January 21, 2011

My Very Own Horror Story, “Blood” and All

I've been taking care of Finny the cat this week while my parents are away on a trip. Tuesday was one of the days I had to go over there, and after the horrible weather we had in the morning, it had to wait until after Big I's orthodontist appointment in the afternoon.

While we were still contained within the walls of the orthodonist's office, she seemed fine. After sucking it up for over an hour while they put the braces on her teeth, she was even smiling a bit. But when we got in the car and started driving to my parents' house, the drama began.

"I want to kill myself," she said. "I look awful. I look like a teenager."

I told her how ridiculous it was to say something like that, and used it as a lesson to talk about the implications of committing suicide. When I was finished with my diatribe, I think she realized how silly it was that she said that. I thought the drama was over.

We arrived and I sighed. No kind neighbor had come over to snowblow their driveway. A good two-three inches of snow and ice were piled up on their steep and long driveway and on all of their sidewalks. Big I and I made our way down through the snow, not wanting to slip on the ice and I asked her if she could take care of Finny while I started shoveling.

As we were making our way to the front door, Big I pointed to a red spot on the snow. "Look Mommy. It looks like blood."

I looked at it from a distance and thought the same. I glanced down at my knuckle thinking maybe the cut I had opened back up again. It hadn't. I shrugged it off, went in the house and showed her what to do, before going back outside.

Back outside, the weather was brutal. Freezing rain was coming down slowly but surely and I nearly broke the plastic shovel because the snow and ice were so heavy. I found a metal one and started the long process of shoveling the windy sidewalks and the plunging driveway.

Then I started noticing something.

There were little red stains on the snow everywhere. They were in front of the house, across the sidewalk, across the driveway and even down near the stream. My imagination started going wild. I imagined some criminal, injured in some way and bleeding, hiding out in the woods surrounding the house. I realized that it was super quiet and that perhaps this criminal had taken shelter and snuck inside the garage while I had my back turned. My stomach tied itself into a knot as my rational side told me to calm down and my martial arts side told me that if my gut felt something was wrong, then I should trust it and figure out what to do.

And then I heard the screaming.

It stopped me in my tracks, but I couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from. It had definitely been there and loud and then it was gone. It didn't take long for it to start up again. I started to move towards it as quickly as the ice underneath me would allow as I made my way to the house. I took a mental inventory of what I could use to defend myself and fight off an attacker. I had my keys and I had a metal shovel.

I made it to the only locked door at the house and looked in the window. There were finger marks and what looked like fresh steam marks from breath on the window pane. And there was Big I. . .

She was face down, sprawled across the sofa, her feet still on the ground. It looked like someone had taken her and turned her at a 45 degree angle and thrown her across the sofa. She was screaming. I fumbled with my keys (it's a deadbolted door) and scanned the rest of the room. Where was the attacker? Who was doing this to her? I screamed her name and she sat bolt upright.

She ran to the door screaming and crying, "I couldn't get out. The door is locked" and then burst into drama-laden tears again.

Still convinced there was more to this story and scanning the house, I mean, there had to be right??? I screamed at her, "Are you ok?" I expected her to tell me the attacker was coming back. He was in another room. . .

"I just hate these braces," she yelled back at me, as she covered her face and assumed her 45 degree angle position again across the sofa, careful to leave her feet on the floor, lest my mother find out she was putting her feet on the new sofa.

Then it dawned on me that the front door and the garage door were both unlocked. She could have gone out either one of those doors, yet she chose to stand at this door and scream the scream of someone being ripped limb by limb, completely apart. I turned around for a minute to compose myself because I was seriously ready to kill her myself and that's when I noticed another red stain in the snow. . . this time with a half-eaten, bright red berry beside it.

I breathed a sigh of relief before turning around and telling her what I thought had been happening while she screamed ridiculously from inside the house. I then pointed out the two very unlocked doors, which had been only steps away from her.

"Oh," she said.

Oh.

Perhaps the orthodontists of days gone by were onto something when they chose to put braces on older children. Perhaps, certain 9-year-olds aren't exactly prepared for the brace-face that will greet them in the mirror. Maybe they haven't learned proper coping tools this young in life.

Maybe this 9-year-old just saves the best possible, ridiculous, scary, nightmarish drama for her mama.

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