The Break In (Part One)

~Jennifer~

Everyone’s heard the story about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” You know, the one about the little shepherd boy who thinks it’s funny to cry “wolf” when there really isn’t a wolf. All the village people get angry with him and decide they aren’t going to believe him anymore. Well, turns out that big bad wolf does show up and because no one believes the boy anymore, he dies. The moral of this story is meant to tell kids that liars never prosper (Or is that cheaters?). Anyways, if you ask me, it should really be that parents should always take something as dangerous as a wolf seriously—otherwise your kid ends up eaten.


When I was about thirteen, I had a knack for always thinking there was someone in our house. Our father worked full time, and our mother had a part-time job at a local bank, so if I had to stay home from school; I was alone. Now I admit, my imagination sometimes got the best of me. Hearing a door slam upstairs wasn’t just the wind blowing it shut; it of course was a murderous killer straight out of the loony bin coming to butcher poor-old-little me. I have decided that, for your sake, I will only tell you about two of the times there was someone in our house…

I was in the eighth grade, and for some reason or another, I didn’t go to school. It was the middle of the afternoon, the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and to really think that at this time some creepy man was going to break into a home in broad daylight, in Danville, was completely ludicrous. Well what can I say; I was a thirteen-year-old girl.

I was downstairs, lying on the couch watching television when I first started to hear the noises. It was this weird, scratching noise; almost like a metal rod scraping against the wall. I couldn’t quite place it, so I ignored it. The second time it happened, it was accompanied by the sound of, what I thought, was footsteps. I immediately sat up to try to hear it better. I concluded that this scratching noise was not coming from outside; it in fact was the sound of my parents upstairs sliding closet door. There’s always a time in a given situation when I believe that it’s okay to panic    this was it.

I did the first thing I could think to do… I called my Mommy. All I could do was scream, “There’s someone in the house! There’s someone in the house! There’s some   " 

My mother’s panic stricken voice cuts me off, “What? Jennifer, calm down, what are you talking about?”

I quickly tell her about the scratching noises, or their closet door opening, and the footsteps I had heard right above me.

“Get out of the house” she tells me, “Run out the front door, and start walking up the street, I’m on my way.”

She believed me!

I could only imagine what my mother was thinking as she made the ten minute drive home in four minutes flat. I met her at the end of the street like she told me, and jumped in the front seat. We drove together back to the house and waited for the Police. Within about three minutes, every cop on duty that day was in front of our house. I like to believe that they were truly concerned for the safety of two of Danville’s finest citizens (okay, let’s be honest, they had nothing better to do). We let the officers do their thing. They went inside, searched the house and looked for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing… We thanked the kind officers, and they went on their way.

Now, you would think under the circumstances my mom would call work and tell them she wasn’t coming back. I mean; I’m her baby, her life, her everything! Well—she left me. She assured me the Police checked the entire house and that it was probably just the house creaking; nothing to worry about, and that she’d be back in a couple of hours. I was a little upset by this, as you can imagine.

About twenty minutes later my mom called. “Hi baby, I was just thinking…Maybe you should check the attic?”

IS SHE CRAZY!?

Let me tell you about the attic. It’s this scary dark place, full of spiders, dolls and other childhood toys we have long forgotten about, that I wouldn’t go in even if I had an entire SWAT team with me. No thank you.

In the end, Michael Myers never came for me that day; however, I felt that this first story was important to tell for a couple reasons. One: There’s nothing more humiliating than having six handsome police officers race to your house, only to look down at you and tell you it was probably just “the wind.” Two: This was the last time I frantically called my Mommy about an imaginary burglar.

Until…

To Be Continued...