They sat around the dinner table, waiting until after the prayer to eat. The family spent the entirety of their day apart but every night they would sit at the dinner table and be together. They would turn off their cell phones and the TV and sit around the table just visiting with one another. It was so easy in the modern world to be distracted from what matters, but they kept the family dinner as a means to stay connected. The phone rang. The father asked to be excused and began scooting his chair backwards. The mother glared at him, he let the phone go unanswered. If the call was more important than his family they would leave a message.
The table they gathered around allowed the family to look out onto the street of the neighborhood, as they ate dinner. Since they were on good terms with their neighbors it mattered little who could see in. In the middle of a bite of spaghetti the window shattered. The teenage daughter let out a shrill cry while the son, who had been looking out the window, proceeded to run off. Sprawled out in the center of the family’s sacred place was a human bloodied and sickly looking. Shards of glass protruded from places of the man and his eyes were black as coals. It leapt from its place on the table and tore open the throat of the mother and drank for several seconds. The phone rang again, unheard by the cries of the family. By the time the call ended, the mother had joined the unexpected guest and began attacking her family.
Upstairs, in his room, the teenage boy could no longer hear the cries of his mother or sister. He sat in his closet fumbling with the pistol his father had given him, for if he ever woke up and someone had broken in. He heard shuffling in the hallways upstairs and the doorknob to his room wiggled. Within minutes the sound had gone and he was alone. He packed what food he could and took a few bottles of water. He grabbed the keys to the family’s Accord and drove off, hoping to find somewhere safe.
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