Psychotic Maniacal Sanity
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- Posted: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:38:23 +0000
Username: Psychotic Maniacal Sanity
Round: 1.
Prompt(s) used: Song: "The Worm and The Bird".
Title of Entry: Hide and Seek.
Word count of entry: 2,675
URL of post: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/writing-contests/the-twist-in-you-open-december-28th-100k-in-prizes/t.35505645_76/#76
Helpless.
There’s no way out.
I don’t know where to go next. I feel trapped, lonely, and my head is spinning. What do I do?
It was dark inside the closet, dark and stiflingly hot. Heather Chambers lifted her head from her arms, feeling her back ache as she tried to stretch the muscles and pull her legs out from underneath her chest. She didn’t know how long she had been inside, but it felt like too long- years maybe? No, not years. It was getting darker, that much she was sure of, and hotter since Daddy had turned up the heating. He was trying to find her; he was always trying to find her; he was always drunk, and she was always lost. She liked being lost. She didn’t like him being drunk, but what did that matter? She’d learned long ago that you can’t change your life. That was impossible.
Little pinpricks of light fell across her face, blindingly bright compared to the pitch darkness of before. Heather started, her chest tightening. Somebody had turned on the light. The bedside light. One part of her wanted to see who had done it, find out if it was anybody other than Daddy, but the other part, the part that always cried when Daddy slapped her, told her that there was only Daddy in the house: nobody else could have done it. She listened in silence, holding her breath and widening her eyes as though she could let the sound in through the whites of her eyeballs too, but she could hear nothing. There was no sound; no birds, no children outside, no padding footsteps on the stairs. Silence. A creeping secretive wave of cold, hard silence that wrapped itself around her body, and during that moment, Heather thought she could have heard a pin drop, if only she had one to drop.
“Heather?” a quite whisper broke the silence- a gruff, incoherent slurring of her name whipping across the room like a bird in flight. She winced, taking a sharp breath in fear, and hid her face in her arms again. Her whole body convulsed in terror; once, twice, three times, and then was still apart from her steady, deep breaths.
“Heather sweetie? Where are you?” the slurred voice called again, this time a little louder. It sounded like it was coming from outside the room- how had the light turned on? Had he walked out? Was she safe?
“Heather, I’m counting to ten, and if I can’t find you I’ll get angry.” The voice, though calm was dead-pan, drunken, without feeling. There was no anger in his voice yet, and there was no love. Heather hated that voice the worst of all, even more than the angry one, because it meant that he didn’t care.
“Heather; once more!” the voice raised a little, and the quiet that it left in its wake was painful and crackling with unspoken words and energy. Heather didn’t dare raise her head, glad for her dark colouring as her hair covered her face in a security blanket of hope. Hope that this time he wouldn’t find her; this time there would be no punishment. She waited with baited breath, waited for the doors to swing open and Daddy to haul her out in a fit of rage, but all she heard was the soft padding of heavy feet on the stairs, and a voice that was wavering further and further away. She counted to ten.
“One, two, three...” she whispered to herself, careless now that he had gone, only caring that she didn’t begin to cry. “Six, seven eight.” She stopped, feeling calm, and opened her eyes. The darkness had fallen again, with a click of a lamp, and she realise what had caused the light in the first place- she was sitting on the switch. She cursed herself for such stupidity and pulled the switch out from underneath her skirt, wrestling so it was as far away from her as she dared take it without moving. “Nine, ten.” Now she was calm. She pulled her legs back underneath her; so they were crossed, and she leaned back against the wall with a little sigh. She felt tired.
How long had it been since she had breathed cool air? Her head was spinning with the claustrophobia that was beginning to develop in her mind, and her nose was beginning to grow sore from the amount of times she had wiped it on the sleeve of her sweater. She wanted to cry, felt the prickling of salty tears behind her eyelids, but she knew that she couldn’t permit herself to indulge in her emotions. If she cried he would find her.
It had been two hours; and the summer day was only just beginning to grow old. The golden sunlight outside streamed into the room, but didn’t fall across the closet, not behind the coat rail and the pinafores that had once belonged to Heather's mother. Inside it was pitch dark, and all she could make out were her hands in front of her face, a slightly lighter shade of black than that all of the rest.
Heather, knowing full well that she couldn’t stay in the closet forever, counted to ten again.
“One, two, three,” she whispered again, ticking the numbers off on her fingers. “Please don’t let him find me.” Then she waited. Nothing. “Four, five, six, counting as the clock ticks.” Again, nothing. “Seven, eight, nine, oh please Daddy, Daddy mine.” Silence. “Ten. Ben stop it you’re hurting her!” Heather’s tears began to well on her cheeks, dripping onto her pale skin and dancing around the freckles like ballerinas on ice.
Oh please, Ben! Please! It sounded real enough in her head; she had heard it enough times. The voice was haunting, without a face or a body to remember, but the voice... That voice. It was so soft, so gentle, raised to such a pitch was unnatural. Heather wanted to cover her ears, wanted to sob to herself silently and cry out that it was all right. She was a big girl, she could handle it.
“Stop it,” she said to herself, a little more loudly. “Stop that Ben, stop that Heather.” The voice she spoke in was not her own, deeper than her own squeaking little sound. There wasn’t any comfort in the interpretation from those years ago, no comfort to be found anywhere these days.
After her speech there was silence, and then she came to a conclusion: Daddy was gone, at least for now. And then, as if she had predicted the future, she heard a quiet bang from downstairs- the slamming of a door perhaps? Heather nodded her head to herself, making a silent agreement with the bolder part of her mind that screamed to see the daylight. She would step outside and see if it was safe. She couldn’t hide forever, and he couldn’t count for any longer.
“More beers please,” she mumbled to herself in conclusion. “Shut up and turn on the television.”
Unsteadily she climbed to her feet, staggering a little as her head hit the heavy lining of an old winter coat. She took two deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. And then, reaching her hand out cautiously, she pushed at the door. It moved a little, and she jumped back in fear, hiding behind the thick winter coat on her left, and then, peering around the side to make sure it was safe, she repeated this action.
“Good morning sunshine,” she whispered happily. The door opened a little further and she poked her head out slowly. With her eyes adjusting to the bright light coming in through the window, she gave the room a sweeping glance, cool grey eyes taking in ever surface and every object in the room. The bed had been sat on, and the lamp had moved closer to the edge of the beside table, but other than that everything looked as it should.
Satisfied that everything was fine she stepped from her safe-haven, treading lightly on the carpet in her dirty white socks. They hadn’t been washed in a few days; Daddy had forgot to turn the washer on, and he never checked her clothes. She dressed herself. The skirt she wore was pleated and too big for her, gaping slightly at the waist as if dismayed at the weight she had lost from lack of interest, and was made of a light purple cloth that had once been soft to the touch, and was now faded and threadbare. Heather knew her Daddy wasn’t a bad man, not like the other men she had heard The News talking about. Daddy loved her, and Daddy looked after her; at least he did most of the time. All parents are allowed days off, right? And besides, Heather knew that their relationship was something special: Daddy was sad, and so he was allowed to be upset with her too.
“Go fetch the flashlight,” she said to herself, straightening up her pink sweater, hardly caring that the end was crusted form the wiping of her nose, and she sniffed lightly. The room smelt like beer, and some kind of cologne that Daddy was wearing. That smelt nice.
“I don’t want to play any more Ben,” she told her invisible father, shaking her head. “I’m bored of hiding, I’m scared. Can we do something else please?” When nobody answered she walked out of the room, tiptoeing across the hallway and down the stairs. “Can we play something else Daddy?” She wandered into the living room. Daddy had left some empty cans on the floor, and the television remote was still sat on the top of the big black box from when she had been watching it this morning. A picture flickered on the screen, but there was no sound.
“Oh yes. More beer.”
She wandered around the house for a little longer, trailing her fingers over different surfaces in turn and then tapping her finger lightly on the piano- she gave up on that quickly though, since the sound it made was awful, out of tune, and loud in the silence of the house now that Daddy had left. She half hoped that he would come home while she was still out of her hiding place, and that he would suggest they play another game. She was tired, and she wanted to sleep; the crying that she had done since Mummy had gone was beginning to take its toll on the way she behaved. She couldn’t think straight, feeling no need to speak properly since nobody was listening. She hadn’t seen anybody but Daddy in two months, she thought, and that was a very long time.
“I don’t want to cry no more,” she told herself suddenly, her voice harsh and strangely cheerful as she stood in the wan, yellow sunlight and twirled in circles before the mirror in her Daddy’s bedroom, the room she had come from to start with. Daddy wasn’t home yet, and it was boring. She was getting cold, and she wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t sleep without a story. Daddy had to finish the story he was telling her, about Romeo and Julia, or something like that. She liked Romeo, he sounded nice, like her Daddy when there was no beer. Julia sounded like her Mummy, and she wanted to find out if they got married; she thought they would. Grown ups always got married, it was like the law.
“Heather!” The door slammed and Heather jumped an inch from the floor, her heart leaping. Quick, hide! She scuttled across the room and was about to slide herself under the bed when she heard Daddy’s feet on the stairs. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was as reassuring as it was frightening; at least he had come back.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Daddy taunted, his words not as slurred and his voice not as harsh. No beer? “I’ll find you Little Heather, I’ll find you.” She held her breath and slid back against the bed, between there and the closet, hoping that the shielding of the bed so close to her would be enough. There was no time to hide underneath the bed. Half of her mind hoped that Daddy would find her still, even though she knew she would get told off for letting the game last so long- she’d probably get a slap- but half of her wanted to hide away and not let him find her. It was quiet when he wasn’t there, but at least he couldn’t hurt her. Daddy was sad. Daddy needed help.
“Oh Heather,” he called, lowering his voice to a sing-song. Heather closed her eyes, scrunched them up as tight as they would go, and held herself as still as she possible could. The footsteps grew louder, and louder, louder. And they stopped. She heard breathing- heavy breathing- and she knew he was in the room. She wrapped herself up into a little ball and counted in her head. They counted in unison.
“One, two, three.” Hide-and-go-seek. “Four, five, six, seven.” Heather bit her lip and felt her fingers respond to the steady counting. “Eight... Nine...” This was where Daddy slowed down, and Heather stopped breathing. “Ten.” The bedside lamp fell to the floor with a crash as Daddy crossed the room, and Heather cried out in pure unadulterated terror.
“Hide and Seek!” Daddy yelled, pulling her out from behind the bed, lifting her from the floor by her arm. She felt something twinge, and cried out again.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she shouted. “Daddy you found me! Let me go now!”
“No Heather,” Daddy growled, putting her down on the floor but still holding onto her wrist so tightly she felt her fingers go limp. “You’ve been a very naughty girl.” She opened her eyes, felt her bottom lip tremble, and looked directly into his storm-cloud angry eyes. “Hide and Seek Heather,” Daddy said menacingly. “Hide and Seek, not Lost and Found.” Heather shook her head in terror, not understanding the difference.
“I’m sorry Daddy, I’m sorry.” She began to cry, little tears that rolled onto her cheeks and seemed only to add coal to the fire that was burning in her Daddy’s chest.
“Be quiet!” he howled, holding his head with one hand. “Have you no respect?” You’ve got another hangover Ben; don’t hit Heather like that. He lifted his hand up to her face and brought it down hard across her cheek, marking the pale skin with a growing red welt.
“Sorry, sorry,” Heather murmured, trying to contain her tears. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t let me find you,” growled Daddy, a little calmer but still inexplicably angry. What has she done? What has she done wrong? No more beer Ben, no more Hide and Seek. It’s just a game. A violent game.
“I’m sorry-”
“I counted to one hundred.” He sounded childish, petulant almost and Heather wanted to just curl up and die. Her face was burning with what she felt must have been the force of a thousand suns, and her tooth had cut into her lip. The taste of iron-tinted blood trickled onto her tongue and she grimaced. Daddy raised his hand again.
“I’m sorry!”
“No!” he growled again, her face contorted in anger, fueled by alcohol and little sleep. “I’ll count again,” he let go of Heather’s arm and she dropped to the floor, crawling away from him steadily as he began to count. “One, two, three.” He walked out into the corridor and stood by the door. “Four, five, six, seven.” Heather scuttled away faster, dragging her knees over the carpet in a desperate fashion until she reached the closet. “Eight... Nine...” Daddy took a deep breath and Heather dived into the closet holding back her whimpers of pain and confusion. “Ten.” Daddy tapped the doorframe once, twice, three times, and then stopped. There was silence.
“Hide and Seek.” Heather closed her eyes.
Round: 1.
Prompt(s) used: Song: "The Worm and The Bird".
Title of Entry: Hide and Seek.
Word count of entry: 2,675
URL of post: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/writing-contests/the-twist-in-you-open-december-28th-100k-in-prizes/t.35505645_76/#76
Hide and Seek
Helpless.
There’s no way out.
I don’t know where to go next. I feel trapped, lonely, and my head is spinning. What do I do?
It was dark inside the closet, dark and stiflingly hot. Heather Chambers lifted her head from her arms, feeling her back ache as she tried to stretch the muscles and pull her legs out from underneath her chest. She didn’t know how long she had been inside, but it felt like too long- years maybe? No, not years. It was getting darker, that much she was sure of, and hotter since Daddy had turned up the heating. He was trying to find her; he was always trying to find her; he was always drunk, and she was always lost. She liked being lost. She didn’t like him being drunk, but what did that matter? She’d learned long ago that you can’t change your life. That was impossible.
Little pinpricks of light fell across her face, blindingly bright compared to the pitch darkness of before. Heather started, her chest tightening. Somebody had turned on the light. The bedside light. One part of her wanted to see who had done it, find out if it was anybody other than Daddy, but the other part, the part that always cried when Daddy slapped her, told her that there was only Daddy in the house: nobody else could have done it. She listened in silence, holding her breath and widening her eyes as though she could let the sound in through the whites of her eyeballs too, but she could hear nothing. There was no sound; no birds, no children outside, no padding footsteps on the stairs. Silence. A creeping secretive wave of cold, hard silence that wrapped itself around her body, and during that moment, Heather thought she could have heard a pin drop, if only she had one to drop.
“Heather?” a quite whisper broke the silence- a gruff, incoherent slurring of her name whipping across the room like a bird in flight. She winced, taking a sharp breath in fear, and hid her face in her arms again. Her whole body convulsed in terror; once, twice, three times, and then was still apart from her steady, deep breaths.
“Heather sweetie? Where are you?” the slurred voice called again, this time a little louder. It sounded like it was coming from outside the room- how had the light turned on? Had he walked out? Was she safe?
“Heather, I’m counting to ten, and if I can’t find you I’ll get angry.” The voice, though calm was dead-pan, drunken, without feeling. There was no anger in his voice yet, and there was no love. Heather hated that voice the worst of all, even more than the angry one, because it meant that he didn’t care.
“Heather; once more!” the voice raised a little, and the quiet that it left in its wake was painful and crackling with unspoken words and energy. Heather didn’t dare raise her head, glad for her dark colouring as her hair covered her face in a security blanket of hope. Hope that this time he wouldn’t find her; this time there would be no punishment. She waited with baited breath, waited for the doors to swing open and Daddy to haul her out in a fit of rage, but all she heard was the soft padding of heavy feet on the stairs, and a voice that was wavering further and further away. She counted to ten.
“One, two, three...” she whispered to herself, careless now that he had gone, only caring that she didn’t begin to cry. “Six, seven eight.” She stopped, feeling calm, and opened her eyes. The darkness had fallen again, with a click of a lamp, and she realise what had caused the light in the first place- she was sitting on the switch. She cursed herself for such stupidity and pulled the switch out from underneath her skirt, wrestling so it was as far away from her as she dared take it without moving. “Nine, ten.” Now she was calm. She pulled her legs back underneath her; so they were crossed, and she leaned back against the wall with a little sigh. She felt tired.
How long had it been since she had breathed cool air? Her head was spinning with the claustrophobia that was beginning to develop in her mind, and her nose was beginning to grow sore from the amount of times she had wiped it on the sleeve of her sweater. She wanted to cry, felt the prickling of salty tears behind her eyelids, but she knew that she couldn’t permit herself to indulge in her emotions. If she cried he would find her.
It had been two hours; and the summer day was only just beginning to grow old. The golden sunlight outside streamed into the room, but didn’t fall across the closet, not behind the coat rail and the pinafores that had once belonged to Heather's mother. Inside it was pitch dark, and all she could make out were her hands in front of her face, a slightly lighter shade of black than that all of the rest.
Heather, knowing full well that she couldn’t stay in the closet forever, counted to ten again.
“One, two, three,” she whispered again, ticking the numbers off on her fingers. “Please don’t let him find me.” Then she waited. Nothing. “Four, five, six, counting as the clock ticks.” Again, nothing. “Seven, eight, nine, oh please Daddy, Daddy mine.” Silence. “Ten. Ben stop it you’re hurting her!” Heather’s tears began to well on her cheeks, dripping onto her pale skin and dancing around the freckles like ballerinas on ice.
Oh please, Ben! Please! It sounded real enough in her head; she had heard it enough times. The voice was haunting, without a face or a body to remember, but the voice... That voice. It was so soft, so gentle, raised to such a pitch was unnatural. Heather wanted to cover her ears, wanted to sob to herself silently and cry out that it was all right. She was a big girl, she could handle it.
“Stop it,” she said to herself, a little more loudly. “Stop that Ben, stop that Heather.” The voice she spoke in was not her own, deeper than her own squeaking little sound. There wasn’t any comfort in the interpretation from those years ago, no comfort to be found anywhere these days.
After her speech there was silence, and then she came to a conclusion: Daddy was gone, at least for now. And then, as if she had predicted the future, she heard a quiet bang from downstairs- the slamming of a door perhaps? Heather nodded her head to herself, making a silent agreement with the bolder part of her mind that screamed to see the daylight. She would step outside and see if it was safe. She couldn’t hide forever, and he couldn’t count for any longer.
“More beers please,” she mumbled to herself in conclusion. “Shut up and turn on the television.”
Unsteadily she climbed to her feet, staggering a little as her head hit the heavy lining of an old winter coat. She took two deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. And then, reaching her hand out cautiously, she pushed at the door. It moved a little, and she jumped back in fear, hiding behind the thick winter coat on her left, and then, peering around the side to make sure it was safe, she repeated this action.
“Good morning sunshine,” she whispered happily. The door opened a little further and she poked her head out slowly. With her eyes adjusting to the bright light coming in through the window, she gave the room a sweeping glance, cool grey eyes taking in ever surface and every object in the room. The bed had been sat on, and the lamp had moved closer to the edge of the beside table, but other than that everything looked as it should.
Satisfied that everything was fine she stepped from her safe-haven, treading lightly on the carpet in her dirty white socks. They hadn’t been washed in a few days; Daddy had forgot to turn the washer on, and he never checked her clothes. She dressed herself. The skirt she wore was pleated and too big for her, gaping slightly at the waist as if dismayed at the weight she had lost from lack of interest, and was made of a light purple cloth that had once been soft to the touch, and was now faded and threadbare. Heather knew her Daddy wasn’t a bad man, not like the other men she had heard The News talking about. Daddy loved her, and Daddy looked after her; at least he did most of the time. All parents are allowed days off, right? And besides, Heather knew that their relationship was something special: Daddy was sad, and so he was allowed to be upset with her too.
“Go fetch the flashlight,” she said to herself, straightening up her pink sweater, hardly caring that the end was crusted form the wiping of her nose, and she sniffed lightly. The room smelt like beer, and some kind of cologne that Daddy was wearing. That smelt nice.
“I don’t want to play any more Ben,” she told her invisible father, shaking her head. “I’m bored of hiding, I’m scared. Can we do something else please?” When nobody answered she walked out of the room, tiptoeing across the hallway and down the stairs. “Can we play something else Daddy?” She wandered into the living room. Daddy had left some empty cans on the floor, and the television remote was still sat on the top of the big black box from when she had been watching it this morning. A picture flickered on the screen, but there was no sound.
“Oh yes. More beer.”
She wandered around the house for a little longer, trailing her fingers over different surfaces in turn and then tapping her finger lightly on the piano- she gave up on that quickly though, since the sound it made was awful, out of tune, and loud in the silence of the house now that Daddy had left. She half hoped that he would come home while she was still out of her hiding place, and that he would suggest they play another game. She was tired, and she wanted to sleep; the crying that she had done since Mummy had gone was beginning to take its toll on the way she behaved. She couldn’t think straight, feeling no need to speak properly since nobody was listening. She hadn’t seen anybody but Daddy in two months, she thought, and that was a very long time.
“I don’t want to cry no more,” she told herself suddenly, her voice harsh and strangely cheerful as she stood in the wan, yellow sunlight and twirled in circles before the mirror in her Daddy’s bedroom, the room she had come from to start with. Daddy wasn’t home yet, and it was boring. She was getting cold, and she wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t sleep without a story. Daddy had to finish the story he was telling her, about Romeo and Julia, or something like that. She liked Romeo, he sounded nice, like her Daddy when there was no beer. Julia sounded like her Mummy, and she wanted to find out if they got married; she thought they would. Grown ups always got married, it was like the law.
“Heather!” The door slammed and Heather jumped an inch from the floor, her heart leaping. Quick, hide! She scuttled across the room and was about to slide herself under the bed when she heard Daddy’s feet on the stairs. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was as reassuring as it was frightening; at least he had come back.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Daddy taunted, his words not as slurred and his voice not as harsh. No beer? “I’ll find you Little Heather, I’ll find you.” She held her breath and slid back against the bed, between there and the closet, hoping that the shielding of the bed so close to her would be enough. There was no time to hide underneath the bed. Half of her mind hoped that Daddy would find her still, even though she knew she would get told off for letting the game last so long- she’d probably get a slap- but half of her wanted to hide away and not let him find her. It was quiet when he wasn’t there, but at least he couldn’t hurt her. Daddy was sad. Daddy needed help.
“Oh Heather,” he called, lowering his voice to a sing-song. Heather closed her eyes, scrunched them up as tight as they would go, and held herself as still as she possible could. The footsteps grew louder, and louder, louder. And they stopped. She heard breathing- heavy breathing- and she knew he was in the room. She wrapped herself up into a little ball and counted in her head. They counted in unison.
“One, two, three.” Hide-and-go-seek. “Four, five, six, seven.” Heather bit her lip and felt her fingers respond to the steady counting. “Eight... Nine...” This was where Daddy slowed down, and Heather stopped breathing. “Ten.” The bedside lamp fell to the floor with a crash as Daddy crossed the room, and Heather cried out in pure unadulterated terror.
“Hide and Seek!” Daddy yelled, pulling her out from behind the bed, lifting her from the floor by her arm. She felt something twinge, and cried out again.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she shouted. “Daddy you found me! Let me go now!”
“No Heather,” Daddy growled, putting her down on the floor but still holding onto her wrist so tightly she felt her fingers go limp. “You’ve been a very naughty girl.” She opened her eyes, felt her bottom lip tremble, and looked directly into his storm-cloud angry eyes. “Hide and Seek Heather,” Daddy said menacingly. “Hide and Seek, not Lost and Found.” Heather shook her head in terror, not understanding the difference.
“I’m sorry Daddy, I’m sorry.” She began to cry, little tears that rolled onto her cheeks and seemed only to add coal to the fire that was burning in her Daddy’s chest.
“Be quiet!” he howled, holding his head with one hand. “Have you no respect?” You’ve got another hangover Ben; don’t hit Heather like that. He lifted his hand up to her face and brought it down hard across her cheek, marking the pale skin with a growing red welt.
“Sorry, sorry,” Heather murmured, trying to contain her tears. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t let me find you,” growled Daddy, a little calmer but still inexplicably angry. What has she done? What has she done wrong? No more beer Ben, no more Hide and Seek. It’s just a game. A violent game.
“I’m sorry-”
“I counted to one hundred.” He sounded childish, petulant almost and Heather wanted to just curl up and die. Her face was burning with what she felt must have been the force of a thousand suns, and her tooth had cut into her lip. The taste of iron-tinted blood trickled onto her tongue and she grimaced. Daddy raised his hand again.
“I’m sorry!”
“No!” he growled again, her face contorted in anger, fueled by alcohol and little sleep. “I’ll count again,” he let go of Heather’s arm and she dropped to the floor, crawling away from him steadily as he began to count. “One, two, three.” He walked out into the corridor and stood by the door. “Four, five, six, seven.” Heather scuttled away faster, dragging her knees over the carpet in a desperate fashion until she reached the closet. “Eight... Nine...” Daddy took a deep breath and Heather dived into the closet holding back her whimpers of pain and confusion. “Ten.” Daddy tapped the doorframe once, twice, three times, and then stopped. There was silence.
“Hide and Seek.” Heather closed her eyes.
