flipflop_diva

They had been at this for three hundred hours now. Jenny knew this because every hour the alarm went off, and every time the alarm went off, another scratch mark was added to the blackboard.

The blackboard was almost full now, just a sea of white. The scratch marks from the last few times the alarm went off were more dots than lines.

The footsteps that were a constant behind her were getting louder, a signal to Jenny that the woman was approaching. Quickly, she turned her eyes back to the big window in front of her. She couldn’t see a single thing through it, just blackness upon blackness upon blackness, but she knew if she was caught looking anywhere else, the woman would get angry.

Two white scratch marks ago, Annabeth, Jenny’s little sister who had been kneeling next to her since this started, slumped over in sleep. The woman threw a vase at their heads. It had crashed into a pane of the window, leaving a crack in the window and shattered ceramic all over them. Annabeth had cried in terror, but they had both turned back to the window, leaving Jenny to mutter once the footsteps had moved across the room: “Don’t worry, Annabeth. I’ll get us out of here.”

Now, Jenny could feel the woman’s eyes through the back of her head. She refused to call the person who paced back and forth, wearing only a flimsy white nightgown and dirty slippers, her mother. The mother she knew would never have done this to them.

•••

They had been at this for three hundred and one hours now. Jenny’s whole body was stiff and aching. Muscles and joints she had never paid notice to before screamed out in pain, but she kept kneeling where she had been told, kept her head forward, her eyes focused out the dark window.

Time was moving more slowly than Jenny thought possible. Under her breath, and when the footsteps grew distant, she would sing lullabies to her sister, the ones their mother used to sing to them as children. When the footsteps were too close, Jenny would count them. It took the woman exactly two hundred and thirty-seven steps to circle the large room they had been stationed in and the kitchen. Every step was small, slow and precise. The few times Jenny had dared to turn around, she watched as the woman looked right, left, up and down with each perfect placement of her foot. Most hours the woman was able to finish two complete laps.

But it was never enough time to plan their escape. Jenny had tried twice already, waiting until the woman was across the room, then leaping to her feet. But before she had made it to the door, only five feet away, the woman was there, gripping her wrist in a bone-crushing hold, eyes wild, hair practically floating above her head.

“Constant vigilance!” the woman would scream. “Constant vigilance!”

Jenny thought she might have been able to shake the woman off, if she had punched her in the right spot, as she had learned in the self-defense classes her mother had forced her to take, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get her sister out, too, and she couldn’t leave Annabeth.

So both times she returned to her window, ready to wait until the moment was right.

•••

They had been at this for three hundred and two hours now. Jenny could see Annabeth’s head and shoulders drooping out of the corner of her eyes. They had barely slept the whole time.

When the sun was highest in the sky, the woman would let them leave their post, one at a time, and sleep for two hours in the tiny bedroom off the kitchen. They got to do this two times each a day.

They also got to leave their post for two-minute bathroom breaks and to scarf down what the woman called dinner but was really cold soup from a can she tossed to them.

The woman herself never ate, never slept, never had to use the bathroom. But Jenny knew, if she waited long enough, that at some point the woman would have to do one of those things, and then that would be their chance.

•••

They had been at this for three hundred and three hours now. It was more than enough time to go over the past, minute by minute by minute. It was even more time to regret every action that had never been taken.

Jenny knew she should have seen this coming. The mother she had known had been sweet, caring, compassionate. She had loved her children and spent her days making sure they were taken care of.

It was only when that car had stalled outside of their house, just one year ago, that things had changed. Their mother had gone out to help the stranded passenger, and when she came back inside, hours later, she was terrified.

“They’re coming to get us!” she had cried. “It won’t be long now!”

Jenny had watched that day as her mother had raced to the blackboard that was now covered in white scratch marks and had written across it a date and time.

“Mother?” Jenny had asked back then. “What’s coming?”

But her mother had not answered. “We must be prepared!” she had cried instead. “Constant vigilance, girls! Constant vigilance!”

The date and time her mother had wrote across the blackboard had been erased by the woman she had changed into — the one who didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, didn’t need to use a bathroom. The one who didn’t seem to know she had daughters, only guards on duty. The one who forced them to keep watch for something that only she knew was coming.

But Jenny didn’t need the date and the time written up there anymore. If her calculations were right, and she knew they were, they were only two hours away from the woman’s personal doomsday.

•••

They had been at this for three hundred and four hours now. The woman had grown more agitated over the past hour, as her self-imposed deadline drew near.

Annabeth kept turning her head to stare at Jenny in fear, and Jenny kept reaching over to pat her sister softly on the hand.

The footsteps were moving away from them, but in ten steps, the woman would turn around and start back this way.

Jenny heard a click that she hadn’t heard in three hundred and four hours, and she turned her head. The woman had opened the door to the basement. She was heading down.

Jenny didn’t wait. She grabbed her sister’s hand, yanked her to her feet. She had the door unlocked and they were running down the driveway within seconds.

Jenny tried to listen over the sound of her sister’s sobs beside her, but she didn’t hear the woman. They still had a chance.

•••

They were in the middle of the road, still racing toward the lights in the distance. If Jenny and Annabeth had still been in their position by the window, they would have known it was now three hundred and five hours since their vigil began.

There was nothing around them. But a hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed Jenny by the shoulders.

She didn’t have time to scream. She didn’t have time to check on her sister. All she had time for, as she saw the white face gleaming in the darkness, as she saw the fangs in the instant before they bit down on her neck, was one single thought.

Her mother had warned them, and they hadn’t listened.







fiction.
I hope.




Thank you for reading! This was written for Week 17 of the therealljidol. We each had to write five entries this week. If you would like to read the entries from the other contestants, you can find them here!