It all happened last Thursday. I was in my attic rummaging through old boxes of crap, looking for anything useful I could take with me to college. As I was busy looking in a particular box full of old office supplies my dad used to keep, I accidentally kicked over another box and spilled all of its contents on the floor. “Oh goddamnit” I muttered. I turned around to see what all had spilled over and saw it was a box full of binders and family photos. As I was putting the photos back inside of the box, one particular photo caught my eye. It was me as a kid at the Grand Canyon. I smiled a little bit, “I never knew mom and dad brought me to the Grand Canyon.” I thought to myself. I had always wanted to go, “why did they never tell me that they’ve taken me before?” I wondered to myself. I then flipped the photo over, on the back written in black marker, was the phrase “Max visits Arizona”. I was extremely confused, “My name isn’t Max?” I thought to myself. I had to turn the photo back over to make sure, but it had to be me. You could clearly see the paw shaped birthmark on my arm in the photo, which I still had. I also recognized the shirt I was wearing in the photo as a shirt that I had found in a box of my old baby clothes. “That’s definitely me in the photo, why does it say Max on the back?” I thought. It didn’t matter, I put the photo in my pocket and finished putting the rest of the photos back into the box, closed it up, then went downstairs.

The next morning I went downstairs to eat breakfast with my parents. While we were eating I asked my dad about our trip to the Grand Canyon. “Hey dad, why didn’t you ever tell me we went to the Grand Canyon?” He froze for a moment then looked at me confused. “What do you mean?” he replied. “Our trip to the Grand Canyon dad, we went when I was younger. Why didn’t you ever tell me we went?” By this point mom and dad were giving me a cold stare. “Son, that’s impossible, we never went to the Grand Canyon.” My mom said slightly concerned. Before I could respond, my dad quickly stood up and asked to speak with my mother in the living room. Before my mom left the kitchen she told me to quickly hurry up and finish breakfast and then to grab my car keys, because there were some errands she needed me to run for her. “But mom, I just woke up, can I atleast go take a shower first?” I asked. She turned and practically shouted at me “NOW!” before walking into the living room with my dad. I quickly finished my breakfast, then grabbed my keys and left for the grocery store.

I didn’t think much about it while I was out, to be honest I had basically forgotten about all of it until I got home. When I arrived at my house, my parents were not home. I unloaded all the groceries and then went up to my room to take a nap before dinner. Once dinner was ready, I came downstairs and sat down with my mom and dad. They were extremely quiet while we were eating. I asked them what was wrong and they both looked at me. “Son, why did you think we visited the Grand Canyon?” my dad said while almost giving me a death stare. “B-B-Because I went into the uh attic and I saw-” My mom and dad began yelling at me before I could finish talking. “Who let you go in the attic?! Why were you up there?! Are you fucking crazy?!” I was at a loss. I excused myself from the table and went up to my room. “What was wrong with them? Why were they getting so angry about this? Why did they want to hide this from me so bad?” All these thoughts raced through my mind. I decided to do some more research. I looked at the photo I had taken from the attic and examined it closer. On the bottom right of the photo, there was a date. “06/28/2003”. The dates seemed to match up. I would’ve been 2 years old when this photo was taken. I decided to look further into this, I googled the date and what popped up terrified me.

The first article read. “2 people murdered at the Grand Canyon, AZ” My heart began to sink as I clicked onto the article. “2 people have been murdered at the Grand Canyon today at 8:40am. Police say the victims were Identified as 35 year old Richard Townley and 33 year old Ashley Townley. The whereabouts of the son Max Townley aged 2 are currently unknown but it is presumed he has fallen victim to the killers as well, police are currently investigating further.” My blood ran cold, My ears began to ring, and my vision began to go black. I then looked at the back of the photo once more. “Max visits Arizona” It all began to make sense. Why my parents would get so freaked out when I mentioned the Grand Canyon, why my dad often had nightmares about “Leaving fingerprints” It made sense why I was completely different from my “parents” in every way. As these thoughts crossed my mind, I heard my “parents” begin to walk up stairs.

I immediately sprung up and locked my door. They began to knock. “Son open the door” my heart began to beat faster. “Please open the door, we want to talk to you.” I began to panic. “Who the fuck are you people?” I yelled through the door. “Son please open the door, let’s talk this out.”. I quickly looked around my room, trying to figure out what to do next. “I know what you did to my real parents!” I shouted through the door, with clear fear in my voice. “Please, you have to understand why, we had no choice.” I spotted what I was going to do next, I began opening my window when I heard my “mom” explain her side of the story. “Our son, Noah. He was a great kid, he passed away a few months before we found you, when we saw you at the Grand Canyon, we couldn’t help ourselves. We missed him so much, and you reminded us so much of him, we had to have you.” I wasn’t going to hear anymore of it. I climbed at my window and jumped down into the garden and ran away from the house.

I couldn’t believe it. My entire life was a lie. They had killed MY parents and kidnapped me, and used their dead son’s identity on me. I had lived most of my life as Noah, just to find out it wasn’t me. It was all too much for me. I ran to the police station and told them the entire story. When the police arrived at my old home, they found it empty. My fake parents had quickly packed their bags and skipped town. It didn’t matter though. I knew everything about them, their names, phone numbers, and much more. It was only going to be a matter of time before these sick freaks were caught, and my real parents would finally receive justice.

Fast forward to today, I have tried to live my new life as Max. I have been finding out as much as I can about my original family and am in the process of reaching out to relatives. However something strange happened during my process. I went to a local park to meet an aunt of mine when I noticed two figures in hoods walking a small crying boy into the woods who was crying for his mom. Now, normally I’m not the one to make assumptions but when I got home and saw on the news that there were two people murdered at the park today and their son has gone missing. I think it is safe to assume someone replaced me as their son today.