Untitled-Chapter 2

Finally making our way into the house, we discovered that the kids had already found the ‘ingredients’ for cookie making. In other words, they pretty much just pulled out every single junk food item they could find and put it on the table. I smiled and shook my head.
“We don’t need all of this for cookies.” I explained as I began to put the items back where they belonged, which included ice cream and marshmallows.  Marshall (my brother) curled down his lip and looked like he was about to start crying. I sighed. “If you are good and behave, you may be able to have an ice cream sundae with marshmallows in it.” I compromised. They began to cheer. “Ifyou’re good.” I stressed. They shut up right away, and began to get the real ingredients out. Marshall had made food with me plenty of times, and he had his own little step ladder, so he could get the things we needed down himself.
About an hour later, the cookies were complete. It took a lot longer than expected, not only because I accidently forgot to turn on the oven, but because the kids kept eating the dough. We ended up making about a triple batch, due to how much we ate in between. Immidetly, that could’ve been mine and Roe’s fault; we did eat a lot of it. But we were hungry, and I hadn’t eaten cookies in ages. After we had finished eating most of the biscuits, the littlies began to rub their eyes and yawn. I smiled. I couldn’t help it; they were just so cute. I clapped my hands quite loudly, causing them to temporarily zone out of their sleep state. “Ok, I think it is time for a nap.” I said. Shock came over their faces, and they began to protest. I clapped my hands again to quiet them. “You have a sleep for about an hour, two hours, and not only will I let you have an ice cream sundae, I will also let you play on my games console.” Marshall’s face shone with happiness. I never let him play my video games, so this was a good day for him. “Ok, ok, ok!” He said back to me, nodding. Turning to his friends, he cried, “To bed!!” They took off up the stairs to his room, which was on the second floor of the house. I heard their little feet pounding up the stairs then heard one set stop. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs and looked up to see that my brother had stopped. I tilted my head to the side and gave him a questioning look. “Do we have to put on our pyjamas?” He asked. I laughed, and shook my head. He smiled, and took off up the rest of the stairs. Roe came over to see me, and we could hear my brother celebrating with the others about how they didn’t have to wear pyjamas. I smiled. I loved to see my brother happy. I turned to look at Roe. “I’ll be back in a sec. I’m just going to check on them, and make sure they are asleep.”
As I got to the second floor, I heard them all scurry into their sleeping bags that were all laid out on the floor. I wandered over to Marshall’s door, and slowly pushed it open so it wouldn’t creak. On the floor they laid in a line, with Marshall on the left, Bob (Roe’s little brother) in the middle, and Frank laying on the left. He was the new kid at school, and I was proud of Marshall for becoming friends with him. I slowly closed the door so they wouldn’t be woken up and walked back down the stairs. Meeting Roe on the ground floor, we walked back into the kitchen so I could set the timer (I figured an hour and a half would be enough) and then into the lounge room, so we could watch some TV. I laid down on the floor, and Roe was about to sit down when she said “Do you want that popcorn now?” “Oh yeah, sure. That would be good.” I went to get up, but she held up her hand. “It’s ok.” She said. “I think I can find and operate your microwave without you.” I smiled and she walked back into the kitchen. Flicking on the TV, I was soon filled with horror.

The first channel that was on was the news channel, which my parents watched every morning before work. That wasn’t the horrific part. What it was was the article they were presenting. The caption read ‘Boy attacked-but by what?’, and they had a policeman being interviewed. “He was found in the woods, a fair way away from his house, but still in our district.” He stated. “We are unsure what took him; however we are fairly certain it wasn’t human. He was covered in blood and scratch marks all over his bodies, ones that could only be described as those of some sort of animal, perhaps a wolf or a...” I didn’t his last suggestion, because I suddenly heard Roe coming. I didn’t want to make her nervous about anything, so I quickly punched the remote. The channel changed but I was unsure of what to as Roe appeared in the doorway, holding a bowl of popcorn. I awkwardly manoeuvred my head to look at her. She looked a bit surprised when she saw me however. I looked at her weirdly, as if to say ‘what?’ “Nothing, it’s just that you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She suddenly looked at the TV screen and grinned, nodding towards it. “Although, I can see why.” I looked back towards  the TV to see that I had turned it onto one of those little kid TV shows, the ones that always look like they would mentally scar you for life if you watched them enough. I smiled back at her, trying to hide the fact that I was actually scarred, but not of the TV show. The attack reminded me of the monster, and even though I knew it wasn’t really, it still worried me. ‘Snap out of it Jen,’ I told myself. ‘it’s just a stupid kid’s story.’ As Roe put on a movie, I pushed the idea of the monster as far as I could into my mind. The remains of it still lingered, but for now I wasn’t completely freaking out over this idea.
But only time could tell when the memory was going to be brought back up...