Andy
I walk into the door after an eight hour shift at work. I look around the house. I can faintly hear music playing from my sisters room. “Shara,” I yell up the stairs
“What Andy?”
“Did you do your chores?”
“Ya sure. Dad made food, there’s a plate for you on the table.”
“Where is dad?”
“I don’t know, he left just before you got home.”
I ran out the front door, I knew exactly where he was. After our mother died two years ago our father started drinking, a lot. He always waited to go to the bar until i left because he knows how mad i get. Him and his ‘friends’ sit around all day while their kids take care of them.
When I walk into the bar the bartender looks at me, “no minors. Oh, it’s you. Your old man is over there in the booth.”
“Thanks Dan.” I’m not even out of highschool yet I shouldn’t have to be doing this shit. “Dad get up we are leaving.” He tried to make a scene and started drunkenly yelling about how he wasn’t drunk, and how he wasn’t going anywhere with me. Drunk bastard made me drag him out by his arms while he cried on the ground.
Shara was asleep by the time we got home, dinner was laid on the table cold. All the lights were off and the house was calm until we came home. My dad barely able to walk, grasping anything that he can grab onto for support, knocking over pictures. He looked to me and said “maybe I’ve have had uh, too uh, much to drink. thanks for getting me.” about time that man gives me a little gratitude. I’ve had to take over almost everything since mom died. He makes it into his room right as I notice a reflection from off the window. I whip my head around to see someone standing on the deck. I throw the door open and chase after them. After a while of running, they just stopped running. This large, i’m assuming man, turns and looks right at me. I’m to far from the house to run back, i’m worried he’d catch me before i made it. “What do you want?” no response, “leave me and my family alone!” I’m screaming as loud as I can and it’s like this freak can’t hear me. I slowly start walking backwards, he slowly started walking forwards. It’s a total stand off and i know I’d lose, unless, I can out smart him. Before I could think of anything he starts running at me. I stand my ground, more like I’m to scared to move but same thing right? As he starts to get really close I get ready, well to do something, as he gets closer he just turns away, just like that scene from the movie get out. It was over, he ran straight into the woods and was gone.
The next day I told dad and Shara over breakfast. “Probably just a bad dream, don’t think to much about it kid, you’re young, hormones are messing up your brain.”
“I know it wasn’t a dream, you’ve got to believe me.”
“Look Andy, we live in the middle of nowhere. We have nothing nice to steal and a shitty house. Nobody wants anything to do with us.” He’s right, it probably was just a dream. I’ve been exhausted from working every shift I can on top of school.
It’s almost 10:00 P.M. Me and shara are up and ready this time, and our dad is drunk asleep on the couch. We set up cameras all over and snares outside. We figured that if we can catch him we’ll know what to do, we really don’t know what’s going to happen. We wait, and wait, but all night there’s nothing. Night after night there’s nothing.
It’s been three weeks, to be honest we all forgot about the whole thing. That is until he came back. Me and sarah were on the phone with dad, we had finally got him into rehab the week before. When we hung up shara saw him first, “Andy, he’s back” I had no idea what she was talking about until I looked out the kitchen window and saw him. We could see his face perfectly, his twisted smile, his rotten teeth and knotted greasy hair. With a blink he was gone. We were both panicking the cameras were still on we both sprint to the computer where we can look at them and find him it takes so long to type in the passcode then we see them. All of them. We both can calm down seeing where he is. He got caught in one of the snares, we must have missed one when we took them down. “What do we do know any?” i was already on the phone with the police and this time I someone was going to come, I would make them if i had to.
Two weeks later dad got out of rehab, we told him everything that happened and this time he believed us. Shara looked at me and we could both already tell that things weren’t going to be so bad anymore.