In Case You Care

Chapters 1-9

Chapter 1  

The roughness of my ceiling looked different today. Different from the other thousands of times I've laid on my bed and stared up at it. Maybe it just looks different because of the leftover tears that blurred my vision. 

But this time, the little rough bumps and lines made an odd shaped figure. In the lumped shapes I could make out some kind of animal. It didn't look real, maybe some kind of fictional creature. I just couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly. 

I pawed the tears away from my eyes one last time. Glancing at the ceiling again, the creature was gone.  

I suddenly got the feeling like I was being watched. I hurriedly sat up and looked around. I was alone. I was all by myself, but no relief softened the paranoid feeling. I peered out my window. No unwelcome intruder gazed in on me. Opening my bedroom door, I found the hallway empty.  

Nothing else will happen. I reassured myself, Dad has probably already stormed off to the bar for yet another round of drinks. My attempt to reassure myself did not calm my jitters. I tried not to picture what would happen when he got back. But unable to push the thought away, I shuddered.  

Even hiding under the bed won't help. I couldn't help but think of the episode that had just occurred about an hour before.  

I had walked through the door after school. Relief flooded through me. Dad wasn't home from the tavern yet. I tried to relax a little, hoping this would be a late night again. Last night I had gotten lucky.  

I tried to think of some place where I could hide. I had to really think. I was running out of hiding places. The bathtub, the hall closet, the garage, my bedroom closet, outside crouched under my bedroom window. I had already tried all of those. I remember that last one didn't work out so well.. I got locked out and had to climb through the only unlocked window; my father's bedroom.  

I glanced down at the scar on my arm. Landing right on top of my sleeping father hadn't gone unpunished. 

I had pondered my next cloaking. Going through things that could possibly go wrong. So I wouldn't make the same mistake, or something more moronic.  

Finally I thought I found a decent hiding place; under my bed. It seemed childish, but it was so childish that it just might work. 

Around eight o'clock I heard Dad clunking up the steps. Before he could even start fumbling for his keys I was under my bed. Scared to even move in fear of giving up my hiding place, I laid there trying not to breathe so loudly. 

I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. Can he hear that? I wondered.  

The underside of my bed was like flipping through a very dusty scrapbook. I found my old teddy bear, some pictures, a few socks that looked like they would fit a five year old's feet. And most importantly, my mother's memory box.  

After my mother died, I decided to keep some things in memory of her. Like her apron that she wore when she would make chocolate chip cookies with me, those one pair of earrings she wore to work everyday, there were a few pictures of her in there too. There was one of her and my dad at the beach, way before I was born. And another picture of her in the kitchen, cooking dinner. And the last, and my favorite. A picture of her holding me. I was only about a year old. She had her long, sandy, golden hair down and her perfect smile was planted on her face. She sat in the old recliner that Dad got rid of two years ago. She had hold of my hands as I sat on her lap. It looked like we were playing patty-cake. A huge, silly grin was imprinted on my face. My chubby cheeks making my eyes look small.  

In the box, I managed to save my mother's old glasses that she wore around the house, and her slippers. I remember Mom getting home from work, kissing me on the forehead, and then going into her room to change out of her suit. Putting on a pair of old sweat pants and a T-shirt, her slippers, and taking her contacts out and putting on her brown frame glasses.