Masked Bandits
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One summer, when I was 10, there was a heat wave. It was so hot! Because our house was so open concept, it got hot really quick and made it too hot to even sleep upstairs. My family and I unrolled our sleeping bags in the basement where it was cool. We were all crisscrossed together. We fell asleep like any regular night, but piled on the floor of our basement.
I woke up to my mom assuring my little brother that everything was going to be okay. Confused, I looked over and asked what was wrong. My mom held a finger to her lips and motioned me to sit next to her, she indicated to me that she heard something upstairs. I listened closely, and I realized she was right. I heard cupboards being opened and creaking footsteps.
My sister popped her head up asking what’s that noise? I told her to keep quiet and that we thought someone was upstairs. We all huddled close, very scared. We sat there listening to the sounds, frozen in fear, not knowing what to do. Mom reached for her cell phone and said she was going to call the police and we all had to keep very quiet. My heart sank to my stomach: this meant it was real; we were being robbed. We all watched my mom as she bravely dialed 911. She spoke into the phone about she thought we were being robbed. She talked in a harsh whisper; you could hear the frantic quality in her voice. This made it all the more surreal.
The police kept us on the line while they headed over. They asked for a bunch of details and kept us calm. They asked us what time had we heard them around? They wanted to know how long we thought they had been there. We could hear the sirens as the police parked at our house. We heard the police come in; my mom grabbed my hand and squeezed it. It felt like they were up there for hours. My brother started to cry a little. My mom stayed strong. I heard someone come down the stairs: it was the policeman. I held my breath. He said there was nothing to fear, we were being robbed. But not by a person, like we expected. . . it was a family of raccoons.
We all let out a collective breath. Apparently, we’d left the garage door open and a family of raccoons got into our camping food. The police were really nice about it and assured us they scared the raccoons away . After the police left, we all debriefed how scary that was for all of us. We all laughed as well because who can say they were robbed by raccoons!
Josee Leclair
I am a Creative Writing student at Algonquin College. In my spare time, I like to read, knit, and watch lots of YouTube!
