Journal #3- Backward Plotting

Crisis Action: A man (woman) sets their house on fire
Characters: The Terrol Family (Mother, Father, Son, Daughter)

On the grim porch, the Terrol Family unlocked the front door, and slowly stepped into the creaky house.

“Why would you have us live here?” Mother asked Father.

“We didn’t have to pay a fucking penny for this, so stop complaining,” Father replied. The kids, one boy and one girl, stared at their parents bickering as they rolled their eyes. What’s new? the girl thought.

“I don’t care! This is like living in a trailer. But that’s just you, you’d rather buy the pharmacy brand than the real deal,” Mother accused. She walks over into the dull yellow kitchen and slammed her Louis Vuitton on the countertop.

“You’re damn right. It’s trouble enough that you max out credit cards with

nonsense. I won’t be pampering you anymore,” Father said. He stared at her until she let
out a breath and gave in. She started to walk up the stairs, as she heard a THUMP from
below her. Thinking it was only her husband’s small temper, she carried on.

“That’s why I have my own room!” she said, as she reached her solitary confinement.

As the winds howled and the power lines hissed, the brindle grandfather clock struck eleven. Mother felt the shivers down her spine as she studied her new room from her queen-size bed. Mother walked over to the apricot drapes and brushed the right side up and locked the windows with her left hand. She stared at her naked ring finger. She could not help but let her heavy lips frown. She walked to the drawer beside her bed and opened it. She remembered when Father proposed to her seven years ago with the ceramic steel ring, but on the day before the wedding, Mother did not want to be discomfited in front of her friends. She made Father buy a green amethyst cocktail ring with eight carat. She closed the drawer and got ready for bed. Abruptly, the windows slammed opened.

“Ah! Oh, my god!” screamed Mother. What the hell? I swear just locked the windows. Mother walked over to the windows, gripping onto her amber-colored bed sheet. She locked it again and pushed it to experiment its robustness. It didn’t budge. Her nostrils engorged from the sudden shock. Suddenly, the lights began to flicker and Mother ran out of her room. She pounded on Father’s door. Father opened a little crack and rubbed his eyes.
“I can’t explain it, but something really freaky is going on. The windows were locked and then I locked them and then all of a sudden, like out of nowhere…” exclaimed Mother as she tried to catch a breath.
“Relax, crazy witch! I’m sure it’s nothing,” replied Father. “Go back to bed.” Mother remained standing outside her door, gripping tightly onto her bed sheet. Father remembered the bed sheet was a birthday present he had bought for her because he realized Mother had been eyeing it in Macys during their vacation in New York City.
“Fine… You can sleep here tonight,” said Father. Mother walked in in relief. After such a rough night the Mother was terribly scared. She could not believe there were actually ghosts in their brand new home.

“We have to get out of this house, it’s haunted. I can hardly sleep at night. There are bad things in this house and it is not normal.” Mother complained.

“We cannot leave this house. It is the biggest in the whole neighborhood and I cannot afford to buy you a bigger one. Stop making up excuses to leave this house, ghosts do not exist.” Father assured. Suddenly he was interrupted by his son screaming. They rushed to the bathroom and Father saw his son’s head being dunked in the bathtub, but there was no one holding him. Father carried his son out of the bathroom and laid him on the carpeted floor. Father began to check for a pulse. He placed two fingers below his son’s jawbone. Father pinched his son’s nose shut and breathed two slow breaths into his mouth. His son began to cough out water.
“Paul!” exclaimed Father. Father gave Paul a hug and carried him outside of the house.

“Stay here,” Father said as he ran back into the house, telling Sarah to do the same. Father ran upstairs and signaled Mother. Mother and Father grabbed the gasoline and poured it down the stairs and down the halls.

“Hurry!” Father yelled. “We got to burn this son of a gun down! Mother panicked heavily and emptied the gasoline jar. Her eyes widened. Vehemently, she ran into her room and opened the drawer. She grabbed the steel ring, slipped her Louis Vuitton bag on and ran back out. Mother, suddenly, slipped down the stairs.
“Honey!” said Father as he scurried down the stairs and helped her up. He was about to bend toward his right to pick up the Louis Vuitton bag when Mother suddenly screamed out,
“Forget that shit! Let’s burn this hellhole!” Father cracked a grin and lit the matches on fire. He dropped it on the gasoline-filled floor. Mother ran into the kitchen and smashed all the wine bottles. She, too, lit the matches and dropped them on the alcohol, incinerating the area.
“Hurry, Karen!” Father called out, as he waited for her by the door. Mother ran out of the kitchen, through the halls, and passed the living room as shrieks echoed behind her. Mother grabbed his hand and said,
“Eric, let’s go.”

Father and Mother ran for their lives with sweat running down their faces. Father and Mother got outside the burning house and took a ten second rest, trying to catch their breath. They carried Paul and Sarah far away from the burning house before the fire caught up to them. After the house burned to the ground, the Terrol family saw that the house was no more, but only a huge pile of ash. The family looked into each other’s eyes, exchanged smiles and had one big hug. They put their soot covered hands on each other’s shoulders and walked away, toward the sunrise without looking back.