Abandoned House

When I was little, I went to the neighborhood elementary school that was 4 blocks down the road. Up until the 2nd grade, my mom would drive me to school on her way to work. When 3rd grade began, my parents felt that I was old enough to walk to school on my own.

Everyday on my way to and from school, I passed by this old abandoned house. It was a 2 story wooden house with a basement. The white paint was peeling off the walls, revealing the stained dark brown wood underneath. The front porch was covered in dust. The lawn was covered with dead grass and patches of dirt. Curtains covered every window in the house, except for one on the 2nd floor which had a naked, faceless mannequin inside.

It was almost the end of the school year. All of the snow from last summer melted and spring has started. When walking home from school, I noticed that the front door of the house was slightly opened. But, there were no signs that anyone had gone in or out of the house. I had this strange impulse that said that I have to go inside and see what was inside.

The stairs of the front porch creaked loudly when I stepped on them. I pushed the door open and stepped in. The house was completely void of life. All the furniture was covered with white blankets. A blanket of dust covered the floor. The first room looked like what was the living room. 3 doors connected the living room to other rooms, and a stairwell in the back of the room lead to the 2nd floor. On the left, there was the kitchen and dining room. On the right, there was what looked like a sewing room. The door in the back of the room was closed.

I went up the stairs to the 2nd floor. Each step made the stairs creak. At the top of the stairs, there was a long hallway which was connected to four bedrooms and a bathroom. At the end of the hallway was the room where the mannequin looked out of the window.

In the bathroom, there was faint dripping of water. I walked into the bathroom. In it, there was an old bathtub, a toilet, and a sink with a mirror above it. The mirror faced out the door. It was yellow and had a large crack in it. When I looked into it, I noticed that there was some ink on my face that got there during school. While trying to get the pen off my face, I saw something move behind me in the corner of my eye.

I immediately turned around. There was nothing behind me. The house looked slightly darker. I peaked my head out of the door and looked to my right. Nothing. I turned and looked to the left. In the room where the mannequin is, the curtains were now closed. The mannequin was standing in the middle of the room, facing into the hallway. I was scared.

I started walked towards the stairs, then I noticed something in the bedrooms. In the bed, there was a human-shaped lump under the blankets. Hesitantly, I went into one of the rooms. I removed the blanket from the bed. Underneath was another mannequin. I was startled and jumped back. I walked back into the hallway, and the mannequin was now standing at the end of the hallway in front of the door frame.

I ran down the stairs and to the door. The door was closed. It was locked, and I couldn't leave anymore. I panicked and looked around. In the sewing room, I noticed something around the corner of the door frame. It was an arm and a leg. There was a mannequin standing there. I started to pound on the front door and crying for help. But then I realized, I saw that one of the basement windows were opened. I realized that the door at the back of the room must lead to the basement. I ran to it, twisted the door knob, and the door opened, revealing a set of stairs. Before going down, I noticed on the top of the stairs in the corner of my eye. I turned to see what it was. There were 3 mannequins standing at the top of the stairs.

I ran down the stairs as quickly as I could. In the basement, there were dozens of boxes around the room. In the middle, there was a mannequin. But it wasn't like the other ones. It was lying on the ground, with its body twisted into shapes impossible for humans. In the back of the room, there was an opened window. I ran around the mannequin, climbed on top of the boxes, and tried to climb out of the window. As I was about half-way out, I felt something grab my leg. I kicked and kicked as hard as I could and got free. I got out of the house and ran home as quickly as I could.

I never passed by that house again.

Waiting in ER

Today is Tuesday, March 11th, 2003. I received a call from the hospital about an hour ago to come quickly. I rushed to pick up my 2 sons from school and drove to the hospital. Now, I am waiting in the emergency room. It all started about a year and a half ago.

It was Thursday on September the 18th. My wife worked as a librarian at the library 4 blocks down the street from our house. I worked about half a mile away from our house at the school, teaching college students. My kids were only 11 and 14 years old. At 5:00 P.M. that day, my wife called me to pick her up, she said that she had excruciating pain in her thigh. She usually walked to and from work. For the past month or so, she has been feeling a weird pain in the side of her leg. After a week, the pain increased, and she started taking painkillers. Now, pain killers weren't enough to stop the pain.

The next day, she took the day off work and I took her to the hospital to have her checked out. After 2 hours of waiting in the waiting room and being examined for 2 hours, the doctors came to us and told us that she had a tumor in her leg. Thankfully, the tumor was near the outside of the leg, so it could be easily removed.

A week later, on September the 27th, we went back to the hospital for her surgery. The kids came along to cheer her up. We waited a little over an hour for her surgery to be completed. The doctors told us that it was successful and there was no more tumor in her leg. She could go back to work in a week.

Everything was fine for the next 6 months. Then, my wife started feeling pain again. But this time, it was farther up her body, around her hips. On June 6th, we went back to the hospital. The doctors discovered that the tumor has spread to her pelvic bone. Our only option was to amputate her leg and part of her pelvic bone to remove the tumor. And so we did. On December 11th, my wife went back into the surgery room for 4 hours. When she came back out, she was in a wheelchair.

Everything now seemed fine. She was no longer feeling any pain. Getting around in a wheelchair was difficult for her at first, but she was getting used to it. She went back to work after about a month. But after 8 months, it happened again. She was feeling pain again, but this time it was in her chest.

And again, we went back to the hospital. And again, the doctors examined her. And again, they found a tumor inside of her. The tumor had worked its way into her lungs. We were devastated. We finally thought that it was over.

But it wasn't.

On February 23rd, she started chemo therapy. After 3 sessions, she could no longer take the pain of it. She would rather slowly die of the cancer than to go through such horrific pain. Her last chemo session was on the last day of February. She stayed home, living with the tumor inside of her. Today it is March 11th, 2003. And here I am, waiting in the hospital once again. After about waiting for what felt like a life time, the doctor came out to talk to me.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but your wife has passed away."

Short Story 1

A man eats dinner with his wife. They discuss how he clearly deserves a promotion, but his boss would never allow it. They finish their dinner and bring their plates into the kitchen.

“As long as I have you and a steady job, I’m happy”, the man said, kissing his wife on the forehead. They head to bed. It is 11 at night, with the clear moon shining through the window. The man slowly drifts to sleep.

The man’s name is Jack Woods. He was born in 1962 and raised on his family’s farm. He went to the nearby high school. After high school, he did not have the money to go to college. He became an accountant, earning an average salary. He met his wife at the age of 20, and quickly fell in love and married a year later. They have been married for 9 years now. He has been working at the same place for the same place for the past 11 years and only makes a little more than he did when he started.

The man wakes up, but he is no longer at home in his bed. He sits up on the mat, staring at the metal bars in front of him. It was just a dream. His wife is no longer with him. He found her laying outside their front door, stabbed to death. His boss was also murdered, just a few days afterwards. He was found guilty of the murders, although he was truly innocent. He received a life sentence for the murder of his wife and boss. The gates buzz and the bars slide open. He steps out of his cell and lines up with the other prisoners. They walk to the showers. A cold gush of water hits his face, as it does everyday for the past 4 months.

Everyday, he goes through the same routine. At 6:00, all the inmates wake up and hit the showers. After showering, they go back to their cells to fix their bed and eat breakfast. At 7:00, he has leisure time in the prison yard. At 11:00, everyone eats lunch. At 11:30, he works in the laundry department, folding and packing up clothes and bed sheets. At 5:30, everyone eats dinner. After dinner, everyone goes back to their cells, then lights out at 9:00.  He repeats this process everyday, with little variation.

He is neither the biggest nor the toughest inmate around. In his first month in prison, he was often harassed by the others. He was beat up, had his food stolen, and came close to being raped once, if it wasn't for the nearby guards. Now, he learned to avoid any type of interaction with others, just trying to get through the day.

Before he sleeps, he mourns for his wife. He can not cry anymore, after what happened when the inmate in the next cell heard him.

Everyday since a month ago, he tries to smuggle out shirts and bed sheets and whatever else he could get his hands on and hide it in his mat. He has collected a sizeable amount, enough to feel a small lump in the bed if laid on but not enough to notice.

One night, he lies completely awake in his bed at night. He does not mourn for his wife. Once it seems like everyone has gone to sleep, he gets up and pulls the clothing and bed sheets out of his mat. He rips them up, making long strips of cloth. Using the cloth, he makes a loose rope. He ties the rope, making something that resembles a noose. He ties it to the pull up bar in his cell and places a chair underneath it. Standing on the chair, he puts his head through the loop. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He kicks over the chair he’s standing on.

A Principle to Keep

     There are many important principles in this world, some more important than others. In my opinion, the most important principle to keep at all times is the unnecessary taking of another person's life. Killing someone in self-defense or in the defense of someone else is one thing, but bloodshed solely your own benefit and nothing else is something that should never be done. Not only do you take another person's life by killing them, you are taking away part of your own humanity. A killer becomes something less than human, maybe even less than the filthy rats that crawl around in the sewers eating waste, because unlike rats, humans have the intelligence to judge whether or not something is right or wrong.
     In normal society, murder is usually rare, due to the punishment that comes along with it. If one does commit murder, it results in the murderer being secluded from society for the rest of their life, or even death. In a post-apocalyptic society, such as the one in The Road, murder seems to happen far more often because of the lift of the governing body and the need to survive, and things far worse than murder such as cannibalism or keeping the person alive to use as a sex slave. The question is whether or not murder is more justified because of these extreme situations where murder is sometimes needed for survival. I do not think that murder is justified at all in this situation, or any situation at all.