Lyneth

                Lyneth closed the door to the classic beast of a car, ’69 Ruby Red Ford Mustang, and leaned his arm over the roof, staring at the house he had spent the last few years of his childhood, pondering, thinking of a life left behind. He heaved a heavy sigh realizing the dump he had grown up in.

          The white picket fence that had lined the sidewalk so many years ago had rotted and chipped away. Entire sections were missing and sprawled across the yard of ill kept grass and trash. It was too dark to see inside the dusted over windows, but Lyneth knew his parents were already asleep.

         They always went to bed around 11:00, after tucking in his baby brother, then turning to Lyneth to tell him what a pathetic excuse of a son he was. They were poor, very poor, and this house was a sum of their efforts as a family. Lyneth hated family ties, yet here he was, 12 years later, coming back to either apologize or state the fact that he never wanted to see them again. While he lived in this old decrepit house, he had nightmares.

   

                The same nightmare, actually, every night. The dream was through his own eyes, laying in bed in the middle of the night. He wakes up to the sound of the front door shutting loudly, as if someone didn’t know of the door’s unbalanced hinges.

         The floor boards begin to creak and bend from footsteps through the hallway. His room was at the end of the hall, right beside a stairway that lead to his parents room and his little brother’s room right beside it. His was the only room downstairs.

         Practically wetting the bed already, he arches and moves his head to see if he could get a clear view of the intruder in the hallway. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His hair had turned from a dark brown like his father’s hair, to a blonde, like his mother’s. He even looked a bit older than he really was every time he had the dream. This didn’t frighten him. He knew that it was a dream because of this.

         As he studies himself in his closet mirror, he notices movement out of the corner of his eye. It’s from his doorway to the hall. This intruder had been seemingly touring his house, scanning for valuables to hawk at a pawnshop or looking for the inhabitants of  the house to… murder.

         Either way, Lyneth began quietly sobbing as a figure appeared in his doorway. A man was standing in the entrance of his room, hair shaggy and a mess. The sleeves on his white shirt were very long and laid in bundles on the floor beside him. His feet were bare and muddy, mucking his pant legs. His face was a combination of terror, confusion, and surprise. A bundle of metal clutched in his left hand was shining from moonlight through his window. It dropped to the floor making the sound of several pieces of  steel clanking together.

         Lyneth didn’t move. He was frozen in terror and shock, afraid to even flinch. The tears rolled silently down the child’s face, but the man did nothing. He stared with his expression of awe. Just as quickly as he showed in the doorway, he walked away. The creaks could be heard going upstairs at that moment. The intruder had left his room for his parents room.

         That’s when the nightmare truly started. His mother screamed, and his father yelled his name. The man was screaming something he couldn’t remember, and his father began yelling. Lyneth, pushing every bit of courage he had out of him, threw off his covers and ran around the corner upstairs. He was always too late. The blood of his mother soaked the sheets, her throat had been ripped out. When he arrives in the room, the killer always has his father against the wall, pressing thumbs into his eye sockets. There was a puddle of blood under his father before he even fell.

         The murderer turned to see Lyneth standing in the doorway. It was too dark to make out his face, but regardless, the maniac screamed either in fear or confusion, charging at Lyneth. This is the point where he always seems to forget or wake up. There was once he had the dream in its entirety, but it wasn’t memorable at the time.



         His father hits him repeatidly to shut up his screaming. “Stop screaming in the middle of the night, you little shit! There’s nothing wrong with you!” his father yelled, sometimes adding his own combination of profanity.

         He saw child therapists and psychologists, neither did anything to make the nightmare stop. He lived with it for an entire two years, sleeping only when fatigued to the point of passing out. At one point, he was even taken to a psychiatric clinic where he was treated for a while. The first night there, was the first night he had no dreams.

         

         Lyneth walked around the muscle car and stepped up on the sidewalk, looking over the yard he once played in. As he made his way up the walkway to the front steps, he noticed a piece of tin was hanging off the roof.

         He was instantly reminded of a childhood memory of himself sitting on the roof. He had a goal of being a secret agent. He dreamed of the gadgets and the death defying maneuvers. He taught his little brother to tie knots very well as a child, and eventually, he made his brother tie his arms behind his back, bound each arm at the wrists.

         Lyneth had planned to escape this bound situation while jumping off the roof and landing safely on the ground. His plan had worked to an extent. A stray nail stood half out of the tin, and Lyneth saw this as an opportunity. He slid down to the nail from the top of his roof, catching the nail by his bonds. He jumped doing a front flip from the roof, instantly tearing the bonds at an angle for him to slip his arms out. Unfortunately, the nail was pulled out, forcing the tin to slide with him.

         He still has the nasty scar on his back from the incident. He smiled a bit. He found it unfortunate and silly that he actually found a use for that stupidity around 12 years later, on that very night. Lyneth was tired from a night of mischief and simply wanted to sleep. He walked up the steps looking over the porch, not noticing much else change. A vacant box sat carelessly on porch. It was a package that once held a security camera for his father's business.

                Lyneth had spent an entire year working for his father, learning how how to install and deactivate security cameras and home systems. He worked in very large buildings, setting up cameras and monitoring stations, and even for other small business'. He could do unthinkable things due to his father's uncareing guidance, an unfortunate ignorance that saw his son as an efficient worker, but not a short of a son. If it weren't for his father's habits of drinking and gambling, he might have been well off; the entire family would've. Either way, Lyneth never thought the knowledge gained from it would have any more use in his life.

                He smiled to himself again, admiring his own mischeif from the night's shenanigans.He opened the door as he usually did and stepped inside. The door pulled to a loud close behind him, slamming shut, ringing through out the small house.



         Lyneth stopped in his tracks. Pictures were hung on the walls of the hallway, happy family posed pictures. There were pictures of his father holding his mother, his hand on Junior’s head, ruffling his handsome blonde hair. There were portraits of Junior in his elementary school graduation. His crayon drawings hanged even higher on the wall, some even had Lyneth in them. None of the portraits did.

                As he stepped slowly, stumbling over dragging pieces of clothing, he looked at every picture and piece of artwork there was. Eventually, he found himself at his bedroom door. Someone was in his bed, obviously awake and frightened.

         Lyneth felt something far more powerful than his mind could comprehend fall upon him. His stomach twisted and turned, and his eyes swelled. His fists clenched tighter than he ever was able, and a rage had built inside of him that he didn’t quite understand until at it’s peak.

         He dropped the ring of keys in his grip in disbelief, letting a blink of moonlight illuminate the walls. His brother's room was no longer upstairs. He remembered what the maniac had screamed while killing his parents. “Stop screaming in the middle of the night, you piece of shit! Quit screaming, you fat piece of shit!”

         He remembered the killer tackling him down the stair case rolling into a wall, killing him. He remembered he wasn't himself. He had seen the fate of his family by a twisted dream, and he was his own killer. He was the murderer of his loved ones and could do nothing to stop it. Lyneth fullfilled his fate without a second thought. He remembered screaming.

         “Why, Lyneth, why?!”



         A man in a scrubs outfit walks quickly down a darkened hallway, sweating and stressed from the night's labor. He makes a left turn, looks at his watch, and stops at the closest nurse station. “Miles, did I leave my keys on the counter here? I can't seem to find ‘em anywhere?” The nurse looked left to right, scanning the counter for any keys. “I haven’t seen ‘em. Which keys are you looking for: car keys...or room keys?” The nurse said with a concerned voice.

         “With a sweet muscle car like your’s, I’d be careful. You never know what the people in here are capable of.” the nurse said jokingly, small grin suddenly appearing.A monitor flickered at the edge of his counter, seemingly a skipping video loop of a resting patient who slept with a smile strewn across his face.



End



Word Count- 1704