Uncle Nick's Visit.

On a straight, wide highway a red Ford F-150 was cruising along going 10 past the speed limit. There was a man, about thirty five years old, with a long beard, and stark blue eyes. He was driving, with both hands on the wheel, gripping it a little too tightly. Next to him, was a little girl, she was about to turn eleven years old. He had kidnapped her. And he was going to kill her.

The night before, there was an argument at the little girls house, her uncle was visiting, but her mom didn't like that he was visiting. Her mom was letting her father know this. Her mom was yelling but somehow thinking that upstairs where he was supposed to be sleeping, Uncle couldn't hear. She knew that her uncle could hear, because he was staying in her room, and she was sleeping on the couch in the basement while he was visiting. She could always hear Mom yelling when she was in her room. She assumed that Uncle was going to be upset with Mom because of what she was saying about him.

Then they started to whisper, and she couldn't hear. That's when she knew that they were talking about her. They always whispered when they talked about her, even when she was sleeping upstairs in her room. They whispered just in case.

Nick had arrived late, he needed to get there, now that he knew what he knew, he had to get there, and he had to rectify the whole situation. Things had been left for too long, so he got in his truck, and he drove all day and night to get to his sisters house. To see the girl. To make sure that it was true.

Naturally, his sister freaked out when he arrived at 2am on a Wednesday night. Tired, dishevelled, and a little drunk. His sister had a temper. She started screaming as soon as he reached the door. She was unintelligible. She knew why he had come, she knew that she couldn't stop him. Or, if she could. That she shouldn't. Not after what happened.

Her husband was a small, and quiet man. He always tried to stop his wife from having screaming fits. It never worked. That's one of the reasons that Nick never respected him. There were many other reasons for why he had only ever had two or three conversations with the man since he met him. Fifteen years ago.

Her husband dutifully went upstairs and carried Allison out of her bed, trying not to wake her up, but failed.

“Why are you carrying me?” She said in a whiny, tired voice. Frustrated at being moved, but too weak from sleep to stop him.

“You Uncle Nick is here. He's going stay in your room.”

“Can I say 'hi'?”

“Tomorrow, you need to sleep, and so does he.”

“Is Mom angry?”

“No, dear, she's not angry.”

“Liar...”

While she listened to the whispers, her mind wandered, she needed to think of a plan, she knew what the whispers were about, she knew exactly what they were saying. She knew why Uncle Nick was here. She knew that he had found out. And he had come to fix everything. Well, she thought, if anyone could. It would be him.

Allison needed to think of a plan. What he was going to do was obvious, how he was going to go about it, depended on a lot of things. Maybe, if she was smart, she would have enough time to show him one last thing.

Nick, didn't sleep. Instead he searched through her room. Trying to find a journal, or something, something that gave Allison an outlet for her mind to wander. He found it in a shoebox covered by a mountain of clothes that she obviously would never wear. It was not a box full of your usual outlets for a little girl, no diary, no journal. No drawings. There were just countless cards with one word each on them.

Cower, Rage, Fear, Hate, Anger, Pain, Suffer, Destroy, Obey.

He stopped reading. It was worse than he had thought. Downstairs his sister was still yelling, until he walked down. They started to whisper.

“Sis, stop it.” She stopped crying.

“I'm so sorry Nick. I didn't know! I didn't know!”

“It's not your fault. Some things are impossible to imagine until they happen.”

“What are you going to do.”

“I'm going to fix it.”

“Okay.”

“Go get some sleep guys. I'll clean up down here.”

His sister and brother-in-law went upstairs first, after a couple hours of watch, just before dawn, Nick went upstairs to Allison's room for an hour or two of sleep, leaving Allison on the couch in the basement. Nick had made sure the door to the basement was locked before he went upstairs. But she was smarter than her uncle. She had the key to the basement door in her hand the whole time her dad was carrying her downstairs. This was going to be her only time to act. She had to do it now.

She got up from the couch, barefoot, she walked up the stairs and she unlocked the door. She walked to the kitchen, and walked upstairs to the bedrooms. She took out the key to her own bedroom, that Nick was in. She locked it. Then she moved over to her parents bedroom.

Allison, walked slowly into her parents bedroom, so quietly, the only noise was that of the interchanging breathing from her parents. She softly walked up to her father. Lifted up a knife she had grabbed from the kitchen. And stabbed her father in the throat. He tried screaming, but the sound of the blood spraying from his throat made a much louder noise than he could have hoped to have made. The spray of blood woke up her mother. Her mother screamed and jumped up to her husband. Clutching him and screaming.

Allison wanted her mother to see, she wanted her to see so that she would scream, and the scream would wake Nick up. It did. He ran to the door. Thinking to himself, not again, not again. The door was locked. So he started slamming into it, trying to knock it down. All the while, he heard the screaming, it was the same as last time. All the same. Except this time, he knew who was doing it. However, just like last time, before he could bust the door open. The screaming stopped.

When he finally bust open the door. Allison was sitting cross-legged in the hallway, the knife laying on her legs. She was completely covered in blood. Just like last time, except for the knife, and the smile.

“I got you again Nick, when did you figure it out that it was me?”

“I always knew, it's just not something you ever want to believe.”

“I killed Auntie Chelsea and my baby cousin. I guess I was five years old. Is that's why it was hard to believe?”

“You were covered in blood. Just like now. But you were crying.”

“I'm a good actor, I was Cinderella in the school play.”

“You're the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life.”

“Stop saying mean things. Or I'll tell Mommy.”