How to Escape an Assassin

~Milan Ava Lee~

I anxiously shimmied the crowbar under the boarded up kitchen window of my 90-year old neighbor Yvette's shabby home. My heart was racing. I could barely see anything, afforded minimal visibility from the cloudy moonlight. I glanced nervously across the yard to where my mom, dad and aunt goofily cheered me on as they hung out of our second floor bathroom window. They were drunk.

We had been playing poker and I ranked last place in our family tournament. The loser's punishment was to break into our looney next-door neighbor's home and take a video of "the hidden mystery creature." That was a reference to the strange wailing noises that we always heard coming from her house in the middle of the night. I let out a distressed groan and silently prayed that I wouldn't end up in a jail cell after tonight's shenanigans. It would make quite the news story headline: "Local preschool teacher caught breaking and entering in elderly neighbor's home"

I pried the lowest wooden panels off of the window frame then crawled through the snug opening like a worm, headfirst. I fell over the kitchen sink, banging my hip on the faucet, and faceplanted awkwardly on the floor tiles. My neck folded on impact. I massaged the side of my neck to ease the stinging discomfort as I stood to my feet.

It was my first time being inside of batty old Yvette's house. I had a good reason for never crossing her property line in the past. For starters, Yvette did very strange things. I once saw her with a tub of whipped cream and a paint brush, smearing the whipped cream all over her front door. Another time she opened a lemonade stand, but instead of lemonade, she was selling napkins that had little lemon designs on them. Sometimes she stood in the middle of the street for hours singing Michael Jackson songs. Other times, she would pound on our front door begging us to hide her because the government was after her.

It was 2:00 in the morning but all of the lights were on, dim and murky with a tinge of green. There was junk piled up in all of the rooms, on every couch, chair, and tabletop. It looked like the preparation room of a thrift store crossed with a junkyard. All of the furniture was worn down and bore yellow and brown aging stains. The yellowing wallpaper had an 1800's Victorian era design.

Suddenly, the faint sound of the mystery creature's wailing could be heard. "Deep breaths, Milan," I encouraged myself. "Let's just take the stupid video and get out of here."

I followed the wailing sounds into a hallway. As the mysterious creature came into my line of vision, I slapped my hands to the sides of my face and my jaw dropped.