Late Again

• Siobhan Banim, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

Late again. It’s almost nightfall. He should have been home an hour ago. I call out, hoping the forest will echo my words. It doesn’t. I listen hard; I cannot hear the chopping of wood or the reassuring chirping of birds. After dark is an appalling time to have dinner and he knows it. The sky is closing in and nothing is as good as it seemed at lunch. I hear the house sighing behind me, settling for the night.
Back inside, I eat my dinner wearily, constantly checking the window, the door. I can feel the cottage getting colder as the night gets darker. How to get warm? How to keep myself busy so I don’t think too much about the man outside? I walk around the house. The back of the house scares me at night. It has dark shadows that don’t belong to anything in the room. Fergus says they’re from outside; I think differently. Fergus, my brother, off buying supplies, not due back for weeks. I have a feeling he has gone to meet a girl, not to get food. When he comes back, I fear he will run away or worse, kill himself, if Father does not return. Fergus runs away from bad situations. He ran away when our mother died.
Mother died a few years ago. I was thirteen. She wasn’t exactly the ladylike kind. Me neither. That’s why Father liked her. That’s why he wants me here. I always feel trapped. Kept in some sort of cage. A life I don’t want to live.
Finally, I take myself to bed. I throw on my nightgown, crawl under my blanket and curl into the smallest ball I can, hoping that in the morning Father will be in the bedroom next to me sleeping safe and sound.
I wake up to a loud knock at the door. Father is not sleeping in the bedroom next to me. He’s not even home. A cold shudder runs through my body. I have imagined this happening. They bash the door with their fists. Its sounds like two or three people.
I walk to the door. I slowly turn the knob. Two men I have never seen before are standing there. As they speak, the words linger in my ear. I see they are holding Father’s axe. It has blood on it. I feel the house open behind me.