The Appointment

Photo by Khaled Nader on Unsplash

Every Monday at three o’clock, I take my son to an appointment.

I don’t know what kind of appointment. I don’t know where it is. But I take him, wait in the car, and bring him home an hour later.

He’s ten. Old enough to be nervous about appointments, but young enough not to question why we go.

This started two months ago.

I woke up on a Monday and knew with unflinching certainty that I had to take Ollie to his appointment at three. The knowledge was there, solid as furniture.

“Where are we going?” Ollie asked in the car.

“Your appointment.”

“What appointment?”

“I don’t know, love.”

He accepted this. Children accept strange things if you say them with enough confidence.

I drove without thinking. Turned left, right, straight, followed routes I’d never learned, ended up in a part of the city I didn’t recognise. Parked outside a building that might have been an office block. Grey concrete with no signs. The numbers on the door didn’t match any address I knew.

“Go inside,” I told Ollie. “Someone will be waiting.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But they’ll know you.”

He went. I waited. An hour later, he returned, climbed back into the car, silent.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“What did they do?”

“Nothing. We just talked.”

“About what?”

“I don’t remember.”

He didn’t remember. Couldn’t tell me who he’d seen, what they’d looked like, what they’d discussed. But he wasn’t upset or scared. Just quiet, as if trying to recall a dream.

The next Monday, the knowledge returned. Three o’clock. Take Ollie to his appointment.

And so we went. Same route. Same building. Same hour of waiting whilst my son disappeared inside.

“What happened today?” I asked when he returned.

“Nothing.”

“Ollie, please. Tell Mum what they’re doing.”

“They’re not doing anything. We’re just… preparing.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

My husband said to stop taking him.

“This is bizarre, Lena. You’re driving our son to some unknown location to meet unknown people for unknown reasons. Do you understand how insane that sounds?”

“I have to take him. It’s his appointment.”

“Cancel it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Because the knowledge wouldn’t let me. Because every Monday morning, I woke up knowing that at three o’clock, I had to take Ollie to his appointment, and the idea of not taking him was impossible, like the idea of breathing underwater or walking through walls.

“I just can’t,” I said.

Paul followed us one Monday. Took his own car, stayed back, watched where we went.

That evening, he was pale.

“There’s no building there,” he said.

“Yes, there is. Grey concrete. Numbers on the door.”

“No. There’s an empty lot. Demolished years ago. I checked with the local council. Nothing’s been there since 2003.”

“Then what did you see?”

“You parking and Ollie getting out. Then he disappeared. One moment there, next moment gone. You sat in the car for an hour, then he reappeared.”

“You’re wrong. He goes inside. He has his appointment.”

“With who? With what?”

I didn’t know. Couldn’t explain it.

But the Mondays continued.

Ollie started using words a ten-year-old shouldn’t know: complex words, adult words spoken with perfect pronunciation.

“Where did you learn that word?” I’d ask.

“At my appointment.”

“What are they teaching you?”

“I don’t know. I forget afterwards. But I remember how to do things. How to be better.”

Better. He was becoming better. More polite. More capable. He could read books that would have challenged a university student. Could solve maths problems I couldn’t solve. Could play the piano we didn’t own, fingers moving across invisible keys.

“This has to stop,” Paul said. “They’re doing something to him.”

“They’re educating him.”

“This isn’t education. This is something else.”

But what else could it be? And how could I stop something I didn’t understand, couldn’t resist, and didn’t remember agreeing to?

Last month, on Monday, Ollie came back entirely different. He was wearing the same clothes and the same face, but something fundamental had shifted.

“How was your appointment?” I asked.

He looked at me with a blank expression. “It’s almost time.”

“Time for what?”

“For me to go permanently.”

I stopped. “Go where?”

“To where the appointments are. They’ve been preparing me. Seeing if I’m suitable. I am. They told me today. Four more appointments, then I stay.”

“No. You’re not staying anywhere. You’re my son. You live here.”

“I was your son,” he corrected. “But that’s changing. At each appointment, I become less yours and more theirs. By the final appointment, the transition will be complete.”

I grabbed his shoulders. “Who are ‘they’? What are they doing to you?”

“I don’t know. I told you, I forget. But they’re kind. They give me things like knowledge and abilities. They improve me. In exchange, I give them me. Gradually. Monday by Monday.”

That night, I decided not to take him. Monday came, three o’clock approached, and I locked us both in the flat.

“We’re not going,” I told Ollie.

“We have to.”

“We don’t. I’m your mother. I decide.”

But at 2:55, I found myself putting on my coat and getting the car keys. I realised I was unable to resist the knowledge that we had an appointment, that we must go, and that there was no choice.

Ollie put on his shoes without being asked. “It’s okay, Mum. You can’t help it. Neither can I.”

We went. We followed the exact same routine.

But this time, when Ollie returned, he handed me a document.

“They said to give you this. It’s the contract. They said you signed it before I was born, but they thought you should see it now.”

The document was old, yellowed, covered in text I couldn’t quite read, but I could make out enough:

“In exchange for successful conception and birth, the undersigned agrees to surrender the resulting child through gradual transfer, to be completed over a period of no more than twelve appointments in the eleventh year of the child’s life…”

My signature at the bottom. Dated twelve years ago, when I was desperate, when doctors said I couldn’t have children. I would have signed anything at that time for a chance at motherhood.

“I don’t remember this,” I whispered.

“People never do,” Ollie said. “That’s part of the contract. You forget agreeing. You only remember the obligation.”

“Can I break it?”

“No. It’s binding. Three more appointments, Mum. Then I go.”

The Mondays continued. I took him, knowing each time brought him closer to leaving. Watched him become more perfect and more distant with each appointment.

Last week was the final one.

“Don’t go,” I begged as he got out of the car. “Stay here. Stay with me.”

“I can’t, Mum. The contract is fulfilled. I belong to them now.”

He went inside. I waited the usual hour.

He didn’t come back.

I went to the building and screamed his name. Paul had been right—there was nothing there. Just an empty lot, rubble and weeds, no building at all.

I drive there every Monday at three o’clock. Park in the same spot. Wait the same hour.

I think I see him through the spaces where the building isn’t. But I can never quite make him out.

The knowledge is gone now. I don’t wake up knowing I have an appointment. Don’t feel the compulsion to drive, to deliver, and to wait.

But I go anyway.

Because maybe if I keep going they’ll give him back.

Or maybe they’ll take me too.

And at least then I’d know where he is.

At least then I’d understand what I signed away when I was desperate enough to promise anything.

Even my son.

Even myself.

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