Apathy
A knock at the door startled the family.
They were playing with firetrucks, a toy dalmatian and seeing which of the little people could climb up the truck’s ladder to douse a conflagration.
Candy leapt up and peeked out the window. The front porch was empty. She looked to her husband, Geoff, who shrugged and took a sip of coffee. Patterson asked what the sound was.
“Nothing,” Candy said and sat back down, rolling a firetruck towards him.
Geoff stopped the truck and pushed it back towards her. Patterson began playing with a Paw Patrol truck driven by Chase.
“Hello!” a man’s voice said.
They saw the outline of a face peering into the window. Geoff sprang towards the door. When he opened it, there was no one, only the cacophony of birdsongs from the suburban forest.
“That’s weird,” he said, catching Candy’s eyes.
“Maybe someone’s playing a prank.”
“Yeah, must be. Or it’s someone selling something. You know, one of those fake electricity providers.”
“Why would they just leave?”
“Who’s leaving?” asked Patterson.
“No one. We’re just trying to figure something out,” said Candy.
“What are you trying to figure out? Who’s knocking?”
“We don’t know.”
“Oh…OK,” Patterson said as he tried to pull Rocky out of the Paw Mobile.
Geoff switched his seat so he could look out the front window to see if he could spot anyone.
Candy went downstairs to make sure the basement door was locked. There, she heard a noise coming from the storeroom at the end of the dark hallway. She grabbed an iron from a drawer and proceeded on tiptoes.
She had to navigate around the toys that were scattered on a rug in a widened play area near the storeroom.
Just as she put her hand to the knob of the storage room, the door creaked open.
She took one step inside and flicked the light switch on, but the room remained dark. Suddenly, she heard knocks coming from several locations in the room. Amidst the knocking, there was a loud voice, whispering voice.
Candy darted out of the room to get a flashlight and shined it where the voice sounded. Underneath a stack of boxes, there was a hood with what seemed to be a shrouded face inside.
“Come here,” it said. “Come closer.”
The knocking grew louder. Candy stepped forward and said, “Why should I?”
“I need someone to take off these boxes. I’m stuck!”
She directed the flashlight under the hood.
Instead of a face, there was a cascade of images that altered every few seconds: Distended stomachs of children who lay on stretchers with little flesh remaining on their bodies. Soldiers marching with frenzied, widened eyes, staring ahead towards their leader. A doctor weeping from behind bars. A row of police officers gunning down protesters. Children buried under bombed out buildings. Journalists fallen from bullets to their heads. Deluges covering acres of farmland. Overcrowded hospitals. Fires spreading from forests and engulfing homes. Militants ransacking food aid trucks. Windstorms uprooting trees. Flooded sewerage where roads once existed. Screaming mothers, screeching fathers standing over massacred children.
“Get away from me!” Candy said, as she turned and dropped the flashlight.
She started to walk away but pivoted and went back to the storage room where she placed several boxes on top of the hood.
Before returning upstairs, she took a deep breath and glanced at herself in the mirror. She caught her own gaze and wiped sweat from her brow.
Patterson and Geoff turned towards her as she came back to the playroom.
“It was just a leak,” she said, pursing her lips and nodding. “I was able to fix it. And I found out who was looking in the window: some teens! I scared them away; we’re good now.”
“They left?” Geoff asked.
“Yeah, they’re gone now. No need to worry.”
As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. His writing can be found in Pif Magazine, New Verse News, Counterpunch, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) and The Opiate. He is the author of the poetry books Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, and the short fiction collection That Night and Other Stories.
