Andrew just got home from school and is already so bored that he can’t stand it.
He is in the living room playing half-heartedly on his Xbox game, the volume turned too loud, but there is no one there to tell him to turn it down. With only one game to play, he got bored with it pretty fast.
“I wish I had more games. The games are a lot of money and it’s taking me forever to save up enough allowance to buy another one.”
He snorts at the thought. “I guess I’d earn the money a lot faster if I did my chores, but chores are lame and boring.”
He looks at the clock. Nobody will be home for a few hours.
“Man, that is just forever,” he grumbles.
At twelve, Andrew has been a latchkey kid since last year and has never really gotten completely used to being home alone. He’s fine except for one thing that makes him nervous; sometimes he hears strange noises in the house. It usually happens when the house is very quiet. When everyone else is sleeping or he’s home alone. Because of this, Andrew doesn’t like being home alone. It makes him nervous, but he won’t admit that to anyone.
Andrew thinks he’s the only person with this problem and that it’s lame and for little kids.
Sometimes, he imagines the noises are giant rats in the basement, waiting for the right time to come squirming up the stairs to chew their noses off and devour their eyes in their sleep. Sometimes he imagines it’s someone breaking into the house.
When he told his parents last year about his fear, they said it was ridiculous and laughed. He didn’t talk about his fear again after that; not to anyone. He doesn’t want anyone else laughing at him too.
Andrew is only going through the motions of playing his game, running his game player through a maze of bad guys, jumping and shooting without really paying attention. He doesn’t miss a beat. He has this game down and figures he could play it blindfolded.
He freezes, eyes widening and hands locked on the Xbox controller while his helpless character is repeatedly beaten to a pulp and killed by the bad guy in the game, over and over, phasing back into the game with a new life only to be killed again each time. It’s a repetition of music, weapon blasts, and his character’s death scream playing on repeat.
“What was that?” he thinks. “That was a thump, definitely a thump from somewhere in the house.”
He heard it despite the loud noise of the game. His stomach knots with anxiety and he keeps still, listening. The thump comes again, quiet, and then something that sounds like a wet slither. Andrew’s knees feel instantly weak.
“It’s coming from the basement,” he thinks.
“It’s nothing,” he whispers quietly, trying to convince himself.
“Mom and dad would say I imagined it,” he thinks. “They would say it’s only my imagination, that there’s nothing there. Or they would say it’s just the sound of the house settling, whatever that means.”
“More like settling its sour stomach after eating someone,” he whispers.
Andrew keeps listening, a frozen statue, waiting for more noises. The television blaring the Xbox game in front of him is making him self-conscious now. If there is anyone, or thing, in the house, the noise will attract it.
He looks at the television anxiously, wanting to move and turn the sound off. “But what if the sudden silence alerts it or him or whatever that I’m here?” he thinks.
“Better leave it on,” he whispers. He is growing more nervous with each heartbeat. The urge to get out of there is too strong to ignore. “Whatever made that sound can have the house to itself. I’m out of here.”
Heart beating fast and too scared to move, Andrew yells at himself in his head, keeping his lips closed tight because he is afraid whatever it is will hear him breathe. “MOVE, COME ON AND JUST MOVE! STAND UP!”
Andrew finally makes himself move. He puts the game controller down as quietly as possible and creeps to the front door, grabbing his jacket on the way from where he had carelessly tossed it on a chair. He winces at the quiet hissing noise his jacket makes from the fabric rustling as he slips it on. Jamming his feet quickly into his boots, he grabs his hat and mitts, almost forgets his key, and slips out of the house. He closes the door quietly behind him, turning the key in the lock as quietly as he can to lock the door.
“If there’s anything here, that’ll slow it down,” he thinks.
He runs down the driveway, turns, and races down the road, the cold snow crunching loudly beneath his boots and his breath pluming in a cloud that hangs in the air behind him for a span of heartbeats before vanishing. His heart is beating fast and he has to force himself to not look back to see if anything is chasing him. The feeling that something is won’t go away, even though he knows it isn’t likely.
THE LATCHKEY KIDS IS AVAILABLE ON KINDLE AND IN PAPERBACK ON AMAZON
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