Stories to Remember: Collection of Short Stories

Into the Fade

            Lillian Michel was sitting in the back of her closet scared to death. It felt like hours since she’d heard the screaming stop. She’d be awoken from a dead sleep when she’d heard glass breaking, heavy objects hitting the wall outside her room, and her family yelling and screaming. She’d wanted to run out her bedroom to see what was wrong, but something inside her instinctively made her jump out of her bed and run to her closet.

She was still in her pink night gown that her mother had put her on to go to bed. Her knees were pressed to her chest and her arms locked around them so tight, her knuckles were white, as if she could keep the fear inside and not let in creep out in the form of cries to her mother. Her curly brown hair was all over her head in a tangle and she could feel the tear tracks that had dried to her face minutes ago.

She’d thought she’d heard someone come in her room and heard her dresser drawers opened and closed, but she wasn’t sure. She’d be terrified none the less. Her hand had angry red teeth sized marks from her biting it so hard to stifle her whimpers and cries.        

But that had been a while ago and the house had since gone silent. She knew she couldn’t stay in the closet forever, but that’s what she wanted to do. She wanted to stay crouched in this little safe haven until her mom called for her. Until this night was just a distant memory.

She had to leave though. She opened the closet door slowly, hearing it creak, and winced. What if someone was still here and she’d just given herself away? After a second of waiting to see if anyone would come, she opened the door some more and slipped out.

The dark swallowed her whole when she stepped out; the moon was the only light source in the house, giving only a minuscule amount of light. But it was enough to see her room and she was right, she had heard someone going through her things. The drawers on her pretty white and pink dresser were pulled out and some were just hanging on precariously by one edge. Her clothes were scattered all over the floor and her bed and someone had knocked most of her books off her lady bug bookcase.

Her door was left half opened so she pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped through. She was still terrified that something would get her as soon as she walked out her room, but it was eerily quiet in the house. She walked down the hallway and passed her sister’s room, whose door was wide open, and looked in. The light was on so she could see how much damage had been down. Her drawers had been pulled out and her things were scattered too, but it looked like there had been scuffle. The covers were scattered, her lamp was broken, and the little pink fish tank was shattered and the fish were lying still on the floor.

Where’s Leslie, she thought. No people in her brain answered, she kept going and walked down the stairs to go to her parent’s room.

When she got to the last stair and stepped into the living room that was normally so neat and pristine, all she saw was chaos. There were family pictures scattered, their glass shells cracked. Her mother’s beautiful end tables that she’d spent months sanding and polishing to perfection were overturned. Her father’s many law books and her mother’s cook books were lying every which way, and the large china cabinet was on its side and the broken dish shards littered the floor. What seemed to draw her most were the black skid marks on the wall, almost as if fire had touched it and with further inspection she noticed ashes peppering the floor. Too shocked to analyze it further, she continued to walk down the hall towards her parent’s room.

            She felt it under her feet before she saw it. It was wet and slightly cold. She thought she’d stepped in a liquid that someone had spilled, until she turned on the hallway light outside her and looked down in horror to see what had to be a river of blood. She stepped back in horror about to run, when she looked up and saw what had caused it. Her parents and her sister were in the room, dead.