Running Home

It’s not easy to go on the run, but Karen never did what was easy. No, nothing ever came easy to her. She’s been doing the hard things in life since she was a kid and has never stopped. Karen did the difficult tasks that most kids don’t dream of doing until well into their adulthood. Adulting is what people in their twenties called it. To Karen, adulting has been part of her daily activities for over ten years. That’s a hell of a lot of being an adult for someone who’s only twenty-two years old. There was an earsplitting wind in the air this morning. Karen took the wind as a sign that change was coming. 

It’s been ten or eleven or twelve years of cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, taking care of her younger brother. All of it. All that stuff that the other students she grew up with knew nothing about. She would often stop and think to herself that none of it was fair. Why was she holding the world on her shoulders while the other kids just did what kids do? It wasn’t fair but she knew the adult saying went something like: Who said life was fair? 

She’d tell herself to suck it up and keep going. She’d tell herself it could get better someday. Maybe the most recent stint in rehab would finally transform her mother into a new person. Mom could come home renewed and ready to care for the family. Maybe her father would stop his own drinking and his daily verbal and physical outbursts would become a thing of the past. She tried to tell herself it was possible, but she knew it wasn’t probable. Nothing ever changed.

Her father would often promise that things would get better. He would say sometimes people struggle but they can change. He would say he’ll work on himself, and he’ll be there for Karen and her brother. He would promise, but Karen knew it was only a matter of time before he got dunk and made a scene again. He would angrily ask her why she never smiles. As if she had a reason to fucking smile. 

Karen sat on a bench at the bus stop four blocks away from the tiny apartment she and her family lived in. It was a cloudy Friday morning in the middle of autumn, early enough that her dad and brother wouldn’t be awake for several more hours. Her dirty blonde hair was tightly kept in a ponytail, and she wore no makeup. She wore a pair of grey sweatpants with a grey sweatshirt, both of which she purchased with cash at a thrift store. Her sweatshirt had the words “The Angels” printed on it in what looks like it used to be red font but has faded to black over the years. She wasn’t sure if the words were referring to the city of Los Angeles, or the California baseball team. Either way she thought maybe it was some kind of sign telling her she should try to get herself all the way to LA. She still believed in the “signs” the universe sent to people despite having lost her faith in God a long time ago. 

Her duffle bag sat on the bench next to her. It was stuffed to the top with the essential items of running away. At least the amount she could get her hands on before sneaking out the front door. She had clothes, cash and one of her dad’s handguns. He owned several firearms, and he could barely see straight most of the time. He’d never notice it was missing.

Karen had been waitressing off the books for seven years and had saved every dollar of her cash tips from generous customers that she possibly could. Every dollar that wasn’t spent on groceries, bills and clothes was stashed away in a shoebox and shoved far under Karen’s bed. She was saving the money for a rainy day and that day was today. The sky was grey and there were strong gusts of wind in the air, making her time sitting on this bench less than pleasant. Other than the wind, it was almost silent outside. Nobody on the street was making any noise because nobody was awake. Karen loved being up earlier than anyone else. The peace and quiet gave her the illusion of momentary serenity in her life.

She sat on this old, worn-down wooden bench and kept her eyes focused on the street across from her. She could see a small parking lot on the other side of the road but not much else. Behind her, there was a row of trees that resided on the edge of an area of woods that stretched back almost a mile, and behind that is where you’d find neighborhood of residential houses. Mostly one-story houses connected to each other, the residents not having much of a front yard or a backyard in such a low rent area. She couldn’t help but fantasize about the new life she hoped to find. She’d find somewhere to live alone and not have to worry about taking care of anyone. That feeling of serenity she had when she’d enjoy the early morning quietness could become her everyday reality. 

Maybe she’d use some of her money to enroll in a community college and find a way to earn her way towards a steady career. Maybe she could become a cheerleader. She always wanted to be a cheerleader.

She heard the bus approaching. She turned her head over he left shoulder to gaze down the street and saw the bus making its way. The bright headlights of the bus were shining extra bright on such a gloomy morning. Karen had to squint to keep her eyes on the bus coming to save her. The bus driver might as well be her knight in shining armor, the bus being his noble steed. Karen took her duffle bag in her hand and stood up, ready to take the first step to freedom.

A massive gust of wind overtook all of Karen and her surroundings just as the bus driver was putting the bus into park. Karen kept her eyes on the bus, but she felt something brush up against her leg. She thought for a moment it could be a bug crawling on her and she twitched her leg to get the imaginary bug off her, but it wasn’t a bug. It was a crumbled-up piece of paper. The paper must’ve blown over here in the gusts on wind. Maybe it fell out of a garbage can on the corner of the street and the wind carried it to Karen’s feet. She stared at the crumbled paper below her as the bus driver opened the bus doors, inviting Karen to climb aboard. Karen looked up and locked eyes with the bus driver. Neither of them said anything but Karen knew it was time to get on. She bent down to pick up the crumbled-up piece of paper, almost without even realizing she was doing it. She opened the crumbled paper and smoothed it out before reading it. She read the handwritten message and wasn’t sure what she’d be doing next. All she knew was that she wouldn’t be getting on the bus. 

He's going to kill me, Hannah thought to herself. She sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the door of the refrigerator, the tile floor of the kitchen was cold against the bottom of her thighs which were exposed in her pajama shorts. She pressed her fingertips lightly against her cheekbone on the left side of her face, the pain made her twitch. She was sure she’d have a black eye by tomorrow, if she lasted until tomorrow. This was far from the first time this has ever happened, although it usually didn’t happen this early in the morning. It was the usual suspects of argument inducing topics that usually sparked the domestic fireworks. Money, cleanliness, drug and alcohol consumption, life plans. They all had the potential to lead to screaming, cursing and name calling. Hannah became numb to the verbal battles. She could brush them off and wait for Brian to come crawling back to her, crying his usual slew of apologies like he always did. It was the violence that changed everything.

She began to lose hope when things got violent. She often wondered if Brian could push things all the way to the point of murder. The rage in his eyes and his voice made her believe that he was capable of more than just an occasional smack in the face. This seemed to be the day she would find out for sure. 

“Where the fuck is it?” She could hear him scream from their bedroom. “Where is it?” He said again. The usual cycle happened again and again. He would get drunk, spend an abundance of cash on drugs, forget this happened, then wake up and accuse Hannah of stealing his money. She would tell him he gave it to his drug dealer; he would say bullshit. “Tell me where you put it!” He yelled loud enough that she could hear him over the whipping winds outside. She didn’t bother answering his yelling. After accusing her, he had grabbed her by the throat and walked her backwards until her back was pressed against the stove. He said he should turn the stove on and burn her face off. Instead of that, he punched her in the face. She dropped to the floor of the kitchen and hasn’t moved since. 

There weren’t many places for her to run to in their one story, one bedroom house they lived in. The living room was next to the kitchen and the front door was in between the two rooms. Brian was to the right of their living room in their bedroom. She could hear him tearing their bedroom apart. She wondered if someone on the block might hear all the commotion and call the police. She doubted anyone could hear him over the wind. It sounded like a hurricane. Hannah knew she’d have to call the cops herself. She worked up enough strength to pull her phone out of the pocket of her shorts. She was able to dial the number nine before Brian stomped his foot on her hand, crushing her fingers into the ground and causing her to drop the phone in the process. He picked up the phone and smashed it on the kitchen counter. He threw the smashed phone at Hannah, the phone collided with her face, and she fell over crying. He grabbed her by the throat and pulled her face close to his. Their noses practically touching each other. 

“You wanna call the fucking cops? I should kill you.” He said. He went back to the bedroom to continue his search and to break more things. Hannah didn’t know what to do now. She knew she needed help but didn’t know how to find it. What did people do before cell phones existed? Was she supposed to write the police station a letter? Email them? Send them a fax? What does fax even mean? She had no options. She had to think of something fast.

Despite her dizziness, she stood up. She grabbed a piece of paper from the large notepad she kept next to the refrigerator to write out her daily to do lists and reminders. She could write a note for her neighbors to find if the noise woke them up. She could run next door, leave the note on their front porch, then run back and try to calm Brian down. She could run fast and he’d never know she was gone. She clicked on the pen and wrote out her message: He’s going to kill me. Help. 55 Bunker st. She started towards the side door connected to the kitchen, but stopped when she heard his footsteps making his way out of their bedroom. She was out of time. She commanded herself not to panic and to think quickly.

She crumbled the paper up into a ball and threw it out the kitchen window adjacent to the refrigerator. She hoped her throw would carry the paper close enough to the neighbor’s front lawn that they would easily spot it from the front door. Just as she put all her might into the throw, another massive gust of wind arose and carried the airborne paper past their house, into their backyard and into the woods that surrounded the back of their block. The paper was gone. Fuck.

Karen sprinted through the woods like she was running track in the Olympics. She left behind her duffle bag and everything inside except for her dad’s handgun. She knew exactly where Bunker Street was; it was the row of houses that would be directly on the opposite side of the woods. If she was able to run all the way to the other side, it’d be the first block that came into sight. The wind rocked the trees back and forth feverishly. Karen could barely hear anything over the wind. She might be wasting her time. Maybe the crumbled-up plea for help was just some kind of joke. Or maybe it was written a long time ago and only just now blew its way over to the bus stop due to the powerful winds shaking the entire neighborhood. Maybe nobody was presently in trouble and there was nobody to help.

Karen had these thoughts ruminating through her brain as she ran but they didn’t stop her from running. She ran like somebody else’s life depended on it. She could see the opening in the woods where the trees parted ways from each other just enough to allow someone to slip through. She could see the backs of the houses that resided just at the edge of the woods. She made it. She stepped through the opening in the trees, a thin branch hit her in the face in the process.

Karen was standing in the backyard of a small house. The backyard was barely twenty feet wide, and the house looked so old and beat up she wondered how it was still standing. She needed to figure out which house number this was. She stepped towards a window on the backside of the house and peered through to look inside. She saw two people, a man and a woman. They were lying on the floor of their tiny kitchen. She thought for a second that they might’ve been having intercourse, but looking closer, she could see the man was on top of the woman with his hands around her neck. He was choking her. 

Karen walked her way around to the side of the house where she would be closer to the kitchen. She spotted the side door of the house and didn’t hesitate before kicking it open. She stepped into the kitchen and the man turned his head around to lock eyes with her. “Who the fuck is that?” He said. He stopped choking the girl and he stood up to face Karen. He took one step towards her as she pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit him in the shoulder, and he hit the ground. He groaned and cursed some more. He was rolling around in his own blood while Karen stepped towards the girl and put her hand out to help her up. The girl was groggy and couldn’t stop coughing. She could barely see but she was able to make out the words, “The Angels” on a shirt in front of her. Karen pulled the girl to her feet.

Karen started towards the man with the gun held out in front of her. She could picture firing another bullet into his head and watching his blood splatter all over the place. Much like the first shot she took, nobody would hear it because of the wind. She could disappear and no one would ever know she was here. She could kill him, then get back over to the bus stop and freeze her ass off while waiting for the next bus. She thought about it and held the barrel of the gun against his forehead.

She looked into his eyes and saw he was crying. She waited a beat, thinking deeper about her options. She couldn’t help but think that killing him might feel good. That thought scared her half to death. She held on tight to the handle of the gun, focused in again on the man’s tears, and then she spoke. 

“Never do this again.” She said. She stepped back and took her phone out of her pocket. She dialed 911 and told them to get over here fast. She told the girl to wait in the bedroom and lock the door. Karen ran. 

Karen sat at the dinner table next to her brother. Dad was setting the table for dinner while Karen and her brother just sat next to each other and didn’t say anything. Dinner was nothing fancy, just microwavable macaroni and cheese, but it was something. Karen’s father mentioned that maybe the three of them would go give mom a visit soon, apparently it would mean a lot to her. Her dad sat down once the three of them had hot bowls of food in front of them. She wouldn’t describe this moment as perfect, or even as good, but it was what she had. She watched her brother take his first bite of food. She smiled.