Ankle Snatcher

by Grady Hendrix

He called it “the Ankle Snatcher.”

Yup, thats it im only jumping into bed from now on...totally creepgy!!!

I heard her pee hit the porcelain.

....um okay...thabks for sharing i guess...

I noticed that she walked with her shoulders slightly hunched, like she was expecting someone to yell at her. I promised then and there to do everything in my power to protect her from all the assholes of this world.

Maybe what I’d inherited from him wasn’t a monster under the bed. Maybe I’d inherited some leftover murderous spoor, clinging to the folds of my brain, a genetic kill switch that had finally closed, and the Ankle Snatcher, and everything I’d seen or heard or smelled since last night, was a delusion prepped by my dad when I was six years old, etched into my DNA.

I knew he was originally sentenced to McCormick Correctional, but in the nineteen years since, they’d probably moved him a bunch of times.

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.

After all these years, I was finally going to see my dad.

“My dad was sentenced here a long time ago. How do I find out if he’s still around?”

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.”

remembered Ernest Rojas. I remembered my dad getting sent to Kirkland.

But I thought you said you weren’t sure where your dad was like just a second ago???????