Late Night

by Simone Kurland

She took off her shoes and quietly tip-toed up the three cold concrete steps to front door of her house. Slowly, she lifted the door mat and carefully picked up the single key.  As she tried to insert the key without making a noise her hand shook and knocked the metal against the lock. She cringed and closed her eyes as she continued to turn the key. After closing the door behind her, she put back her parent's car keys on the same hook that she took it from earlier that night. She silently crawled up the fourteen carpeted stairs and when she got to the top she stood up. The whole apartment was pitch black but she could easily walked through it from memory. As she turned the corner she saw a silhouette of what she thought was the twisted curtain, she turned back around to head to her room. She stopped. Slowly she turned and looked at the silhouette again. Staring at it, she couldn't figure out just what she was looking at, she began to step closer. Each step she took her heart beat louder and louder. As she squinted her eyes and slightly turned her head to the side she realized she was staring at. Her mom's dead body hung from the bannister between the living room and kitchen. She ran to the light and hit at the switch three times before the light came on. After a second of staring at her mom she began to scream. She dropped to her knees and yelled for her dad. There was no answer. Sobbing, she continued to scream for him into the carpet, and as he did not answer she went to her parents bedroom. She turned on the light only to find him tucked in bed with a pool of blood, staining the crisp white sheets that laid on top of him. She ran to the bathroom, flipped on the light, locked the door and stood against the wall staring at herself in the huge mirror. She slid down the wall and sat there with her eyes wide open. A loud banging came from the front door, as well as a deep voice stating that they were the police. She wiped her face with her hands, took a breath, and walked down the stairs to let them in. She fumbled with the keys and swung the door open to see them holding up their badges. Two men walked right past her and stomped up the stairs, a younger woman with long brown hair introduced herself as she wrapped a blanket around the girl. “My name is detective Barrett, what's your name?”

She tried to stop from crying to tell her but her breathing was so fast she couldn’t talk. “I-I-I-I ca-ca-came home and and and and…” Barrett rubbed her back,

“Shh, it’s fine I just need your name, “ she said softly. 

She took two deep breaths and replied, “Jenna Walske” Her voice shook almost as much as her hands. The woman then sat her down on the cold front steps and calmly began to question Jenna.  “So Jenna, where were you earlier tonight?” She didn’t respond. “Jenna, Jenna? Are you listening?” Jenna could slightly hear the detective but her voice was fading away, she sat at watched the leaves move with the wind as she swayed slightly side to side. She looked into Barrett’s eyes and slowly fainted, hitting her head on the detectives shoulder and falling into her lap.

She woke up with a strap on her arm and man holding her wrist.  She looked up and saw four people staring back her, waiting for her to say something. She recognized the woman and looked around to see that she was still lying on the cold porch. “Sweetie, would you like to sit up? It would be good if you had some water?”

“Um, yea that’s fine.” The three men then hoisted her up and delicately propped her against the house as the woman handed her a white paper cup of water.

"So Jenna there are a few detectives looking through the apartment, trying to decide what happened. Right now it's looking like a murder- suicide. It would help us out a lot if you could tell us why your mom would have wanted to do something like this."

Jenna kept her eyes on the paper cup as she shook her head. "No, no that couldn't have been what happened, there's no way."

Barrett placed her hand on her back, "I'm sorry, but we found a suicide note." Jenna's mind quickly went to her boyfriend, Brian.

She just need one solid piece of evidence showing her mom didn't commit suicide. Frustrated, Jenna sat down on a chair and rests her head on her hands with her elbows on the table. As she looked at the chair that her mom had toppled over, she began staring at the smooth wood and the perfectly carved back. She tried to replay what had supposedly happened that terrible night. "There was no way she could have hung herself, " she thought, "even if she wanted to, she never would have followed through." She kept her eyes on the fallen chair, trying to picture her mom standing on it. Suddenly she saw a flash of a mom standing on one of the four identical chairs, she was on her toes trying to grab a rarely used tea pot from the top self of the cabinet. She remembered how her mom wanted to take it out because her mother was coming to visit. She saw as her mother stretched her arm as far as she could, barely grabbing the tea pot by her finger tips, almost dropping it. Jenna's eyed widened. She jumped up and picked up the chair, sure enough, there was at least a foot between the chair and her moms dangling feet.