Creature Feature Challenge #creaturefeature

Entry

Until my mid-teens I hadn't lived in one house for more than a year. Though I've now been living in this house the longest, and my family thinks of it as home since we pay mortgage on it, I've always felt that my earlier houses were home.

The "Yellow House" wasn't one of those. I lived there before I entered school so my memory of the pale yellow house is fuzzy, but almost all of my memories in that house took place upstairs in the converted attic where my siblings and I had our rooms.

The house was very large and a lot of the upstairs was still undeveloped, filled with closed off areas and dark closets hidden around corners and under beams. A house perfect for hide and seek, which quickly became our favorite game.

Over the months we began picking up strategies such as taking our stuffed animals and arranging them in human sized shapes and hiding them around the attic to throw the others off our trail till we could reach the furthest corner and call it safe.

The last game we played still haunts me. After several rounds I was labeled as "it" for the next game and I put my face in the "safe" corner and began to count. Despite the lack of insulation and noise dampeners we could never hear what the others were doing or what direction they went in. I knew they had to be setting decoys before settling into their hiding spot but I couldn't pinpoint where or how many.

When I reached 100 I spun and began my hunt. My brother was the easier of the two as he was only a year older than me and I found him with relative ease, but my older sister was a pro.

She was where we picked up our tactics but she was still the best and always made it to base. I always started my hunt for her in her bedroom which was separate from mine and my brother's and considerably smaller.

Her bed was occupied, but I knew it wasn't her—too lumpy. I looked underneath and in the closet, but she wasn't there. I dug deep into the back of the closet and under piles of clothes but to no avail. I decided to move on when I thought I saw something move in her bed. I pushed onto the central lump and confirmed stuffed animals.

I went for me and my brother's room. There wasn't anywhere to hide in mine really; it was the largest and emptiest in the house with no closet and our mattresses just sat on the floor instead of on bed frames. I checked around my side of the room and saw nothing. My brother's side was just as empty as mine, but I went to check anyway. His box spring was moved out at an angle and his mattress flush against the wall. This wasn't uncommon, but I still yanked the mattress away—nothing again.

I headed out of the large room and began to search the closets and crawl spaces. I prided myself on how quiet I was, which was the only way I ever got close to where someone was hiding. I had narrowed it down to two doors and as I reached for one,

I heard a call of "Olly olly oxen free!"

"Damn it!" I shouted.

It wasn't uncommon for me to swear even at a young age and I rarely got in trouble for something as mild as "damn". I began to crawl back out when I heard shuffling from behind one of the doors. My brother was stuck sitting in the safe corner once I found him and my sister had just called safe.

I knew there were rodents in the house and decided not to let one out of the closet. I finished crawling backwards out of the narrow enclosure and turned to stand up. My brother was frozen. He was shaking violently and staring up at our sister. I had never seen his eyes so wide before and when they flicked over to me he seemed to be begging for help while still urging me to run.

What was he so scared of?

I started to walk over and he whimpered. I stopped again when I realized how wrong the situation was.