It was a dark and stormy night and I was home alone. My parents had gone to my little brother’s basketball game at the middle school. Of course, I threw a fit and then pouted until Mom and Dad agreed I could stay home alone. After all I may have only been 11, but I was very responsible.
As soon as they left the house, I turned on the stereo as loud as it would go and did the Tome Cruise dance across the bare wood floor in the great room. My fat cat Sassy looked at me like I was crazy.
Coming down from my excitement of being home alone on a Friday night, I microwaved a bag of buttery popcorn and settled into watch my DVD collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Turning the lights down I curled up on the couch with Sassy in my lap and the bowl of popcorn at my side.
Suddenly, I heard a loud clatter outside. Muting the TV I strained my ears but didn’t hear anything else.
“Probably the wind,” I said to Sassy and I turned the TV back up. Just as Buffy was getting ready to stake another vampire, I heard the noise again, only this time it was closer.
I paused the TV and pushed Sassy off my lap. I went to the front door and peeped out the side glass. The wind was really whipping the trees and I could see lightning flashes in the distance.
“Must have been thunder,” I said to myself.
CRASH – BOOM!!
I nearly jumped out of my skin. This time the noise came from the back porch. Flipping on all the house lights as I went, I flew into the kitchen and looked out the back window.
OMG – there was a man standing in the backyard. It looked like he had on dark clothes and he was standing perfectly still.
Making sure the back door was locked, I grabbed the phone and called my parents.
“Mom, there’s a man in the backyard!” I was crying so loud my words were all jumbled.
Mom said lock the doors and hide – they were six to seven minutes away from the house but they were calling 911. I raced through the house to my room and jumped into my cluttered closet.
This is where my parents found me, crying and scared on the floor of my closet. The police were doing a search, but they found no one around or near the house
When things calmed down and my parents had comforted me – my jangled nerves started to relax. I went to the sink to wash my hands, when a scream escaped my lips. There he was – the man was back!
Daddy grabbed his shotgun and dashed out into the backyard. I was so scared and Mom was hugging me tightly as I cried. Daddy returned two minutes later, laughing and shaking his head.
The man in the backyard turned out to be a tarp that had blown from the neighbor’s yard and got tangled on my Mom’s clothesline pole.
So much for the brave girl staying home alone.
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