8 Minutes

9:27

I

The alarm on the microwave rang out loudly disturbing the quiet peace that had engulfed the evening. Robert rushed to turn it off before it disrupted the household further. Opening the door with a soft pop he took out the tea-filled mug, looking around making sure his wife wasn’t around to scold him for abandoning the kettle once again. The well-meaning birthday gift was only used a handful of times by the recipient.

Having to heat the kettle on the stove was just “too much” for Robert. The economics professor was busy writing a new academic paper that he hoped would be enough to guarantee him to be the chair of the department come the new year. He was already two weeks behind his schedule if he was going to get the paper out in time. Thus, he did not have time to wait for a kettle to boil.

He threw in a caffeinated chai tea bag in hopes of it giving him the surge to get through the next few hours of writing. If his taste buds could stand coffee he would have thrown on a pot, but unlike his wife and daughters, the smell alone made his insides turn. He dunked the tea bag into the mug a few times, hoping it would speed up the process of the tea leaves seeping through into the water, and looked at his watch. Just a few minutes to half-past nine, which means his youngest, Cassie, would be asking for him soon.

His oldest daughter, no doubt working on the homework she had put off all weekend was probably still up. Judging by the light coming from the dining room Robert assumed she was sitting at the head of the table with her books and papers spread out before her.

Spinning the bag around he stuck his head into the room to see the junior in high school scrolling through her phone, surrounded by the half-finished papers and spreadsheets.

He knocked twice on the door to get his daughter's attention.

Her head shot up as he spoke, “It’s getting late, Trish.”

“I’m almost done, dad.” She put her phone down and cleared up some of the papers, throwing them in her backpack in a manner of which he didn’t think would be easy to sort out when the time came to hand in the assignment. He left his eldest to finish and looked at his watch: 9:27. He made a move to his study on the lower level to place his cup down before heading up the stairs to kiss his youngest good night. He heard a soft tapping sound at the front door and turned to it.

He stared for a second at the closed entryway and watched how the light outside slowly illuminated the area around it. He and his wife had gotten motion sensor lights installed the month prior since their oldest got her license. They didn’t want her stumbling through the dark and undoubtedly tripping and hurting herself.

He stepped closer and listened. It wasn’t tapping that he heard, it was ticking. A tick, tick, tick that he was hearing. It was only half a second before that he remembered where he had heard that noise before. The first week they moved into their home he accidentally locked the keys to the master bedroom in the room. He spent an hour searching how to pick a lock so he wouldn’t have to break down the door himself, or worse, call a locksmith to help him. Ever since then they got a spare key to the bedroom, since it was the only room that could be locked from the outside, and kept it in the upstairs closet.

Robert yelled for his daughter, praying that his wife and youngest would be safe upstairs, knowing deep down that none of it would help a second before the door was unlocked and pushed open.

It wasn’t like the movies, with the intruders kicking the door back with a gun pointed at their faces. Instead, two masked- which was like the movies- individuals opened the door casually, almost like they lived there, and sauntered in. Neither stood tall in statue, maybe five foot ten for the taller one, the shorter one at least half a foot shorter, but the calmness that they both exuded in the room was enough for him to take a step back. Robert stood in disbelief, unable to do much other than watch as they shut the door with a soft click and locked it again behind them.

Then they took out their guns.

II

Patricia, or as everyone called her, Trish, tucked a piece of her golden hair behind her hair and tried answering the question again. She wrote and erased and rewrote the same sentence almost a half dozen times. No matter how hard she was trying Trish could not get the sentence right. She texted her friend Liz to help her out before the Spanish test the following day, if she continued to do as poorly as she was doing, she would have to repeat the class.

She heard a knock on the door to the dining room she was currently using as a study. Her father stood in the doorway, “It’s getting late, Trish.” He told her. She assured him she was just finishing up and would head to bed soon. After he left she looked at the papers in front of her and decided it was probably a good time to quit.

She was packing up the remainder of her homework when she heard the front door open. She looked at the clock on the wall and noticed the time. It was later than she expected, but who was she to judge. She thought back to late summer nights when she would go to her friend’s houses later than the current time. Maybe it was one of her friends who needed something. She was thrust out of her thought, however, when she heard her father scream. It was something about the tone of his voice. It was guttural and strained. It was a voice she had never heard her father use with her, even when he was chastising her for coming home after curfew. Something about the way he said it made her freeze, her hand on the zipper to her backpack. Everything froze at that moment until the door opened.

Where she was sitting, she could see her father standing over an arm's length away from the door when it opened. She scanned through her mind trying to figure out who would have a spare key to the house. Her family was all inside and the only other people would be her grandparents, who also lived in town, but they would have been asleep for hours by now.

Out of instinct, she dropped to the floor out of eyesight. She could see the two individuals who came through her front door and held a gun to her father’s face. The stairs to the upper floor of the house were directly in front of the entrance, which was blocked by the intruders. She could make a run out the back door by escaping through the kitchen but she felt her feet glued to the floor, unable to move.

III

“Is dad coming?” Rebecca heard her youngest ask for what had to have been the fifteenth time since tucking her in.

“Your father’s coming soon, sweetheart,” she reassured her for equally as many times. She checked her watch, 9:27. She rubbed her eyes and silently begged her husband to walk through the door. He had been so consumed with work in the past few weeks and though she knew he didn’t mean to forget; she knew his mind often went to other places.

She coaxed her youngest back under the soft comforter that she had gotten just last week. She was allowed to pick the comforter if she promised she would stay in her bed the whole night, and after she proved she could do it for a month she chose a brightly colored pattern covered with cats. Rebecca glanced at her watch, even though she knew only seconds had gone by. Robert had missed tuck in the past four days straight and she knew if he didn’t come up soon then Cassie would be back crawling into their bed in the middle of the night again.

“How about I read you another story?” She scanned the shelf for her daughters' favorite book. A small picture book about a fairy whose multiple colored wings gave her multiple powers.

“Deep in the woods in a far-off country,” Rebecca started as Cassie laid her head back on the pillow. She was hopeful that her eyes would flutter closed, but the six-year-old reminded bright-eyed. At least she is distracted Rebecca thought as she turned the page and continued reading to her daughter. She let Cassie trace over the glittery wings of the princess fairy when she heard her husband shout something. It wasn’t clear enough for her to understand the exact words, but something in her gut told her to check on him.

“Honey, stay in bed. I’m going to check on your dad, okay?”

Cassie gave a big yawn and softly said “Okay.” Rebecca thought by the time she came back she would be asleep.

IIII

Cassie tugged on the bottom of her sleeve. A hole had formed big enough for her to put her thumb through, even though her mom told her to stop.

“I’m going to sew that next time I do the wash.” She had told her, but Cassie had hidden the shirt so she couldn’t. She liked having the hole in the sleeve. It made it so the sleeves would stay all the down and cover part of her hands. It was like her sister Patricia’s shirts. She had tried on a few of her shirts one day when she wasn’t home, but they were too big. She supposed she could wear them as a dress if her sister was not home for a few days, but otherwise, her sister would get mad. She had faced her wrath before taking her things and her parents had told her to not take them without asking, but whenever she asked, Patricia said no.

“Is dad coming?” she asked her mom. Her dad had not come up to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight in days. She knew he still loved her because he told her every morning before she caught the bus, but the last time her dad didn’t come in for multiple nights she started having bad nightmares. Her parents told her she was too old to sleep in bed with them, but if the nightmares came back, she would have to. Her dad was the one who kept the monsters away. Her mom didn’t know how to do that and her dad had told her it was because he had defeated the monsters long ago and they knew not to mess with him again.

Her mom told her he would come, but that was when she went to brush her teeth. Now she was already tucked in and she felt that the monsters were coming. She asked her mom and again, and she assured her that her dad would be there. She even started reading her favorite story. The one about the fairy princess Annabella. Cassie settled back into her pillow and listened as her mom told her the story that she could probably recite from memory.

She looked at the pictures and the multitude of glitter on the wings of the fairy. Maybe her mom would let her be Annabella for Halloween next month. She was tracing the wings on the page, feeling the roughness of the glitter when she heard something downstairs. Her mom's brow furrowed and she stood up saying that she was going to check on her father downstairs. Cassie nodded but couldn’t help a yawn coming out and decided that she should rest her eyes before her dad came up.

9:28

I

The air rushed out of Roberts's lungs as a fist collided with the center of his stomach and he doubled over onto the carpeted entryway of the house.

“Bring him to the office.” He heard the smaller one, a girl, say to the other. The taller one, who he could positively identify as a man, was the muscle of the duo. He grabbed Robert roughly by the arm and hoisted him to his feet, dragging him through the bottom level of the house, he turned around only once, before the man gave him a hard shove to keep him moving, but that second was enough to turn his blood to ice as he saw the woman move towards the dining area, where he knew his daughter last was. He wasn’t even sure what he had yelled. He hoped it was enough to get her out of the room, if he was really lucky, she would be out of the house and at the neighbors by now.

He was pushed towards the end of the hall, where the office and a hall closet were and was surprised when the intruder opened the office door like he knew where it was. The doors looked identical from the outside, with no plaque or linens tumbling out to indicate the difference.

How did he know where the office was? Robert thought to himself. He was tossed into the room and the door was shut on him. Robert wanted to throw himself at the door but was paralyzed with fear of what could happen to him if he were to open the door. Would he be greeted, not by the man's masked face, but by the gun? He moved quietly to the door and head something outside. A dragging noise and then a thump as an object was placed against the door. He listened until he heard footsteps walk away and only after he was certain that he was gone did he feel safe enough to try the doorknob. It turned, giving him a brief rush of hope, but when he went to push the door it caught on something. He tried again, but the door would not move. Whatever the intruder did, he had trapped him in his office, unable to get to the rest of his family.

II

Seeing her father collapse to the floor enticed a small whimper out of her mouth and she threw her hand over it to try to keep as quiet as she could, but she knew it was too late as she saw the smaller of the two intruders shift towards her. Even though she was out of sight she knew her spot had been compromised. She unglued her feet from under her and slowly moved backward as she heard shuffling moving down the hall.

As soon as she turned the corner to the kitchen, she stood upright and bolted through it to the other entry. She saw as the door to her father’s study was shut, with a large wooden table placed in front of it. There was no way she would be able to move that out of the way. Not on her own at least. She waited until the man was gone from the hallway and dashed for the stairs, running as quickly and as silently as possible she almost collided with her mother as she reached the top.

“Trisha, what on earth is going-” She threw her hand over her mother’s mouth but knew she was too late by the look in her eyes; growing three sizes as her mother took in whatever was behind her. “Hide your sister.” Her mother said in a voice so low to keep the individuals from hearing.

She could feel their warm breath on her neck as her mother shoved her behind her and she dashed into her sister’s room.

Cassie was lying in bed, eyes half-closed when she ripped the covers off of her and put her hand over her mouth and putting a finger up to hers to indicate she needed to be quiet. She heard her mother struggle outside and held her sister close to her. She waited until she heard a door on the other side of the closed bedroom open, and took it as her only chance to leave. She opened the doorway to her sister's room and stepped out into the hallway. She held her sister’s hand as they made their way quietly down the hall, making it half a dozen steps before she saw the head of the second intruder come up the stairs.

The sisters froze where they were as the smaller masked individual came up and stood on the landing. The eyes were so dark she wasn’t sure they had any color in them. She felt her breathing pick up as they stood eye-level unmoving. She wondered if they were going to stand like that forever, but then the door to her room opened.

The second masked individual came out of her room and stood next to his accomplice. From their build, she assumed he was male and a full head taller than both her and the other intruder.

He didn’t pause. He moved quickly towards the two girls and Trisha made a split-second decision and backed up a few steps, opening her parent’s bedroom door and shoving her sister inside. She pressed the handle in and locked the door from the outside, sealing her off from the danger that she now faced alone. Not even a second after the door was locked the taller intruder grabbed the handle and tried opening the door, only to find that it would not open. He gave a frustrated sigh and turned towards Trisha.

She turned to run, but found she was blocked from the stairs from what she deducted was a woman under the first mask.

The man grabbed her by her waist and picked her up as if she were a small child throwing a tantrum and turning towards the closest door and tossed her inside. Then just like downstairs he shut the door and dragged something large in front of it, preventing her from leaving.