“Whatever,” Jason replied and then hung up.“Well screw you too,” Emma said, turning off the phone and put it back in her pocket. Emma was trying to persuade her dad to lift her punishment. Emma been doing the same thing for the past couple of days. She’d been waking up, getting dressed, and trying to stalk her dad to see if he would let her go out. But for the past few days, she had failed miserably and instead of letting her off the hook, her dad had gotten madder and sent her back to her room. Emma walked down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator door and grabbed the last apple in sight. She headed out the backdoor into the backyard. All the hammering had stopped, and her dad was nowhere in sight. Emma walked inside her dad’s tool shack. It was the only project her dad had ever finished. The tool shack was a decent twelve by twelve wooden shack. She stepped inside and looked around but couldn’t see her dad. Emma knew he had to be out there because he would never leave his tools outside.
“Dad, hello!” Emma yelled. She didn’t get any response, so she continued to walk around the backyard. She was about to go back inside the house when she heard a noise coming from the back of the tool shack. Emma slowly walked toward the back of the shack. When she turned the corner, she saw her dad’s boots on the floor. “Dad!” Emma yelled. Her dad’s body was twitching as if he was having a seizure, but Emma knew that couldn’t be because he had never had such a condition.
She left him there and ran inside the house to call 911. After a couple of rings, a woman’s voice answered, she sounded in her late 30’s early 40s, and asked what the emergency was. Emma explained the reason for the call and the woman told Emma to turn her dad on his side and let him rest to help prevent shock. However, she would not be able to send any emergency vehicles to her house because all the emergency services were busy.
“What do you mean they’re busy? I am not a freaking doctor; you guys need to send one over here!” Emma yelled on the phone. The female voice on the phone started crying, which confused Emma. “What is wrong, why the heck are you crying?” Emma said. The voice remained quiet for a second or two.
“You have not watched the news? Your dad is not the only one. Hope God gives you strength,” the female voice said and suddenly the dial tone filled Emma’s ear. The woman had hung up. She wanted to turn on the TV, but she needed to go check on her dad. She didn’t know what the lady was talking about. Why would she say such a thing to a complete stranger, and more importantly, why did she hang up the phone on an emergency? Emma tried to call 911 again, but this time all she got was the busy tone. She dropped the phone and ran outside to check on her dad. To her surprise, he was no longer where she left him.
“Dad!” Emma yelled. After not getting a response, and not seeing her father anywhere around the backyard, she ran inside the house and up the stairs. Emma got to her room and pulled the cell phone from under her mattress. She turned on the phone and tried calling Jason, but after a few unanswered rings she hung up and tried calling her mom. The phone continued to ring for a few more seconds, until she heard her mom’s voice.
“Hello?” Her mom said.
“It’s Emma, something happened to Dad. He was lying on the floor twitching, and I tried to call 911, but they are not coming, and now dad disappeared,” Emma said.
“You need to get out of the house, NOW!!” Emma’s mom yelled. “Is not safe inside the house, I need you to get in your car, and come to Grams!” Emma didn’t know what was wrong with her mom, and wondered why she didn’t even ask for her Dad. It seemed like she already knew what happened, but that was impossible since her mom was at her grams house. Could her mom be responsible for what happened to her dad? Emma thought, then shook her head. “Naaa,” Emma murmured.
Emma forgot to ask her mom where she had hid the car keys. Since Emma had been grounded for the past two weeks, her parents had hid the keys in case Emma tried to go out. But she didn’t have time call again, her mom sounded frantic on the phone. Emma went into her parents’ bedroom looking for the keys. She always loved how her mom had set up the room with every single piece of furniture on black and white, even the pictures above their parent’s bed displayed abstract paintings in black and white. Emma opened her mom’s dresser drawers but couldn’t find anything, then she remembered the small black leather box where her dad kept all his watches. He used to collect watches. Emma remembered her dad showing her the very first watch he bought with his own money. Emma used to laugh because it was missing the bands, the battery was dead, and because her dad was so cheap and lazy, he’d rather by a new watch than replace the battery on the old one.
Emma opened the box, and to her surprise, the keys were there. She didn’t waste any time. She grabbed the keys and headed outside the room. She ran down the hallway and to the top of the stairs. She was about to go down, but she noticed a shadow coming from the dining room. “Hello?” Emma said, though wishing she hadn’t asked, but it was too late now. Whoever was downstairs had already heard her and was coming. She remained still, waiting to see who it was. “Dad? “Emma said.
She was strong girl but this was too much for her to handle, her eyes got watery and she screamed toward the thing downstairs. It was not her dad anymore, and she knew it. Emma’s dad approached the bottom of the stairs, drooling blood from his mouth, eyes, and ears. He crawled up the first couple of steps and let out scream that echoed through the house. Emma screamed again, and turned to her right noticing the large flowerpot her mom bough a few weeks ago. She grabbed it, picked it up as high as she could, and sent it flying down the stairs. Emma didn’t wait to see if the pot hit her target or not. She sprinted as fast as she could to her room. Emma closed the door and jumped on her bed. She opened the window and started to crawl out of it to freedom when she heard a hard banging on her door. Emma had seen too many movies to stay there like a fool, waiting to be killed. She spent no time in getting all the way down to the backyard. She had been practicing escaping every other night to be with Jason, so this time was no different except that if she had been keeping record of how fast she climbed down, today she would have beat every other time.
Emma ran toward the driveway, unlocked the car, and got in. For a moment, she felt dumb because she couldn’t find the ignition. She took a deep breath, started the car, and headed toward her grandma’s house. She could hear ambulances and police sirens in the distance, but nothing was in sight. Emma didn’t pay attention to anything on the road. She was glad when she hit I44. Emma knew she had about an hours drive to her grandma’s house. She was surprised to see
the empty highway in front of her. She pushed the gas a little harder, wanting to reach her grandma’s house as soon as she could. “Why the hell am I rushing to Mom, if she is not even worried enough to call me again?” Emma thought.
She had forgotten that the phone she used was Jason’s cell phone, not the one her parent’s had bought her last year. She got mad just thinking about it, and threw the phone on the passenger seat. Emma hit the gas and sped up as fast as her car would go. She was confident of her driving skills, like every other teenager in the world. She felt proud of herself for being so independent. She wondered whatever happened to Jason and then thought of him as another douche bag that would have dragged her down. She was daydreaming and didn’t notice the cell phone was ringing.