"Ding Dong" by Quincy C

     It was just around the time that I began middle school. Due to my parents separation, I was constantly switching from one house to the other as a kid. This was a normal occurrence and I had long since gotten used to it. But this week, this week was different. I was staying with my dad for the weekend, which proved to be quite boring and somber. This was a result of the recent passing of his mother, my grandmother. Now, I wasn’t very affected by the whole situation because I had never met the poor old woman except for once when I was first born. Even so, I tried to comfort my disheartened father, which was totally out of character for him. After sitting in silence for what seemed like an eternity, my dad realized he had some errands to run. He asked if I wanted to come, but being my lazy self, I politely declined.
     My dad lived in an apartment building on the bottom level, which was creepy enough on its own. To make matters worse, it was always extremely dark, and you could always hear the neighbors above us sauntering around on their creaky floorboards. My dad had just recently gotten a doorbell installed...I guess he didn’t enjoy the loud banging when someone was at his door. As I sat there alone watching cartoons, someone rang the doorbell. I decided to ignore it because I really wasn’t in the mood to shoo away some persistent solicitor. A few minutes later, I hear another ring, this time more aggressive than the last. I waited again, and once again it rang. Fed up with this nonsense I finally got up and swung open the door to find no one in sight. This I found really strange. There was a long hallway that we could see from our door’s peephole, which also had a really loud echo. If someone had run away, I would’ve definitely heard it. Totally confused, I shut the door and went about my business, attempting to rationalize the incident in every possible way. Unable to really justify a response, I decided to go take a nap.
     I was lucky enough to have a TV in my room, which I often fell asleep watching. In accordance with my normal routine, I turned my TV on and proceeded to drift off into dream land. I’m not sure how long I had been asleep, but I woke up to someone turning off my TV. This person then walked over to me and rubbed my back in such a gentle way. I heard a little “hmph” come out of the figures mouth which sounded like a man’s voice. I figured it was just my dad and went back to sleep.
     When I woke up again, my TV was still off. I went into the living room to see my dad, but he was nowhere to be found. “Maybe he forgot something” I thought. So I waited, and about an hour later my dad came home. I decided to ask him what he had forgotten. He looked at me kinda funny and asked what I was talking about. I explained and his response was, “I just barely got home, you must have been dreaming.” “What!?” I thought. There’s absolutely no way that was a dream, how did my TV turn off? Who was rubbing my back? It felt way too real to be a dream. Of course, being a boring adult, my dad just brushed it off as my wild imagination running free again. After all my attempts to make him believe me proved futile, I decided to just let it go.
     “So dad, what errands were you out running anyway?” I asked. “Oh nothing much, I just wanted to go get a new doorbell, that other one just won’t ring.” He replied. Confused I said, “of course it does, someone was ringing the heck out of it when you were gone.” “Well that’s impossible sweetie, the doorbell isn’t even setup. Look, it’s sitting over there on the kitchen counter.” He said. My head moved reluctantly towards the counter, hoping he was wrong. As I looked up, there was the “broken” doorbell, wires and all.