Did You Hear That?

Jonathan Miciano

Creative Writing Submission

    Charlie was not used to staying home alone. In fact, this was the first night his parents agreed to let him stay at home by himself while they went out to dinner with their old family friends. Charlie thought it would be great having a night all to himself, until he remembered: he was afraid of the dark. Not only that, but Charlie was afraid of his own shadow, which made no sense why he was home alone to begin with.

     Needless to say, Charlie experienced a rather hellish night.

     It all started at around the time Charlie’s parents left the house. It was already dark outside, so Charlie decided to turn on every single light in the house. He made his way downstairs to the kitchen to find something to eat. Normally, he would never go downstairs at night, but Charlie was in desperate need of food.

     Just then, Charlie heard a creaking noise coming from upstairs. Still a little dizzy from the lack of food in his system, Charlie stopped in his tracks and looked around for a second. “Did you hear that?” he asked. He had forgotten that no one else was home, so no one was there to answer him. He figured that houses usually make little noises, such as creaks, at night and that he would not let anything scare him while he was home alone.

     Charlie made his way upstairs and into the bathroom. When he closed the door behind him, he heard another noise coming from outside. “Did you hear that?” he asked again. He was still not used to being home alone, so he forgot that there was no one there to answer him. He stuck his head outside of the bathroom and saw a branch from outside repeatedly tapping on the window. Charlie decided he would not be scared of a little wind and a tree branch.

    Charlie then made his way to his bedroom. He decided that he no longer needed all these lights since he thought he was no longer afraid to be home alone. Just when he turned off the last light outside of his bedroom, he heard another noise. He turned to the window to see if that was the source of the noise, but the wind had stopped. He turned on all the lights again and looked around the hallway. “Did you hear that?” he asked once more. But again, there was no one there to answer him.

     Charlie finally made it inside his bedroom when he heard the final noise of the night. He was getting tired of all of this at this point, so he marched right out of his room in the complete dark. He stood there for a while and examined his hallway. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

     “I did,” said a voice coming from behind him.