Thanatophobia

Two

The trailer park was like a ghost town, full of little tin huts sat on cinder blocks. As a whole, the place was big, big enough to rival even the largest apartment complexes in the city. It was a giant square of land, segmented into four strips of turf and dirt packed to the brim with trailers and RV’s.

Tai walked along the Westernmost road, quietly, carefully. Apart from her feet crunching on gravel, the night was completely silent. To her right was a vast sea of metallic structures, going as far as she could see in the dark. To her left was a forest of tall pines, dense and frightening. She knew the forest went on for about three miles before the logging clear-cut started. The forest, or what was left of it, was notoriously infested with wolves.

Tai shivered, and pulled her thin jacket around her. She knew now, that she should have just called the police. That’s what her father would do when she told him what had happened, and she would have saved herself this whole ordeal had she just thought rationally about her options. But as she thought once more of her mother’s limp, gorey body on the kitchen tile, her heart began to race, and she knew the fear of that moment wasn’t something she could have controlled.

Finally, she came upon her father’s trailer. It was a small, rounded thing, barely big enough for him to live in. It occurred to her that she could not live here, so where would she go? Apprehensively she rapped on the door. No response. She could hear the old analog tv blaring, so twice more she pounded on the door, and again, nothing. He’s not asleep, she thought, he can’t be.

“Dad!” She called. The noise of her voice, a loud contrast to the silence that surrounded her, made her feel very vulnerable. She could picture the wolves in the forest coming to snatch her. She pushed away the thought and screamed for her father again, feeling panic begin to wash over her. “Dad!”

As quickly as the panic had appeared, it dissipated, when her father opened the door, quite suddenly. He stood there in a white wifebeater and paint stained khakis, with an expression of disbelief on his face.

“Tai. What are you doing.” It was not a question, but a demand. He was braced against the door frame, barring her from entering.

“I… I…” Tai couldn’t find the words, “Mom is… there’s been…” She took a breath. “I came home from school late, and I she didn’t call me, she always calls me, and she was in the kitchen. She was… there was blood, blood coming out of her head, all over, and she didn’t answer me, and she didn’t wake up, and she wasn’t breathing, and--”

Her father slapped his hand over her mouth, and grabbed her by the shirt. Without a sound he pulled her into the trailer, and led her to the threadbare couch pushed up against the wall. Once Tai was sufficiently seated and silent, he snatched the phone off the grimy kitchen counter, and shuffled into the other room.

Tai’s relationship with her father had never been great, he always seemed to begrudgingly visit her, occasionally taking her out to a movie or dinner, but their visits (monthly) had grown less and less glamorous, and the past few months had consisted of sitting on this very same couch watching football or westerns until it was time for her to go home again, with not more than a few words between them. Even with this in mind, Tai wondered at her father’s behavior. She could hear him in the next room over, discussing something very tensely.

The interior of the trailer was a mess. It looked as though Tai’s father was in the middle of packing, with a suitcase lying open on the floor, half full of clothes and documents, with more clothes, money, and official-looking pieces of paper strewn across the floor in every direction.

Suddenly, he came back into the room, clutching the phone in one hand. “Tai,” he said, his voice chillingly even, “Let’s go. Come with me.” He put the phone down and grabbed his car keys, gesturing for Tai to go to the car.

She stood, and carefully stepping over the mess on the floor, she left the trailer, with her father trailing shortly behind her, “Where are we going?” She realized she was shaking.

“The police station. To report what happened.”

Together, they walked the short way to where his pick up truck was parked, and hopped in. “But dad,” Tai started, her voice trembling inexplicably, “We could just call the police. Wouldn’t that be easier? Maybe we should just--”

He cut her off, “NO. Just,” He sighed, and backed out of the driveway. There was a moment of silence, Tai too afraid to speak, too afraid to look at her father as they drove through the trailer park. He put his hand on her shoulder and stiffly smiled, “Everything is gonna be fine, okay. You just have to trust me. Relax. We’ll sort this out.”
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This is nowhere near perfect but I figured i should just get it out in the world, so I can keep chipping away at the story.