The Office Drawer

It was an overcast day on October 9, 2022, when Candace Dorsam got the call that her Papa had passed away. She was well into her 20’s at the time, but his loss was still devastating for her. The best days of Candace’s adolescence had always been when she’d visit her grandparents in Collingswood. Papa was the best because he was never so militant with rules the way Candace’s parents were. He always allowed Candace to stay up late watching old cartoons, let her have all the candy and soda she wanted, and even let her slip a bad word into conversation every once in a while. 
Unfortunately, Papa was also an over the road truck driver for a transportation company in Illinois, so he’d often be away for weeks at a time, even when she was visiting. And though Papa had never been one to stick to rules too closely, he did have one; to never go in his office drawer when he was away. 
One day Candace had been playing hide and seek with some of the neighborhood kids, and she had decided to use Papa’s office as a hiding spot, just under the desk. After several minutes, Candace had become bored and, with none of the adults around, decided to take a look in the drawer. Disappointingly, she found nothing out of the ordinary, just a few yellow envelopes and some scrapbooks. She’d closed the drawer and left the office to find her friends when she ran into Papa in the hallway, who questioned her with an uncharacteristic darkness about why she was in the office. “Did you touch my desk?” He’d asked with a wide blackness in his eyes. Suddenly scared, Candace insisted that she hadn’t. “Stay out of my office, honey.” He then said, and that was the end of it. 
After Papa’s wake, Candace convened with her family at the old house, her first time seeing it in many years. And after hours of going through scrapbooks and old memories, most everybody but Candace and her grandmother had cleared out. Deciding she’d stay the night, she revisited Papa’s office. She went into the drawer, and found all of the same unremarkable office supplies as before. 
Underneath them though, she found something that shook her to her core... 
14 drivers licenses, all belonging to young women in rural Illinois towns that Candace didn’t recognize. Searches of their names and addresses all turned up unresolved missing persons cases, save for one; 21 year old Katelyn Freeman, whose decomposed body had been discovered in a non-functioning man hole in a south Chicago park in the spring of 2006.
Category:Weird