Val Muller

Welcome to the Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write a dramatic scene. Your heroine is alone in a house someone is breaking into. Today’s contribution comes from Val Muller, author of THE SCARRED LETTER and the CORGI CAPERS kidlit mystery series. The story below takes a unique twist on the idea of an “intruder” and challenges Courtney Hollinger, sister of Corgi Capers’ main protagonist.

 

Cold

By Val Muller

“Don’t forget to leave the sink dripping,” Mom said.

Dad smiled. “Wouldn’t want the pipes to burst.”

Courtney smiled back. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect the house.”

“And if anything happens, call Arabella or Cassie. They know we’ll be gone for the night, and we’ve asked them to look in on you.”

“I’m in seventh grade already. I can take care of myself.”

“Seventh grade isn’t that old, young lady. Remember, no going out. Let the dogs out once or twice, but that’s it. And no visitors.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Finally, finally, they left. Courtney watched them from the front window. She couldn’t wait. She had the entire night planned—a movie marathon coupled with a chat session with her friends. And she could text Dave all night, too. She was finally being treated like an adult.

But that was all. She was turning over a new leaf. Her parents finally trusted her, finally un-grounded her. So no sneaking out, no inviting anyone over. Just watching movies with the volume as loud as she wanted, eating whatever she wanted, and having the peace and quiet of being away from her brother.

It would be like being a grown-up. It was going to be awesome.

And then, when Mom and Dad returned in the morning and saw the house was still standing the dogs were fed and happy, they’d trust her even more. Never too early to start thinking about driving—only a few years away!

The kitchen sink was set to drip—last year the pipes had frozen along the outside wall. They hadn’t burst, luckily, but there were so many stories in the news with this recent cold snap. It was the reason they were letting Courtney stay by herself. She was supposed to keep the taps dripping and the thermostat turned up. And, in case anything happened, she knew where the main water shut-off was, and she had her parents’ cell phone numbers memorized. Mom’s presentation wasn’t until the morning, so she could call them whenever she wanted.

Not that she would need to.

She settled into the recliner—Dad’s recliner. She set up Mom’s laptop on the end table, plugged in her phone charger, opened a bag of popcorn, and pulled a blanket up over her. Breaking small rules didn’t matter. Dad would never know she was eating in his chair, and Mom wouldn’t miss her laptop tonight. She smirked and broke one final rule. “Come on, Sapphie,” she said to her dog. “You can sit up here with me.”

Sapphie took a running leap without even thinking, burrowing into the forbidden comfort of the recliner. Adam’s dog yelped and hid under the couch. “Poor Zeph,” Courtney said. “Too bad Adam couldn’t have taken you to his sleepover.”

Courtney shoved a handful of popcorn into her mouth and pushed “play” on the DVR. The first movie started playing just as a text from Dave came in. She signed onto Facebook and posted on her friends’ walls. She didn’t have to worry for once about a parent peeking over her shoulder. She could talk about whatever she wanted, using whatever language she wanted to. She giggled; she could even fart right there in her father’s recliner and no one to reprimand her.

It was everything she expected, everything she hoped. Living like a grown-up was awesome.

Halfway through the bag of popcorn and the movie, the microwave oven beeped. The lights went out.

“What the—?”

Sapphie and Zeph barked in alarm, sensing her tension. She picked up her cell phone. The pale moon outside did little to light the way.

“It’s okay, dogs,” she whispered. She hoped.

“Power out,” she texted to Dave.

“Yeah, me too,” he responded. “Sux. Guess I’ll go hibernate until it comes back on. Gonna get cold with no heat.”

And he was gone, just like that.

And then Courtney shivered. Cold with no heat. With no heat, how would she keep the pipes from freezing? In the kitchen above, she heard the refrigerator turn on. Why weren’t the rest of the lights coming on, too?

Then she remembered: Dad had wired their generator to come on automatically to run the refrigerator. She thought about calling Mom and Dad. They hadn’t been gone that long. Maybe they would come back. Besides, this was Mom’s conference. They had already talked about Mom going by herself and Dad staying behind. Maybe he could come back now.

She looked at her list of contacts, ready to push the button for Dad’s phone, but she shook her head. Sure, she was only in seventh grade, but that was pretty old. She could handle this on her own.

Outside, the wind howled. She must not have heard it over the movie’s volume, but it was raging. It pressed against the windows, making them creak. It lashed against the shutters and whipped through the trees. She remembered being a little kid, all wrapped in a comforter in bed and hearing these same noises. How comforting it had been all those years ago, wrapped up tight with Mom and Dad downstairs to protect her.

Now she was on her own. No one to protect her—and assigned to look after the dogs and the house. And all those chips on her shoulder.

She ran up to the kitchen. The faucet was still dripping. That’s right—water and phone lines were on a different system than electricity. She remembered Mom saying something about that. She pulled the faucet, making the stream of water more steady. Less chance of freezing that way.

But what about the plunging temperatures? A quick trip outside with the dogs proved that the wind was bringing with it a cold front, an arctic blast whose icy grip reached into the ground and into pipes and water lines and flesh.

Courtney shuddered and hurried back inside. She touched the exterior kitchen wall. It felt cold. This was no good. She picked up her phone again, ready to call Dad.

But no. She could handle this on her own. If the refrigerator ran off the generator, then certainly a space heater could as well. Some of the sockets in the kitchen still had to be electrified. It was only a matter of finding which ones…

* * *

The next morning, she awoke to the sounds of dogs barking. They scampered happily down the stairs as Courtney sat up. Her sleeping bag pooled around her, and she looked up at the kitchen sink. It was still dripping. The space heater was still spinning, directed at the cabinet under the sink. She’d stayed up most of the night, checking the pipes and making sure the space heater wasn’t about to catch on fire. It was the most exhausting night she’d ever spent.

The clock on the microwave blinked, letting her know the power was back on. She looked up in time to see Dad coming into the kitchen.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did you sleep in the kitchen?”

Courtney rubbed her head and shrugged. “Power was out,” she said. “Had to keep the pipes from freezing.”

Dad helped her up, and she trudged upstairs to shower.

“We’re proud of you,” Dad called up the stairs, “working so hard to protect the house.”

“Yeah,” Courtney whispered to herself. “Be proud all you want. Being a grown-up sucks.”

 

The Spot Writers–our members:

 

 RC Bonitz: http://www.rcbonitz.com

 

Val Muller: https://valmuller.com/blog/

 

Catherine A. MacKenzie: http://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

 

Kathy Price: http://www.kathylprice.com

 

Welcome to the Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write a dramatic scene. Your heroine is alone in a house someone is breaking into. Today’s contribution comes from RC Bonitz, author of A BLANKET FOR HER HEART.

 

HER BACK INTO IT

by RC Bonitz

 

Moonlight cut between the heavy curtains, making a spear of faint gray light across the floor. Darkness, black and deep, clothed the rest of the room. Nel liked it that way. Light kept her awake.

She stirred and opened an eye. Was that a noise downstairs? Ever since Tom died last month she’d been as jumpy as a feral cat. Rolling over in the bed, she closed her eyes again. She had to settle down at night, this wakefulness could not go on. Nerves, that’s all it was, an old woman’s agitated nerves.

Squeak. Nel sat bolt upright in her bed. That was definitely a real sound, not imagination, a door, the back door opening? What else could it be? She shivered in the darkness, strained her ears to hear. A whisper of a wind parted the curtains. Gray light filtered through the room for just a moment and then the curtain closed again. Completely.

She waited, daring not to breathe. Faint, there it was, something in the kitchen down below her. Something, someone moving in her house. A animal? A thief? Or worse?

Fingers fumbling, she reached for the bedside phone. Picked it up, keyed it in the dark. Silence. No dial tone? How could that be? Her hand shook. Whoever it was, he was, he wanted to make sure she couldn’t call for help. Where was her cell phone? Downstairs in her purse! In the kitchen where he was. Oh God, why had she been so careless.

A floorboard creaked, and then another. He was heading for the stairs. Who knew her house so well? Someone she knew? Someone who’d kill to silence her after he got his kicks. Her stomach knotted, sweat broke out, she had to keep herself together. If she only had a gun.

A stair creaked, he was coming up. The bat! The old bat they used to play softball with at family picnics.

Nel slipped out of bed and felt around beneath the box spring. Nothing but carpet. Where the dickens was it. She leaned down, shoved her arm further under the bed. A creak on the stairs. He was coming. Finally. Her fingers closed around the bat.

Another stair gave out a warning. Near the top now, coming for her. What could she do, a frail old woman with a heavy baseball bat. Tom’s words came out of nowhere,, from a softball game so many years ago, ‘put your back into it, Nel’. She stood up beside the door, bat ready, shaking, waiting.

One more creak, the top step now. She held her breath. The door jerked, a stick of light from the hall crept in. The door flew open, banged against the wall. His breathing followed, hard and fast, as he stepped into the room.

She put her back into it.

---

 

 

The Spot Writers–our members:

 

 RC Bonitz: http://www.rcbonitz.com

 

Val Muller: https://valmuller.com/blog/

 

Catherine A. MacKenzie: http://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

 

Kathy Price: http://www.kathylprice.com

 

Welcome to the Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to use the following five words in a story: candy, whistle, ferry, ring, and kitchen. This week’s contribution is by Kathy L. Price.

 

Childhood Dreams

by Kathy L. Price

 

She blew into the candy whistle again and again, enjoying the high-pitched sound as well as the delicious taste. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend to hear the seagulls and smell the salty air of the sound.

“Kathy,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Stop that or I’ll take it away from you. Have you finished your homework yet?”

Kathy quit blowing into the whistle but kept it in her mouth, savoring the sweet, cherry flavor. It wasn’t long before the candy had dissolved so much there was no whistle left. That was a huge disappointment because she’d been pretending she was riding on the big ferry which carried them across the water from Fort Myers to the islands. Daydreaming about sunny skies, warm sun, and sand between her toes was a lot more fun than doing math homework.

The two weeks they spent on Sanibel and Captiva every summer, barrier islands off the west coast of Florida, were the absolute best of the whole year. She got to play on the beach every day. She got to see real live dolphins swimming in the ocean; collect perfect, pretty shells which were just lying all over the sand; wade in the water and pretend she was a mermaid. She knew when she was old enough, she was going to get a job at Weeki Wachee Springs and be a real mermaid. Mermaids didn’t need to know anything at all about math. Or maybe she’d be a water skier at Cypress Gardens. There were so many possibilities.

The years passed and the dreams changed. A bridge was built to connect Sanibel Island to the mainland and the ferry service was discontinued. At fourteen, Kathy and her family moved to California, a long, long way from Weeki Wachee Springs. College graduation, marriage, and children of her own changed the course of her life. Many years later, when her little boy blew into his candy whistle, she remembered the ferry and the childhood dreams long dead. She didn’t tell him to stop. She let him blow his whistle for as long as he wanted.

 

 

 

The Spot Writers–our members:

 

RC Bonitz: http://www.rcbonitz.com

 

Val Muller: https://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Kathy Price: http://www.kathylprice.com