Athazagoraphobia

Forgotten: Ethel Anderson

She hugged herself, rubbing her arms, as a chill like none other entered the house. The tiny hair on her arms stood up. Ethel was alone, or so she thought. Her family was gone, she was by herself, a lone soul in a world with billions of people, but even as she stood, still and quiet, borderline insane, she felt a strange presence.

There was someone in the house and as if to affirm this thought, a noise, like the shattering of a vase, came from the second floor. Her heart skipped a beat.

She placed her hand on her mouth, to keep herself from yelling, to stop herself from making a sound, and quietly, like a mouse, walked upstairs.

Her rapid breathing was uncontrollable, no matter how hard she tried, and her footsteps were shaky, slipping and sliding on the polished wooden floors. Her body trembled without her will, scared beyond imagination, and she almost tripped over her two feet.

Ethel held out her hand, placing it on the cold, hard wall, to steady herself and slowly crept towards her parent's room from where the noise seemed to have originated. She braced herself for the worst, not knowing what awaited her beyond the brown door, and placed her hand on the doorknob.

Silence was all she heard for a few minutes. The stillness of the air was so loud that when the sound of someone cursing came from the other side of the door, she became paralyzed. Her brain was on overdrive and was brimming with questions. Who was here and why? Where were her parents? The thought of her mother and father evoked sorrow from deep within her; tears fell, tracing her face first, and then dropping on the ground like rain.

Holding her breath, she turned the doorknob and opened the door slowly. Ethel's face was pale, her eyes were bloodshot, and her lips quivered, but she held in her sobs as the door creaked open.

The room was empty. The bed was void of pillows, bed sheets, and persons. The walls no longer held up smiling family portraits and the closet doors were thrown open, as if they were emptied a while ago.

She cautiously walked into the room and made her way to the bed. With shaking hands, Ethel touched the mattress and, as if that was the last push she needed, she choked on a sob before crying. She didn't cry hysterically or violently, Ethel was neither loud nor silent, she simply cried like a lost child would and she only wept as a broken person would.

In the midst of her tears and her gut-wrenching sobs, she didn't feel the presence in the corner of the room. Her perpetrator watched as she cried tears of blood, as her soul dripped from her eyes, and then slowly made his way to her. Her back was turned to him, she didn't hear his footsteps over the sound of her heart breaking, and he couldn't be happier with the situation.

He had come to rob the house, having found it empty in the morning, but there were no possessions left for him to take. The house had been cleaned before he arrived and as the clocked ticked, he grew angry. He needed to take something, he had to rob something, because he lived off of the adrenaline rush. He had almost given up, when he had heard the sound of a girl from down below. He had the chance to rob something and he was going to do it, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

With that thought in mind, he held out his hand and, with a quick movement, placed it on her mouth. Her muscles grew tense in his grasp and he almost began smiling at how easy it was, but as he grew lost in his thoughts, thinking of the ways he was going to torture Ethel, she opened her mouth and bit his hand.

"Shit," he said, trying to remove his hand from her mouth but Ethel latched on with all her might. It was her only defense against him.

"Let go you bitch," he yelled and, with a cry of pain, tore his hand from her mouth. Before she had a chance to run, enraged at her audacity, he raised his unharmed hand and slapped her with such blunt force that Ethel fell, her head banged against the bed frame, and her body slid down until she was lying prostrate on the floor.