If a young boy named Nathan approaches your kid in the playground and asks them to play follow the leader with him, stop them before they say “yes” and take them home immediately. He LOOKS to be around 7 or 8 years of age, has shoulder length black hair, wears all red and has a weird accent, an accent I’ve never heard before anyway.
This day last year, I took my 5 year old daughter Alice to the playground since it was a nice day and she was begging me to go all week. She loved playing on the swings and slides. While she was playing on the swings, Nathan approached Alice and asked her to play with him. Alice was never shy and always played with other kids at that playground so she agreed to play with him
“What do you want to play?” She asked
“Ummm, follow the leader maybe?”
“Okay. I’m Alice by the way”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Nathan”
“That’s a nice name”
“Thank you. Have you ever played follow the leader before”
“No”
“Well, all you have to do is follow wherever I go”
“Okay”
The game started out fairly innocently. The two walked in a single file around the park, Nathan in front, Alice following behind. Then Nathan started leading Alice towards the road. This is when my parenting instincts kicked in.
“ALICE. DON’T GO ANY FURTHER”
She kept following him
“ALICE. STOP”
She wasn’t showing any signs of stopping so I ran as fast as I could to stop her, but as I grabbed the sleeve of her top to stop her, I was pulled along with her. As I mentioned before, Alice was only five and there was no possible way she would’ve been strong enough to pull me along with her when I tried to stop her. I then tried standing in front of Nathan and told him to stop but he pushed me to the side and continued walking towards the road. I tried wrapping my arms around Alice to stop her but I was still being pulled along with her. I even tried pushing her away but she didn’t budge. I tried telling her stop, I tried telling her we’d go for ice crem, I even tried telling her I’d get her the phone she’s been asking for for the past 6 months but she didn’t even turn her head to look at me. It was like she was under some sort of spell.
Nathan led Alice into oncoming traffic and then just disappeared. My wife who was at work at the time blamed me for not watching her closely enough and when I tried to tell her the truth, she thought I was just making up a story to cover for my poor parenting. Not long after Alice’s funeral, my wife divorced me and her family and even my own family still blame me for her death. The only person who still talks to me from my family is my older sister who actually believes me because she heard of something similar that happened to a relative of a co-worker of hers a few years ago.
I visit that playground almost every day in hopes I’ll see Nathan to confront him. I’m not a violent person, but Nathan is not the child he tricks people into believing he is. I don’t know what he is but if I ever see him, I will make sure he pays for what he did to Alice.