The Inconsistent Ramblings of a Constant Story Teller(A short story collection)

Mom's Car has Heated Seats, Chew on the Pink Monkey, or Emotional Toddlers.

I awoke to a large crash in the middle of the night. The loud sound of shattering glass onto wooden floor woke me with a jolt of energy and fear strait to my heart. More smashing sounds resonated and shook the house as footsteps came rushing down the stairs. I knew I had to act quickly. I jumped up out of my bed and quickly shut my door, making sure that I locked it as well. Not a second after, my door was shaking with the power of two strong fists, banging on it with all of their might.

"Go away!" I screamed. My voice cracked and made my determined, defiant yell sound like it came from a third grader. "I'm trying to sleep. Leave me alone."

The person whose fists were banging on my door yelled back in a deep, angry voice, "Where did you put it!" He banged more and I felt as if he slammed on the door any more, the cheap wood that it was made of would surely break and the large man behind it would burst through and bash my face in instead.

"Put what?" I asked, again in my puny, squeaky voice.

He stopped pounding on the weak door, "My left shoe, Jake, where did you put my shoe!" Each word that he spoke got louder and louder, until he resumed pounding the wooden barrier that kept me away from his anger.

Before I could reply however, another equally angry and frightening voice erupted from down the hall, "Aaron, stop yelling, me and your mother are trying to sleep!" I thanked whatever god might actually be real that my father was awake to save me.

"This little twerp stole my shoe!" My older brother yelled back as he stopped pounding on my door once more.

"Why do you need your shoes? It's three in the morning!" My father yelled back. I heard as my father got up off of the bed and started his walk down the hallway, past the bathroom and right up to my door.

"I am going to go ruin something," My 17 year old brother replied, in a softer tone. "I'm going to go break something."

"No you aren't," my father replied. "Go to bed," he ordered, "Now!"

Then I heard scuffling, and something hit the ground with enough force that a framed picture of me and my friends at Disneyland fell off of my shelf. "O-okay," I heard my brother say in a defeated voice behind my door. "Fine," and he walked back up the stairs and into his room.

Then my father attempted to open my door, not realizing that it was locked. He too, began pounding. It was then that I noticed that I was curled up into a tight ball in one of the corners of my room. That action must have taken place sometime after my father had come down the hall. "Open this damn door!" He unnecessarily yelled.

"Okay, okay," I quickly spoke in my feeble voice. I sprang up and ran to my door, swiftly opening it as fast as I could.

Then I was face to face with my father. Bruce Walker was a very tall man, built like a bodybuilder. Wide shoulders, powerful chest, and a scary face. His entire life he had been training to be the strongest man that he would ever meet, or at least it seemed like it. I would rarely see him during the day because he was either at work, at some construction site or another, or at the gym, and I would rarely see him at night because he was out drinking. He was a scary man, who always seemed to be angry or annoyed. But part of him was sweet, although I almost never saw that small sliver of his personality.

As I looked at my father in the darkness of the hallway, he spoke but one word before going back to his room, "Sorry."

I had always assumed that he was disappointed in me. I was almost the polar opposite of him, spending the time I had away from school either out with my friends, sitting in my room on the internet, playing music on my guitar, or electric keyboard that I bought myself a few years back, or draw in my notebook. I never exercised, didn't have a girlfriend, and spent most of my time away from my train wreck of a family.