Amazon Mom

A mother's battle against mis-behaving kids.

 

I cracked the door open just a bit and scanned the hallway with one squinted eye. I whispered to Barry, “The coast is clear. She's in the kitchen.” I eased the door open ever so slowly, avoiding it's tendency to squeak, so Barry and I could steal into the hall silently. We had both left our shoes behind so our sock-clad feet could move ghostly quiet over the hardwood flooring. We stealthily made our way down the hall to the storage closet located at the halfway point. This closet was our objective, or more precisely the treasure hidden within. Mom had ordered our Christmas gifts from the mammoth Sears Wishbook catalog, and they were now inside the hall closet waiting for December to arrive. The mailman had delivered them earlier and Mom had sent us to our room and made us promise not to peek while she took delivery and put them away. We had kept that promise, but we had made no promise not to snoop in the closet afterward. We knew that snooping would be frowned upon, perhaps with extreme prejudice, but we felt our superb sneaking skills would keep us safe from wrath.

 

I paused at the closet door to make one last recon check. Mom was still in the kitchen, I could hear water running in the sink and the clanking of some pot or pan. I cupped both hands around my mouth and made a tunnel from my mouth to Barry's ear to keep the whisper from escaping into the air. “We gotta open this door real quiet. Sometimes it sticks.” I then started the painstaking process of turning the knob. When the knob stopped I carefully applied pressure to smoothly pull the door open; it's not moving so a little more pressure is needed, well that's still not enough. For crying out loud, the stupid door is stuck. Of all the times for this to happen it has to pick the one time when we need to open it quietly. I step back to regroup and calm myself while I come up with a plan to get this door open without alerting Mom, who is only a few feet away in the kitchen. Barry looks at me, then the door and he steps in to try his hand at it. Well let's see what he can do. Maybe he'll have better luck, after all it's possible I didn't get the knob turned completely when I tried. He places his little hand on the knob and starts turning. It's a little too fast for my liking but it gets the job done. Now for the moment of truth, carefully ease it open. Instead he yanks like he's trying to pull start a lawn mower, and the door opens with a horrifying screech.

 

I immediately hear from the kitchen, “Get away from that closet and come here, now!” My sock feet start spinning on the hardwood as I try to get moving, doing a pretty fair impression of Fred Flintstone getting his car going. Barry and I both dodge past Mom and head for the stairs and a sure getaway. Old people can't get down the stairs nearly as fast as us kids. I hear her yell “I said come here” with a touch more anger this time. That order fell on deaf ears as I had freedom in my sights. Barry and I were neck and neck through the kitchen, but I edged him out as we we made the turn to head down the stairs. At this point I also noticed that Mom was surprisingly close on our heels. I put on an extra burst of speed and hit the stairs at full speed with Barry just a step behind. Our feet sounded like machine guns hitting the treads. There's no way Mom can catch us now. About halfway down something went horribly wrong. Mom picked up an empty milk jug and threw it at Barry's legs with amazing accuracy. The jug wedged itself between his ankles, instantly stopping his feet while momentum pulled his upper body into a somersault. He passed me on the left as he went head over heels down the remaining stairs to land in a crumpled heap at the bottom.

 

I took a quick second to peek over my shoulder and saw Mom coming down the steps with a broom in hand. I jumped over Barry's lifeless looking form and hit the basement floor at speed. It was a relief to hear Barry crying as I ran on, because I knew he wasn't dead. I ran past the laundry room, then the bathroom and I could see precious daylight shining through the glass in the doorway ahead. I chuckled a little to myself as I prepared to sail to freedom. Just then my lower back blossomed into crippling agony. I hit the floor like a bag of dirt as I realized what had happened. Mom had used her broom as a spear. She had let it fly from the bottom of the stairs, and it had soared across the entire length of the basement to catch me square in the lumbar region as I paused to open the door. I was seconds away from freedom, and now my cries joined in with Barry's to create an unholy chorus; truly music to Mom's ears.

Reviews

[Lorraine]

Wasn't sure if you were trying to portray mum as cruel, or look back with humour.
This was written in such a way, that you created suspense, and made me want to read all of it.
I like that you wrote it in the present tense.
This created a good impression of the events.