Eagerly awaiting the parents

When the Children came home, they were not very surprised by their parents' absence. Often the father would be out to see his friends, and mother would be delayed at her work. It was standard practice to get the keys from under the doormat, make themselves a dinner, whatever they wanted, as long as they didn't put more than four spoonfulls of something they liked, and wait for their guardians. On some occasions, they had waited until the midnight for the parents to return, but not much longer. If we don't come back during the night, and you don't find us in our room in the morning, they had been told, call uncle Sami and let him know that we didn't come back. He will know what to do. While they were far too young to understand the full implication of the statement, they were generally aware that the morose tone in which the message was conveyed implied that it wasn't something anybody would want to look forward to.

The hour-hands ticked by, slowly. The children eagerly waited for their parents, having decided they wouldn't go to sleep before receiving them, for the following day was a holiday. And this was a rare chance for them to stay out beyond their bedtime -- an opportunity they weren't keen to relinquish.

Four episodes of their favourite children tv show later, and nobody had knocked on the door. Nobody had called either, to check up on them, to ask if they'd eaten well, or if they'd gone to bed. The older child kept her eyes glued to the large clock above the mantle. This was just a normal day, and normal exciting things had happened at school, and she wanted to share all the news with them. This cannot be one of those days, she thought. Please, please, please, let this be a normal day, a nice day, not a bad day. She didn't fully know what a 'bad day' would imply, but she knew she didn't want to understand the concept.