Write, Wrote, Written

 Sunday Scribblings #102

Note:  The prompt I’m using for this one is “Time Machine.” 

“There’s a repairman up in your unit,” his landlord had said.

Odd he, thought, given that he didn’t know of anything in his apartment that was broken–that and the fact that it was already after eight o’clock. He should have known. He should have figured it out before he opened the door. Fortunately, the thing waiting for him missed when it lunged at him, and he was able to get inside and get his hands around a sword he kept for such occasions. He put everything he had behind the swing that decapitated it.

The good part about it was that there was no body to dispose of. It immediately burst into flames, and all that was left for him to do was sweep up the ashes and replace the charred rug in his living room. He went to get a broom, but before he made it very far, he caught a whiff of the burnt synthetic-fiber rug. That smell instantly transported him back a quarter of a century to when he was four years old to his parent’s house in middle-of-nowhere Missouri.

He was lying in bed, too scared to fall asleep. There were possibly monsters under the bed, or in his closet, or maybe at his window. He pulled the covers up over his head. Every little sound caused him to flinch, and he just wished he would fall asleep so that it would be daytime sooner, but the minutes seemed like hours.

The next sound he heard, though wasn’t a little creak or a squeak, or even a bump. It was a loud crash. It sounded like it came from downstairs. Then he heard what sounded like his mother talking, and then another loud crash, and then nothing. Silence.

He was torn. Part of him wanted to stay under the covers where it was safe. Part of him wanted to go downstairs to see what had happened. After deliberating for a few minutes, he decided. With all the courage his little body could muster, he climbed out of his brand new big-boy bed, opened the door, and sneaked down the hall.  When he neared the stairs, his nose was assaulted by a stinging, burning smell.  Standing at the top of the stairs, he could see a big black spot on the rug in the living room below.  His mother was standing next to the black spot.  She was in her nightgown.  The sleeve was torn, and her hair was messed up.  She was holding a broken chair leg in her hand.  The jagged end of it was dark and shiny, like it was wet.

“Mommy,” his four-year-old self said.

She jumped and looked up toward the stairs.  When she saw him she tried to hide the chair leg.  She finally just dropped it and stepped in front of it.  She smiled, but she didn’t look happy.

“Yes, sweetie, what is it?”

“I heard a big noise.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  Mommy was a big klutz and tripped and fell.”

He remembered when he tripped and fell and skinned his knee.  It had hurt.

“Ouchie?”  he asked.

“No, no ouchie.  Mommy isn’t hurt.  Now why don’t you run back to your room, and I’ll be up to check on you in a minute, okay?”

He did, and a few minutes later, she came in and sang to him until he fell asleep.

At the time didn’t really understand what he had seen, and gradually, the incident faded from his memory.  Now it had come back, and now he did understand, and when he realized what had happened that night, his twenty-nine-year-old self sat down on the floor of his apartment and cried.

His earliest childhood memory was of his mother destroying a vampire.