My Key to Outside

The Fear Trapped Inside

I was afraid to go out of my own house. I wanted to go outside. I wanted to have a life, but I couldn't get the confidence to step outside the safety of my home.

I lived in Whitechapel. It hadn't been long since I moved there; probably a few weeks. I thought it looked like a beautiful town, and when I first got there I saw all the lively people just having what looked like a normal day. When we had parked into the driveway of our new home, our home for a long time, possibly forever, I got out of the car. I was excited to be somewhere new, but then I got a feeling. Not one of those feelings you get when someone sends you flowers, or when you meet your favorite band, or when you win a race. No; it was the feeling you get when you feel like someone's watching you, or when you forgot to study for a test. I thought it was nothing. I thought I was just adjusting to a new home. It felt weird to be living somewhere else, and that was probably the feeling I was getting, of course, that's just what I thought.

Now, only a few weeks have passed by, and school is about to start. I wanted to do some stuff before I had to hit the books. I just couldn't trust the outdoors.

I had only been in Whitechapel for eight days when I went outside for the warmth of the sun, when I heard a growling noise. It wasn't a normal growl from a dog. It was definitely much worse. After I heard that, I immediately went inside and told my parents. They said it was probably just the dog, but I knew it wasn't.

I've gone out of the house more than that. I made the dumb decision of going out at night. I was going to feed the dog, when I heard the same noise. My dog started barking at it, and I turned on the light, and in the backyard, saw a person trying to attack my dog. The person got distracted by the light, and my dog made its way back to me. I brought the dog inside, closed the door and turned off the outside light. I don't have clear vision, and I couldn't see clearly what was in the backyard, but I just knew that my dog wasn't going outside without me, and I was never going out at night.

Ever since then, I've tried to stay inside as much as possible. I also try to keep the dog inside as much as possible. We have to get it groomed so it can go through the house without hair getting everywhere. I told my parents what I had seen that night, and I think they mostly believed me, but they probably partially think I had a little bit of night blindness. They said they would look for the strange thing I saw, and also call the police. Oh, that's another thing I forgot to mention. A police officer came. He went around to the back, and never came back. We thought he had left. The police officer he was with had stayed inside to ask questions, but said that he couldn't find where his friend went, and now, that's one of those "missing persons" things on the news. We see a lot of that on the news. There's lots of disappearances every now and then. All this is why I'm too afraid to go outside. What am I going to do when school comes? I'll just run to my car when I step outside of the house. I'm glad I can't drive, because I don't have to go out alone. My parents will talk about how it's a "beautiful day" to go outside and I just think "yeah, some people think it's a beautiful day to kill someone's dog," and I can't go outside.

Another scary thought is one of the animal killers going to my school. What if they don't just kill animals? Maybe I was hallucinating.. No... I know I wasn't. I know I saw a person and the police went missing so it had to be true. Maybe I shouldn't think about it. It was getting late so I decided to go to bed. I used to almost always go to bed at at least midnight, but this time I went to bed at my usual bed time for school: 10:00. I was scared of the outside of my own house, so why not go to sleep already? I wanted to just forget about everything for at least eight hours and dream about something nice.