Midnight Break-in
1/2
Crash!
The dog, which had once been sleeping soundly in his pet bed that was as old as he was, started barking immediately and stood up with his ears pricked. I woke up in a fluster with hair in my face and fumbled around in the dark, cold from having just left the bed. I was desperate to find a light switch in the guest bedroom I had been residing in for the past three days. There was a multi-colored luminescence coming in from the window by the lights of ambitious neighbors’ Christmas decorations but it wasn’t nearly enough to see. I must have spent a good two minutes shivering and feeling around the wall for some kind of sign of the switch until I finally found it by the door.
I flicked the switch and the room was alight with a golden glow. With the light on, I found my jacket and put it on while also catching myself in the vanity mirror with my hair standing up in impossible places that would confuse most physicists. The dog let out a whimper and moved to my side, nudging at my hand. I ruffled his fur for a second until I heard it again.
Crash!
Someone’s here.
When the thought came to me, I felt my throat close. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? I debated whether or not it would be better to stay in the room, to leave, or to at the least to move from the room. I thought about the dog and how I’d be able to keep him quiet, though he didn’t end up making much noise. In fact, when I thought about dog, which the owners’ kid named Nemo, I wondered why the dog didn’t make a noise when whatever it was that made the crashing sound was outside of the house rather than inside. That would have been a lot easier, boy, I thought.
I began to hear shuffling footsteps coming from downstairs and for whatever reason, I thought that that was my chance to move so I turned off the light of the guest bedroom, took hold of Nemo’s license attached to his collar to muffle the clanging, and moved down two doors to the son’s bedroom. All over the walls, there were various sports-related memorabilia. The kid was a county-wide champion in more than one leisure activity at the young age of ten but the pastime that decked the walls of his bedroom the most was baseball. Knowing this, and knowing the fact that he was a pre-pubescent boy living in America, I let go of the dog and checked under the kid’s bed for some sort blunt weapon. I found old math tests with “You did it!” stickers and the name Charlie Bath scrawled in pencil at the top, a “Clue” board game box, and three different baseball bats. I chose the Louisville Slugger, hoping I wouldn’t break it because I had only seen this kid’s face covered with just a shadow of sadness once and that was enough to last a lifetime.
My entire body was trembling as I stood up. I started pacing around the room and had no idea what I was doing. This isn’t my house. I should call the cops. I whipped out my cell phone from my jacket pocket and pressed the emergency call button to skip typing in the password but then I thought, What if I’m making a big deal out of nothing. Just because I heard a noise doesn’t mean that it actually happened.
“House sit, they said,” I muttered to myself. “It will be easy money, they said.”
I stood up then and breathed out a lungful I hadn’t even realized I had been holding. I looked down at the dog that had been following me around the room like a duckling having just seen its mother for the first time. His eyes seemed to bulge and his tail was lowered. Looks like I have to be brave for the both of us.
Finally plucking up some remainder of courage, I left Charlie’s bedroom and stopped at the top of the stairs. The faint sound of Nemo’s paws tapping against the wooden floors made me cringe until I turned around and saw him behind me. I motioned for him to stay before I walked down the stairs but he followed me anyway.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that there was a light that had spilled onto the living room floor from the archway of the kitchen. What burglar in their right mind would turn on the lights? But it seemed too faint to come from the overheads so I slowly moved to the kitchen, gripping onto the bat and ready to swing. Nemo, who was once behind me, moved in front of me and sniffed the air. He seemed to straighten up and, as if he had never been afraid, he bounded into the kitchen with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
There was a small commotion but I didn’t hear anything violent so I went in after Nemo and turned on the kitchen lights.
The dog, which had once been sleeping soundly in his pet bed that was as old as he was, started barking immediately and stood up with his ears pricked. I woke up in a fluster with hair in my face and fumbled around in the dark, cold from having just left the bed. I was desperate to find a light switch in the guest bedroom I had been residing in for the past three days. There was a multi-colored luminescence coming in from the window by the lights of ambitious neighbors’ Christmas decorations but it wasn’t nearly enough to see. I must have spent a good two minutes shivering and feeling around the wall for some kind of sign of the switch until I finally found it by the door.
I flicked the switch and the room was alight with a golden glow. With the light on, I found my jacket and put it on while also catching myself in the vanity mirror with my hair standing up in impossible places that would confuse most physicists. The dog let out a whimper and moved to my side, nudging at my hand. I ruffled his fur for a second until I heard it again.
Crash!
Someone’s here.
When the thought came to me, I felt my throat close. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? I debated whether or not it would be better to stay in the room, to leave, or to at the least to move from the room. I thought about the dog and how I’d be able to keep him quiet, though he didn’t end up making much noise. In fact, when I thought about dog, which the owners’ kid named Nemo, I wondered why the dog didn’t make a noise when whatever it was that made the crashing sound was outside of the house rather than inside. That would have been a lot easier, boy, I thought.
I began to hear shuffling footsteps coming from downstairs and for whatever reason, I thought that that was my chance to move so I turned off the light of the guest bedroom, took hold of Nemo’s license attached to his collar to muffle the clanging, and moved down two doors to the son’s bedroom. All over the walls, there were various sports-related memorabilia. The kid was a county-wide champion in more than one leisure activity at the young age of ten but the pastime that decked the walls of his bedroom the most was baseball. Knowing this, and knowing the fact that he was a pre-pubescent boy living in America, I let go of the dog and checked under the kid’s bed for some sort blunt weapon. I found old math tests with “You did it!” stickers and the name Charlie Bath scrawled in pencil at the top, a “Clue” board game box, and three different baseball bats. I chose the Louisville Slugger, hoping I wouldn’t break it because I had only seen this kid’s face covered with just a shadow of sadness once and that was enough to last a lifetime.
My entire body was trembling as I stood up. I started pacing around the room and had no idea what I was doing. This isn’t my house. I should call the cops. I whipped out my cell phone from my jacket pocket and pressed the emergency call button to skip typing in the password but then I thought, What if I’m making a big deal out of nothing. Just because I heard a noise doesn’t mean that it actually happened.
“House sit, they said,” I muttered to myself. “It will be easy money, they said.”
I stood up then and breathed out a lungful I hadn’t even realized I had been holding. I looked down at the dog that had been following me around the room like a duckling having just seen its mother for the first time. His eyes seemed to bulge and his tail was lowered. Looks like I have to be brave for the both of us.
Finally plucking up some remainder of courage, I left Charlie’s bedroom and stopped at the top of the stairs. The faint sound of Nemo’s paws tapping against the wooden floors made me cringe until I turned around and saw him behind me. I motioned for him to stay before I walked down the stairs but he followed me anyway.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that there was a light that had spilled onto the living room floor from the archway of the kitchen. What burglar in their right mind would turn on the lights? But it seemed too faint to come from the overheads so I slowly moved to the kitchen, gripping onto the bat and ready to swing. Nemo, who was once behind me, moved in front of me and sniffed the air. He seemed to straighten up and, as if he had never been afraid, he bounded into the kitchen with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling out of his mouth.
There was a small commotion but I didn’t hear anything violent so I went in after Nemo and turned on the kitchen lights.