The Case of the Vanishing Tablet
Counting beads, making sandwiches, and apparently entertaining a trickster spirit — just another Sunday night in my kitchen.
Our house is small — the kitchen’s so narrow that two people can’t stand side by side, just shuffle around each other in a strange little dance. That’s where this odd event took place and was a couple of yeas ago now.
At that time I was preparing my medication for the week. As part of tapering off, I have to open the capsules, count out the tiny beads, and reassemble them. It’s a fiddly, boring process, and I usually zone out while counting. That night, I finished six tablets, placed them neatly in my pill box, and left the seventh — the one for that evening — right in the middle of the chopping board.
It couldn’t roll anywhere (oblong shape, flat board), and with two dogs in the house I’m always careful. I busied myself with making a sandwich, going back and forth to the fridge, all the while reminding myself that I still needed to fetch my glass from the lounge before I could take the pill.
When I returned to the board — the tablet was gone.
I hadn’t taken it. I knew that for sure. My partner at the time (let’s call him B) came in with a torch and we scoured the place. Floor, counters, fridge, waste jar, even my sleeves and slipper socks — nothing. I called out into the room, “Whoever or whatever has taken it, please return it. It’s not safe for the dogs.”
B then said something that stopped me cold: he swore he’d seen me walk into the hallway toward the lounge door, pause as if I’d forgotten something, and turn back to the kitchen. Except I hadn’t. I thought about fetching my glass, but I never left the kitchen. I insisted, hand on heart. He insisted he saw me do it.
We were still puzzling over that when the tablet suddenly reappeared. Right there on the chopping board, to the side of my plate. I’d literally just put my sandwich down on that plate seconds before — the board had been empty. B couldn’t have reached past me or even seen the board from where he stood. But there it was.
I thanked the room out loud, both relieved and thrilled. B, on the other hand, just looked uneasy and muttered, “Well… at least the dogs are safe. But please don’t tell me I have to deal with two of you in this house.”
Reflections
I’ve had smaller things like this happen before — a lost recipe from my mum that turned up after I asked her (she passed years ago), or finding my way to unknown places after asking my dad for guidance (he was always my navigator in life and car, and has also passed).
So what happened that night?
Did my intention to fetch the glass somehow manifest a “phantom me”?
Was it the Fae playing a trick, then returning the pill when asked respectfully?
Or was it something — or someone — else looking out for me?
I don’t know. But I do know this: I didn’t move it. B didn’t move it. And yet it vanished, then reappeared right under our noses.
Note to self: always thank the unseen hands when they return what they’ve borrowed.
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