Ankle Snatcher

by Grady Hendrix

I’d always thought we’d have good banter, but a crisis hotline wasn’t the place to find out,

“He told me that he was very sorry, but the boogeyman had taken Mom away.”

Sometimes people asked why he did it, as if there might be some logical explanation for why a husband would murder his wife and then tell his six-year-old son that the boogeyman did it. There wasn’t.

I never told them my dad said the boogeyman got Mom because she stepped out of bed without turning the light on first. I never told them that for the rest of my life I’ve never once gotten out of bed in the dark.

I’ve read enough about domestic homicide to know that every perpetrator blames his victim. Like every perpetrator, my dad had a big elaborate fantasy about his sad little crime. His involved the boogeyman, only he didn’t call it “the boogeyman.” He called it “the Ankle Snatcher.”

Then she said, “We don’t have to turn into them. We can be our own people.”

She looked down at me with eyes that were the darkest, deepest things in the room.

People like you and me, son, we have to be careful of the Ankle Snatcher.

They never asked me a single question about Tess or what happened last night. They had no interest in me or anything I had to say. I wasn’t a person. I was a crime.

They live in our closets and under our beds, and after dark they come out when we break the rules. We’re serving time for the boogeymen’s crimes.”