Home Alone

When I was 17 years old, my parents decided to go on a vacation for their 20th anniversary. They tended to travel a lot for work, so being left at home with my big brothers wasn’t anything new. We had moved to a new neighborhood a few months before, so besides the scenery, not too much had really changed.

It was a nice neighborhood, the reason for the move being the property value for my parents, and the fancy nearby universities for us. Even the neighbors were friendly, the family across the street even becoming acquainted with our own exceptionally quickly. We had become close enough that whenever my parents were gone, they’d stop by to check on us to make sure we were okay.

This time wasn’t really too different. My parents were planning on being gone for two weeks. Normally, they were only gone for a few days at a time, a week at most, but I wasn’t worried as I felt I was able to take care of myself whenever my older brothers inevitably went out to whatever parties were happening that weekend, only to come back the morning after. They’d usually give me some cash to not tell our parents about their adventures, and I’d usually use it to order some food for the night.

On the second Friday of my parents’ vacation, I had decided to skip school for a mental health day, and give myself a long weekend. It was supposed to be a half day anyway, so I knew I wouldn’t miss too much.

From morning to sunset, I’d spent my day in my pajamas, binging true crime documentaries, and eating nothing but snacks from earlier that week. Soon, I unsurprisingly became hungry for a full meal, and started to feel somewhat guilty for the only healthy thing that I had eaten being a bag full of pre cut orange slices.

I definitely didn’t feel like cooking anything, and my brothers had already come and gone for the night, so they wouldn’t be of any help. I eventually decided to order Thai food, and sat on the couch to scroll through my phone while I waited for dinner.

About 30 minutes in, I heard a knock at the door. I slid off of the couch to go answer it. I didn't need to ask who it was, as I saw the curly brown hair through the window in the door. When I opened it, I was greeted with a smile.

“Hi sweetie!” Greeted the neighbor. The way her fit body contrasted to her baby face always seemed to catch me off guard, especially so on the rare occasion that she wore a shirt that was tighter or sleeveless. “Just checking in, as per usual.”

“Hi! Everything’s good here. My brothers should be home soon, and I just ordered dinner.”

“Your usual party of one?” She giggled. As she did, I noticed something strange. In the short time we’d known her, she seemed to have a habit of smiling with her eyes. Now, however, her eyes were open a little wider than usual. It made her seem- I don’t know… crazed.

I didn’t get the chance to laugh with her before she continued. “Listen, honey. I have something to ask you, and I need you to tell me the truth, okay?”

I was confused, then worried, hoping she wasn’t going to ask about my brothers being gone constantly. Then again, no one paid that much attention, right? Everyone had their own lives to live, and besides, it’s not like they were doing anything illegal, as far as I knew, and wanted to know. “Uh, sure. What’s up?”

“Are you sleeping with my husband?”

I was shocked. Up until that point, I’d never even had a one on one conversation with her husband. The most I could do was pick him out from a crowd. If anything, I wanted to sleep with her eldest son, but I hadn’t told anyone that. That was the only thing that I could come up with that could even come close to what she was accusing me of. “I’m sorry?”

The smile on her face blew away with a gust of wind. “Don’t lie, you sneaky little tramp. I know everything!” She slammed her fist on the door, and pushed her way pass me and into the house.

“Mrs. Krane! What are you talking about?” She was beginning to scare me. The kind woman that I dreamed about having as a mother-in-law was now standing in front of me, screaming, her face contorted in ways I never would’ve imagined.

“I will not let him screw me over again!” She fumbled with something in her back pocket and the back of my neck tingled like I’d just become spiderman. Before I could turn and run, she pulled out a knife. Immediately, the suspicion of danger turned into full panic, and I froze. “I told him, if he did something like this again, I’d hit him where it hurt.”

I managed to take a breath. “Mrs. Krane. Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have NEVER done anything with your husband. I’ve never even been in the same room alone with him. P-Please, just-” My heart felt like it was going to explode and I couldn’t stop shaking.

“You take a look at this, and tell me you’re not screwing him!” Her eyes were wild as she glared at me. With her free hand, she reached into her other back pocket and whipped out her phone before I had a chance to panic all over again.

After a few seconds of her unlocking the phone and swiping through a few screens, she threw it to me. I fumbled, but when my hands steadied enough to take a look, my stomach dropped. On the phone were pictures of me. Various poses of me sleeping, sometimes with clothes on, sometimes not. They were taken in my room, some close-ups, some full-bodied. As I swiped through the pictures, a chill ran over my body and my stomach churned. My vision went blurry with tears.

“Wha-?” I squeaked. “I- I swear, I had no clue about this! You have to believe me!” The more I tried to hold them back, the more tears burned my eyes.

“STOP LYING!” She screamed, lunging at me. I tried to back away, but tripped on my slipper as I did so, which actually tipped my body over enough to just miss her knife. I took my chance to kick off my other slipper, and stumble through the open front door. As I ran through the front lawn, I noticed an extra car in the driveway that looked like it belonged to my eldest brother, Isaac. I glanced around to check, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Hey!”

I spun around. There he was struggling with Mrs. Kane. He had one arm around her neck, and the other wrestling the knife from her hand.

“I think I’ve got her. Grab the knife!” He yelled. I hesitated. The racing thoughts in my mind were interrupted when he yelled again. “HURRY UP!”

I stepped closer to them, never taking my eyes off of the knife as it was being flung around in their struggle. I shuffled around the two of them, making sure to stay clear of their arms. When I was pretty sure I was positioned in a way that wouldn’t get me hit, I jumped in and grabbed onto their intertwined arms. Not knowing how to get her to let go of the knife without cutting myself in the process, I found the piece of the entanglement that was her arm, and bit down as hard as I could. She screamed in pain and the knife fell into the grass. I rushed to grab it, then stepped back as I watched my brother wrestle our neighbor to the ground. They struggled for a few minutes before Mrs. Krane wriggled free, and ran across the street and into her house. Isaac hurriedly ushered me into our own house and we locked the doors, and called the police.

When the cops finally arrived, we told them everything that happened, and soon after, we watched as they put Mrs. Krane, now covered in blood, in handcuffs and led her into the police cruiser.

Obviously, I was not sleeping with Mr. Krane, but the assumption was that because he was familiar with the layout of our house, and was aware of everyone's schedules, he knew when and where to sneak in through my bedroom window to take photos of me while I was sleeping. It was an open running joke that there could be an explosion on our street, and I still wouldn’t wake up, so that seemed to be the reason that I never woke up when he was there. I wasn’t the only subject of the pictures in his phone, but I was the only one that was very clearly unaware of his presence.

I stayed home from school for another week, both of my brothers stayed home with me everyday until our parents returned from their trip. When we told them what had happened, they didn’t believe us at first until I showed my mom some of the pictures. Only then, did they apologize for not believing me, and get furious on my behalf.

As it turned out, the reason that Mrs. Krane was covered in blood when we saw her again, was because she had murdered her husband in her madness. She confessed to everything that had happened, saying that he’d pushed her too far. She is now in prison but I still shiver to think that she actually might’ve killed me that night had my brother not come home early.

To this day, I refuse to go to bed without double checking that all of my windows and doors are locked. I am still a very deep sleeper, so there isn’t much more that I can think to do for the situation. The memory of those pictures still makes me nauseous, and I still get chills when I think about it, but I don’t lose sleep over it anymore.