In case of emergency

There are two doors in our house: one in front and one in back. That should be sufficient, but you never know.

There are two windows in the kitchen, but only one is big enough to crawl through. There’s a trap door that leads to the crawl space under the house, but no way to crawl out once you’re down there, just solid walls of concrete foundation. So if you go down there, you’re screwed.

In my oldest daughter’s room there’s a door that opens to the back yard, but she doesn’t want me in her room, so that’s no good. My youngest daughter has only one tiny window: She might fit through it, but not me. There’s a window in the living room but it sticks. It opens, but I can’t depend on it opening, I have to rattle and coax, so it’s no use.

In the bedroom I share with my husband, there’s a door that leads out onto the roof. The roof is steep but if I could make it to the edge, I could shimmy down the fig tree.

All the rest of the windows are either too small or sealed shut. If I had something big and heavy, I could use it to smash the glass. A hammer or maybe the cast iron frying pan. I wonder if I wrapped my hand in in a towel, could I punch my way through? Just smash my fist right in and crawl out through the shards.  In case of emergency.

Tags: fiction, flash fiction, how to escape, in case of emergency, paranoia