Through the Back Door

Flash fiction

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

This is a response to S.E. Reid, of Talebones, flash fiction contest. The prompt, to write a story in any genre, from the perspective of a character who is usually in the background. This, is Through the Back Door.

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The brass knob turned slowly, catching the light of the living room beyond, then the door pushed open a crack. My breath was fast, my romance novel held chest tight. I pushed back into the wall, trying to hide myself behind the black pipe of the wood burning stove.

It opened wider, a sliver of dark. I told her nothing good comes through the back door, but she had unlocked it anyway, sneered and pushed a finger to her mouth like a bad child shushing a younger sibling.

A man’s face peeked through, looked around, not seeing me, then his body in the kitchen, and the door closed behind him. I held my breath. Why did I have to leave it unlocked? Because, she is my boss. The payer of my check. And I am a live-in. A nanny, a cook, a maid, a modern day indentured servant, made so by my six figure student debt and inability to—as my mother would say it—get a real job.

He moved to the stairs, began the slow tip-toeing ascent, just as my cheeks were burning red from lack of oxygen. I let it out slow as I could, and he stopped, listening. I couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of blood in my ears. Whir, whir, whir.

Shut up—I told my heart, and tried to breathe slowly, silently.

The door was shut, but it was right there. I could leave, run out into the night. Shout to a neighbor for some help. Never mind that the yard, if you could call it that, was enormous, the neighbors a ten minute jog at my best. But the children, Lyric and Henry, were upstairs, the first door to the left before the master.

They were already unhappy children at ages four and five, born to parents with enough money to never spend time with them. After all, they were busy running to functions and work events, vacations and networking meals. Important things. Before me, it was a young girl Cynthia, who they mistakenly called mama and then refused to stop, so she was let go.

Sarah Beth told me that in my interview, when she asked if I would have appropriate boundaries with the family. Would I make sure never to entangle myself, to mistake their family for my own? Sure, no problem. I never wanted this type of family anyway. My inability to connect with children made me the perfect woman for the job. I made meals and supervised and cleaned, but I never hugged or kissed or loved them.

He was on the first landing now, before the turn that would take him to the hall where they slept. Would he nab them? Kidnap them and ask for a ransom? The children would scream, wake everyone up. What would he do then?

I stood, carefully, trying my best to keep the chair from moving against the wall, alerting him to my presence. Where was my phone? In the room. In my bedroom, through the door in the living room, down to the basement where I slept. Too far.

My book was still in my hand, my mind rushing through possibilities. I scanned the counter, the knives stored, black handles jutting next to the stove. A place like this, a McMansion on two acres, should really have some armed defense, but Sarah Beth had insisted. No guns. Not with the children. And Henry Sr. had relented. He always did exactly what she wanted, not because he loved her, but because he couldn’t be bothered to interact, especially not when it came to the children.

I stepped forward, moving as quietly as I could towards the knives.

A cry, small and pathetic, cut the silence. He was in there, with them. I stood frozen, listening. There was nothing. Then, the sound of pounding feet in the hallway, and Henry Sr.’s voice in the darkness.

“Hey!” he shouted, and there was a banging sound that shook the house.

A body, against a wall?

I moved, shaken from the fear trance, landing at the counter in two long strides, a butcher knife gripped in my right hand, the novel in my left. My legs were shaking, electric with possibility. Was I holding it right?

Sarah Beth had tried to teach me to use the thing. I was never a good cook, and she, for all her un-familial tendencies, was fantastic, had spent a stint at a French cooking school after college. She knew how to butcher whole cows, each point where the soft tissue connected to bone. I tried to emulate her motions, those thin arms somehow piercing just right to cut the meat away.

Yes, this was good. I would have leverage.

And now what? Wait, while the intruder murdered the entire family?

Get the children.

I breathed deep, wincing with each yell and bang I heard upstairs, then stepped slowly around the corner and peeked. The door to the children’s bedroom was open, the glowing stars on the wall just visible. I took a shaky step forward then stopped. Silence.

Calm, slow footsteps moved through the hall, growing louder as they approached the staircase. I shuffled backwards to the stove, and ducked behind the island, just as Sarah Beth appeared. She was dressed, a suitcase in her hand, her hair done just so like it was before lady’s lunches on Wednesdays.

“Looks like she went to sleep,” she said, turning around as she spoke.

The man, the intruder, appeared next to her and I moved back further back into darkness. The door clicked open. Sarah Beth motioned with her finger to her lips, shushing him as they moved out into the night, and shut the door behind them.

I sat there, breathing hard and sweating. Little Henry’s hand on my shoulder made me jump.

“Daddy isn’t moving.”

I stood to hug him and stroked his hair, the knife hidden behind my back. He wore an unhappy expression, the one for each time his mother left without saying goodbye. I needed my phone, to make a call before they got far, but first I locked the back door. Nothing good comes through there.