“Today we have sun with; BUZZ But Tommy I; BUZZ We interrupt your program with some breaking news; BUZZ.”
I flipped through the channels with the remote. I couldn’t find anything worth watching. My feet were kicked up and I was slouching on the couch. My jeans felt too tight and my shirt felt too loose. I was cold even though it was September. Year round my basement was always freezing cold. The lamp beside me was dim and the table that had my drink on it was too far away for me to reach. The TV was burning my eyes, and my feet weren’t comfortable. I didn’t have homework and was trying to rest, but there were so many flaws with what I was doing. Every time I found a channel that had something I liked, the show was ending. Nothing on was any good. My computer wasn’t working, and whenever I tried going to Netflix the screen would glitch. I was so unhappy. My mom had called wondering if I was all right, and I told her I was fine. I didn’t want to get up to read because my head hurt. I wanted to eat ice cream, but we didn’t have any. My dog was busy barking at the door begging me to take him on a walk, but I didn’t bother getting up for that either. Sweat had dried on my face because I had to bike home, and when I did I was hot from the sun. When I got to the basement I was cold. Families of deer were in my back yard eating my plants, and I had an urge to yell at someone. My day wasn’t going so well at that moment.
I eventually sat up and started walking up the stairs heading to the kitchen. My dog was barking at me, and I let him out to chase the deer in the back yard. When I was closing the door, my arms felt weak and tired. I didn’t want to do anything that involved movement besides clicking the buttons of the remote with my thumb. I turned around and started slowly walking to the fruit bowl. I almost took a hold of an apple, but I was too lazy to reach for it. Instead I grabbed a few Oreos and the whipped cream bottle. I imagined what my dog must have been saying to the deer back there. I imagined the conversation to go like this.
“Out! Out! Out! My yard! My territory! Solveig! Help me get theses deer out!” my dog, Thor, would say.
“He’s on my tail! Help! Stay away dog!” one deer would say.
“I told you all he shouldn’t have been back here!” another would scream.
I forgot about my dog in the back yard while I walked down the stairs. I twisted open one of the Oreos and scraped the frosting out with my tongue. I shook the bottle for a second and then mainlined the whipped cream into my mouth. This was the best part of my day so far. The TV was still flashing before my eyes. I lifted up the cup of my drink that was on the table and drained it in a second. I sat back down and ate the rest of my cookies.
THUMP.
I looked around the room. I put the TV on mute so I could here what was going on. “Hello?” I asked concerned. “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”
No answer.
I unmuted the TV and began watching what was on.
THUMP.
“It’s nothing,” I thought. I stayed sitting on the couch wondering if my dog fell down the stairs, but I knew it would be constant if it were him.
THUMP.
I was really confused now. I started walking over to the stairs thinking I would see blood and bones around my dead dog. The closer I got, the more frightened I became. As I started to close in on where the stairs touched the ground, I heard one more thump.
Before I could round the stairs, the window northeast of me, shattered. My heart thumped as a small deer fell through the window, back first. I felt like I was having a heart attack. Its spine hit the edge on the desk that was against the wall where the window shattered. Glass flew everywhere. Pieces landed inches from my feet. The deer scrambled on the wooden floor.
I screamed so hard my head hurt even more. The deer crouched into the guest bedroom. I tried to stop screaming but I couldn’t. I grabbed my hair and pulled it as I wandered around my basement. The TV roared behind me. My feet were bare, and I couldn’t think of anything to do. I embraced the corner where the stairs were and tried my best to not step on any glass. I stared into the deer’s eyes. I was screaming so hard it backed up into the bedroom even more. I turned around to see everything on the desk falling off it. Before I turned and ran upstairs I saw blood leaking on the desk from where the deer hit. The whole time I screamed. My throat hurt. Tears ran from my eyes, and I hoped the deer wouldn’t break anything.
I grabbed the phone upstairs and dialed my father’s number. Nothing happened. I dialed my mother’s. Not a sound. I tried both numbers again. No one answered. As I ran to the front door I saw the deer was still in my basement. When I got outside, the sun was shining fiercely. The tears piling in my eyes made my vision blurry. I started running as fast as I could to the neighbor’s house. One of my school friends lived across the street so I ran to her house first. I rang the doorbell a few times, but no one showed up. I pounded the door. Finally my neighbor’s father came and answered.
“Hi Solveig can I help you with something?” Derek asked.
“A deer jumped through my window and is in my basement and I don’t know what to do,” I yelped.
“I’ll come over,” Derek finished.
We speed-walked over to my house while I was telling him the whole story. I stepped on rocks on the way back over to my house, but I was too traumatized to notice. When we got back in the basement the deer was gone. I turned off the TV, and Derek and I guessed where the deer could have gone. I said it could have walked up the stairs and out the back door, but he said it probably jumped out the window. Glass was everywhere, and the lamp and computer had fallen over. We walked up stairs to check around the house to see if the deer was there.
As I was looking out the back door window, I saw my dog with the deer’s neck bleeding in his mouth. The body was still attached but when my dog jumped up and down with the neck it looked as if he could tear it off the rest of the body right then. I could just imagine what he was saying.
“That’s was you get for coming into my yard,” Thor would have said.
The deer would have been speechless.
The rest of the day I went on a walk far from my house, just to get the image out of my head. I took a book to read while I was away so my mind could travel there. When I got back home my parents removed the deer. My dog was licking the blood off the grass. My parents brought our heavy duty vacuum, to clean up the glass in the basement. Before they could vacuum, I saw a small piece of glass that was barely hanging in the window. It swung back and forth while the light was shining through. I got gloves and shoes on so I could walk to the window and get that piece of glass. The glass was almost an inch long. I took that piece of glass walked up to my room and put it on the ledge of my window. I was happy about the two things I got out of my experience: a nice piece of glass, and a cool story to tell people.