The house phone rang twice before Jillian realized it. She still had her headphones in, so she did not hear the ringing, but instead say the phone light up. She got up and checked the caller ID. It was her mother's cell phone.
She picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi honey." Her mother said. "Your father called me and it seems we both have to work late. Afterwards, we're going to go out to eat. You'll have the night to yourself and you'll need to make your own dinner. In fact, there are leftovers in the fridge."
"Okay Mom." She responded.
"Bye dear." Then, her mother hung up the phone.
So now she would be home all by herself in her paranoid state. She tried to ignore her thoughts as they went through different scenarios of what could go wrong that night while no one else was around. She tried to silence her inner voice with her music again. It worked, but only long enough for her to finish her homework. She placed all of the papers back in her bag and checked the clock on her phone. It was only 4:30, which was far too early for dinner.
She sat down in the middle of her couch and turned on the television. She leisurely scrolled through the channels, occasionally stopping on a specific one. She went through all of them, and found nothing that she could settle on. She decided to just watch the news.
The blonde haired reporter talked cheerfully about a group of murders that had been committed. This got Jillian's attention; she sat up and turned the volume up a bit. The woman continued to explain that a family of five was murdered by what police believed was a serial killer that had been on the loose for years.
Next, the woman began interviewing the chief of police of that town. Jillian noticed that the town name on his badges was only about two towns over from her location. She felt goose bumps rise on her skin, and she involuntarily pulled her long sleeves down. The chief explained that, whoever the killer was, he had not been active for a couple of months. Apparently, they had secretly hoped that he had killed himself, mainly so that the police could take the credit.
The man explained that one member of the family had their throat slit. Two were gutted, and another two were stabbed repeatedly: one twenty-seven times in the chest, another sixteen times. The television flashed the faces of the victims, saying their names, interests, and age.
Jillian turned off the television. She was able to remain calm until they showed the faces. The faces were what made them real. Otherwise, they were just names. A bunch of letters jammed together in order to create some type of sound. It did not mean anything unless a person knew them. However, faces were their identity. Names are just a filler for a way to call a person. A name could not tell someone's story, but their face could.
She sat on the couch a little while longer. Her eyelids began to drop as her lack of energy began to get to her. She leaned over and curled up on her side, her hair covering her face. She let her worried thoughts leave her as sleep entered.
Her peaceful sleep did not last. She woke up to a large crash sound. She jumped and looked around the room. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. She got up and looked at the clock, concerned on how long she had slept for. She was relieved to discover she had only been asleep for about a half an hour. She continued to look around the room, but there was nothing she could see that would explain the crash she heard.
She decides to check upstairs, even though she was certain that the sound had come from the first floor. She went up the stairs and into her room. She looked around, and froze as she saw the window.
It had been smashed. At first she feared that someone had gotten into the house while she was asleep. However, upon closer inspection, she realized that the window had been broken from the inside. Jillian carefully stuck her head outside and looked at the grass below. All the broken glass had fallen out of the window. She knew that this meant someone was already in the house. She started to breathe slightly heavily as she tried to figure out how someone could have gotten in the house. She had locked the front door when she came it, didn't she? She quickly ran down to check. It was locked just as she remembered.
She began to think that someone had entered the house while she was at school. She shivered at the thought, and felt sick thinking that she was not able to tell that she was not alone. Suddenly, she remembered the knocking at the deck door. She had gone outside to investigate the sound. She gasped and ran to the kitchen, not worried about anyone accompaning her since the intruder was clearly out of the house. She skidded to a hault at the french doors. She looked at the little switch on the handle. She had forgotten to lock it when she came back in the house. Someone had just walked in while she was asleep, just one room over.
She flashed to the killings that the news woman had talked about. Jillian's heart began racing. She nearly jumped to the phone and called the police.
