User blog comment:SOMEGUY123/300 Word Long Stories/@comment-28938497-20150105232252

I pulled the car up outside my house. I had been out for my night classes and had left my four year old son with a babysitter. Her name was Kate and she had been in the ‘year’ above me at night classes despite barely being out of her teens. And I was a thirty five year old man who left school at sixteen and wanted to learn something again. That’s why I started the classes. Kate started them because she was working two jobs. She was young and had a detailed plan for the future. It’s a shame she’ll have the disappointment of them crashing down to look forward to.

She’s doing odd jobs for cash right now because the restaurant she used to work at had a fire about two months ago. She was very lucky to make it out alive. She jumped at the chance to babysit my son for $6 an hour, and wouldn’t accept any more than that.

I opened the front door and my son ran up to me and hugged me. Even with Kate, I guess he missed me. Kate entered from the lounge.

“He was an angel. An absolute angel!”

“I’m glad,” I replied. “If I even need a babysitter, I’ll let you know.”

I noticed my son was looking at me strangely.

“Kate, head out. I’ll sort the payment in a minute. Let me talk to my son.”

I waited for her to leave, then crouched to my son’s level.

“What’s up, little guy?”

“Dad, who were you talking to? You were talking to yourself.”

“What? No, I wasn’t. I was talking to...”

I looked over my shoulder, towards Kate as I spoke, to confirm she was still there, and I saw the entire back of her body was horribly burned.