reach the boardwalk. The square windows of Shanty Hutch glowed golden at the end of the row. A dull cowbell clanked as I pushed open the ratty screen door. Zeb was behind the counter, just as he’d been for over 30 years, wearing a knit cap and a matching sweater, watching a documentary about the cats of Istanbul. He squinted suspiciously at my rope and magnet, but took my cash payment, and nodded at me on my way out, as if to say good luck.

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The next instruction said to go to the Blue Noddy Boat House, and take the single person row boat parked at Dock C, Slip 15: 

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It will be the only one with two oars. You will have to hop a barbed wire fence to get there. The nightwatchman, Kimo, will definitely catch you, and try to fight you. He is a yellow cord in capoeira, so your only option is to bribe him. Kimo, you see, is secretly a Disney adult. Offer him the remaining articles of your ziploc bag, which will be whatever cash is left after buying the rope and three weekend passes for Epcot Center in Orlando Florida, and he’ll gladly look the other way.

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Everything played out exactly as Nabs foretold. The barbed wire fence only caused a minor flesh wound, and Kimo only managed to punch me twice in the ribs before I explained about the Epcot passes, and once I did, he personally escorted me to Dock C, and helped me down to the boat.   

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I set out across the raging sea. The final instruction said to row out halfway between the fourth and fifth buoys, and to use the rope and magnet to pull something from the seafloor. Up to that point, I’d managed to keep my fear in the periphery, but out there, bobbing in the storm, lowering a rope into the unseen depths of the mighty ocean, it all came crashing down. A stark vision of my dinghy capsizing, emptying me out into oblivion. My back muscles seized, my vision blurred, and the rain finally soaked through my skin, saturating the spongy cores of my bones.

 

When the rope went slack, I yanked it up, six inches at a time. My first try came up with nothing, and so I tried again, and again, and then again.

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On my fourth try, I pulled something out of the water. A metal jewelry box with a heart-shaped latch. Inside, there was a large skeleton key, with a brass tag, engraved with a single word:

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“Lighthouse.”  

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I blinked through the downpour. Off in the dark distance, at the cape of a narrow peninsula, a light was shining. I don’t remember how I made it there. But I do remember crashing against the shore and climbing jagged rocks up the blinking tower.

 

I remember a momentary break in the rain, when for less than thirty seconds, the clouds opened to a patch of ink black sky, glittering with starlight. I remember finding the front door, and the keyhole. And I remember stepping inside the drafty, saltworn building, into a large, circular room.   

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A spiral staircase extended round the stone walls, rising to the peak of the tower. A cloaked, masked silhouette stood at the second level, peering down at me. 

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“It is I!” the figure declared. “Nabs Abductington!”

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“Nabs” I muttered, wiping a dramatic streak of blood from the corner of my mouth. “You heinous freak.”

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“It is 11:59pm, and 46 seconds,” Nabs said, and then bowed. “Congratulations. By a margin of 14 seconds, I will not murder your girlfriend. You may now come and claim her.”

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He let out a flamboyant laugh, swooshed his cloak, and vanished into the shadows. 

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I chased after him. And, for some reason, from that moment on, rising up through the tower, I felt weightless, like I was flying, like making one's way through world was something easy. The stairs coiled tighter as they rose higher, each step steeper until finally, for the second time in one day, I arrived at a door left slightly ajar.

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It opened on its own, into the lantern room. The great spotlight spun overhead, beaming out through the endless distance. And Vivian was there, very convincingly gagged and strapped to a support beam—the perfect movie image of a kidnapped girlfriend. We held eye contact as I came to untie her, holding back our smiles.​​

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“Dude,” she said. “Happy birthday.” 

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"Thanks," I said. "And, I think there's something legitimately wrong with you." 

 

"What do you mean?" 

 

I told her not to pretend like she didn't know just to be cute. 

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"I'm not pretending!" she exclaimed. "I really don't!"

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There was a picnic blanket laid out in front of the massive window, with a family sized bag of potato chips, a non-smashed confetti cake, and a single gift, wrapped with a plaid bow. We sat down together, ate some chips and kissed with tongue. Then I opened my present.

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“A mirror?” I said.

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“The man at the estate sale said it’s an antique,” she said. “Look into it. What do you see?”

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The light was warm, casting deep shadows across my face, like sunlight across the lunar surface.  My hair was wet and matted, my eyes were puffy and pink, and amidst the rest of the grime and darkening blood and fine lines, a piece of kelp was plastered flat over my left cheek.

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“A metaphor,” I said.