My Stepmom Sent Me to a Strict Tutor—I Didn’t Know They Were Planning My Murder
Part 2
The paralyzing shock gave way to pure survival adrenaline.
I threw my weight forward and bit down hard on Brenda’s exposed forearm.
Brenda shrieked in absolute agony.
Her iron grip loosened just enough for me to rip my arm free.
I sprinted blindly down the long, dark hallway.
Their frantic footsteps pounded against the floorboards right behind me.
“Get back here, you little brat!” Brenda roared.
I lunged for the first brass doorknob I saw in the shadows.
I practically fell into a small guest room and kicked the heavy door shut.
I fumbled desperately with the cheap brass lock mechanism.
My sweaty fingers slipped twice before I finally twisted it until it clicked.
I backed away from the solid wood until my spine hit the cold wall.
I desperately needed to call the police before they broke the door down.
But a wave of fresh, nauseating panic hit me.
My main smartphone had completely died during math class today.
Then my panicked brain sparked with a desperate memory.
My old, cracked spare phone.
I had shoved it deep into the bottom pocket of my backpack this morning.
I fell hard to my knees on the plush carpet.
I tore the heavy canvas zipper of my bag open.
I blindly dumped the heavy textbooks onto the floor.
My shaking hand brushed against cold metal at the very bottom.
I pulled it out and jammed my thumb against the power button.
The shattered screen lit up with a dim glow.
Twelve percent battery remaining.
My slick fingers slipped on the glass as I rapidly dialed 9-1-1.
The operator’s calm voice crackled through the speaker.
“911, what is your emergency?”
I aggressively cupped my hand over my mouth to muffle my shaky voice.
“Please, you have to help me,” I whispered.
Hot tears were freely streaming down my flushed face.
“My stepmom and my real mom are trying to murder me.”
I rattled off Heather’s secluded home address.
“They confessed that they murdered my dad, and now they’re trying to get me.”
A massive thud suddenly echoed from the other side of the bedroom door.
The solid wood visibly splintered around the painted frame.
I shoved the dying phone as far under the guest bed as my arm could reach.
I left the emergency line completely open so the dispatcher could hear everything.
“Open this door right now!” Heather screamed from the hallway.
I scrambled to my feet in a total panic.
I looked frantically around the small guest room for any kind of weapon.
My terrified eyes landed on a heavy ceramic lamp sitting on the desk.
I lunged for it and ripped the power cord right out of the wall socket.
I gripped the thick ceramic base with both hands like a baseball bat.
The brass doorknob jiggled furiously, rattling the entire frame.
The thick wood began to crack right down the center panel.
Would the cops make it here before the hinges completely snapped?
Part 3
The heavy brass hinges finally gave way with a deafening, violent crack.
They snapped long before the distant wail of police sirens could reach the isolated suburban neighborhood.
The metal deadbolt tore completely through the splintered doorframe.
Jagged shards of white-painted wood flew across the cheap guest room carpet.
Tyler backed away until his shaking shoulders hit the faded floral wallpaper.
He gripped the base of the heavy ceramic lamp with slick, sweating hands.
He knew in his gut that nobody was coming to save him in time.
The two women standing in the hallway were going to finish what they started.
Two hours earlier, Tyler had been sitting in the passenger seat of Brenda’s immaculate SUV.
The leather seats smelled faintly of expensive vanilla perfume and cold leather.
He stared blankly out the rain-streaked window at the passing streetlights.
His stepmom drove with both hands perfectly positioned on the steering wheel at ten and two.
She hadn’t spoken a single word to him since they left their driveway.
That silence had become the standard operating procedure ever since his father’s funeral six months ago.
His dad had supposedly lost control of his truck on an icy mountain road.
The police ruled it a tragic, unavoidable accident.
Tyler had never fully believed the official story, but he was just a kid with zero proof.
Ever since that day, he had been trapped in a cold house with a woman who treated him like an inconvenience.
Brenda had inherited the massive house, the cars, and the social status.
But Tyler was the sole beneficiary of his father’s life insurance and the family trust fund.
He wouldn’t get access to a single penny until he turned eighteen next year.
Until then, Brenda was stuck playing the role of the grieving, dutiful guardian.
She played the part perfectly for the neighbors and the lawyers.
Behind closed doors, she barely acknowledged his existence.
Except when it came to his slipping grades.
The SUV turned onto a secluded, tree-lined street on the edge of the city limits.
The houses out here were massive, set back from the road behind wrought-iron gates.
“You need to take this seriously tonight,” Brenda said suddenly.
Her voice was sharp and devoid of any maternal warmth.
She didn’t take her eyes off the winding road.
“Heather charges a ridiculous hourly rate.”
Tyler slouched lower in the leather seat.
“I didn’t ask for a tutor,” he mumbled.
“You have a D-minus in algebra and a failing grade in history,” she snapped back.
“I am not going to let you fail out of high school while you live under my roof.”
She tapped her long, acrylic nails against the leather steering wheel.
“It makes me look negligent.”
That was all she actually cared about.
She didn’t care about his future or his education.
She just didn’t want the estate lawyers thinking she wasn’t doing her job.
Brenda pulled the heavy SUV up to a sprawling, dark-bricked house.
The lawn was perfectly manicured but completely devoid of life.
There were no lights on in the front windows.
“I’ll pick you up at nine,” Brenda said.
She didn’t unlock the doors immediately.
She turned to look at him, her dark eyes entirely unreadable.
“Don’t cause any problems for her.”
Tyler unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the heavy door open.
“I’m just doing math, Brenda.”
Slamming the car door shut before she could respond, Tyler ended the conversation.
The worn canvas backpack landed heavily against his shoulder.
The long, paver-stone driveway stretched out toward the imposing front entrance.
There was no need to look back and check if Brenda waited for him to get safely inside.
The sound of the SUV’s transmission shifting into reverse confirmed she was already leaving.
Stepping up onto the covered porch, the teenager finally pressed the glowing doorbell.
A deep, echoing chime rang out from deep within the house.
He waited on the porch, shivering slightly in the crisp autumn air.
The heavy wooden door slowly clicked and swung inward.
Heather stood in the dimly lit entryway.
She was dressed in a tailored gray cardigan and dark slacks.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight, severe bun at the nape of her neck.
“Tyler,” she said smoothly.
Her voice always had a strange, forced cadence to it.
“Right on time.”
Tyler stepped over the threshold into the sterile, quiet house.
“Hey,” he muttered.
He kicked his sneakers off onto the welcome mat.
“My stepmom said we’re doing history tonight too.”
Heather closed the heavy front door behind him.
She reached out and turned the brass deadbolt with a loud, metallic clack.
“We have a lot to cover tonight,” she agreed.
She turned and walked toward the formal dining room.
“Follow me.”
Tyler followed her down the long, shadowed hallway.
The house always gave him an uneasy, claustrophobic feeling.
There were no personal photos on the walls, no magazines on the tables, no signs of life.
It felt like a model home that was staged for a showing, rather than a place where someone actually lived.
He walked into the massive dining room and dropped his backpack onto the expensive hardwood floor.
The sprawling dining table was polished to a mirror-like shine.
Heather took a seat at the far end of the table.
She didn’t offer him a glass of water or ask him about his day at school.
She just sat there, her hands folded neatly in front of her.
Tyler pulled out a heavy, velvet-lined chair and sat down opposite her.
He reached down to unzip his backpack.
“I brought my math textbook,” he offered.
“We won’t be needing that tonight,” Heather said.
Tyler stopped mid-zip and looked up at her.
“But we have a test on quadratic equations tomorrow.”
Heather didn’t have her usual forced, polite smile.
Instead, she rhythmically tapped her manicured nails on the wood.
The rhythmic clicking was the only sound in the dead-quiet room.
She tilted her head slightly, studying his face with an unsettling intensity.
“Get one single question wrong, and you’re staying at my house tonight.”
Tyler’s eyes widened in genuine shock.
He stared at her across the long stretch of mahogany.
He thought she had to be joking.
It was a weird, intense kind of joke, but some tutors tried to be edgy.
He waited for a punchline that never came.
Heather reached down into her designer leather tote bag resting beside her chair.
She pulled out a thick, rubber-banded stack of white index cards.
A slow, unnerving grin stretched across her pale face.
“Let us begin.”
The air in the room suddenly felt entirely too heavy to breathe.
Tyler shifted uncomfortably in his hard wooden chair.
“I’m not staying here,” he said nervously.
“Brenda is picking me up at nine.”
Heather ignored his protest entirely.
She slipped the thick rubber band off the cards and snapped it against her wrist.
“Who was the twenty-third president of the US?” she asked.
Her tone was completely flat and authoritative.
Tyler blinked, thrown off balance.
Brother, I can barely name five presidents on a good day.
History was his absolute worst subject.
He wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on the rough denim of his jeans.
“Abraham Lincoln?” he guessed blindly.
He knew it was a stupid answer the second the words left his mouth.
Heather shook her head slowly.
“Incorrect.”
She flipped the card over with a sharp flick of her wrist.
“I will give you two more tries.”
Tyler’s heart started beating a little faster against his ribs.
This wasn’t a normal tutoring session.
She wasn’t trying to help him learn or figure out the answer.
She was testing him on completely random trivia.
“Next,” she said sharply, pulling the next card from the deck.
“What is the square root of 1,764?”
What kind of question was that?
Tyler literally had an F in math right now.
She knew exactly how bad he was at numbers without a calculator.
She had spent the entire last month trying to teach him basic algebra.
He swallowed hard, tasting panic rising in the back of his throat.
“Forty?” he asked.
Her cold eyes locked onto his across the table.
“Wrong. The answer is forty-two.”
This entire setup felt completely rigged.
She wasn’t trying to help him pass his classes.
She was actively trying to make him fail her bizarre little test.
“Next,” she said smoothly, not missing a single beat.
“How many bones are in the human ear?” she asked.
Tyler was completely cooked.
He let out a frustrated, shaky breath.
He pushed his chair back slightly.
“What? The ear has no bones.”
Heather shook her head again, that terrible grin returning to her lips.
“No,” she said.
She put the stack of cards face down on the table.
The thud sounded unnaturally loud in the empty, silent house.
“You get one more chance.”
She leaned forward over the table until she was uncomfortably close.
Her eyes seemed to darken in the dim overhead light.
“Tell me your biological mother’s middle name.”
Tyler’s heart completely stopped in his chest.
A cold, prickling sweat broke out across his forehead and the back of his neck.
She knew his biological mom abandoned him when he was just a newborn baby.
His dad had told Brenda everything about their painful past.
Brenda must have gossiped about it to her over a glass of wine or a phone call.
How would he possibly know the answer to a deeply personal question like that?
He had never even seen a picture of the woman who gave birth to him.
“That’s not fair.” Tyler’s hands curled into tight fists beneath the mahogany table.
Heather didn’t blink, her dark eyes entirely unreadable.
That awful, tight smile never left her red-painted lips.
“It looks like you are staying here tonight.”
Tyler pushed his chair back from the table violently.
The wooden legs scraped loudly against the expensive floorboards.
He begged her to just let him leave.
“Please, I have been here for hours already.”
He reached down and snatched the strap of his backpack from the floor.
“Can I please just go home?”
She didn’t say a single word in response.
She just sat perfectly still, staring at him unblinking.
It was like he was some kind of twisted science experiment in a glass cage.
He tried to stand up to walk away from the table.
Heather slammed her open palm violently onto the polished wood.
“Sit back down! We are not done.”
Tyler dropped back into the velvet chair automatically out of pure shock.
Every primal instinct in his body was screaming that something was deeply wrong here.
This wasn’t about math or history anymore.
He glanced over his shoulder down the long hallway toward the heavy front door.
The heavy brass deadbolt was turned all the way to the right.
It was locked securely from the inside.
When had she even locked that?
She must have done it right after he walked through the door.
“Um, why is the door locked?” Tyler asked.
His voice came out as a pathetic, shaky squeak.
Heather completely ignored his question.
She casually reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out her smartphone.
Tyler watched her thumbs fly rapidly across the bright screen.
She was sending a text message to someone.
She set the phone face down on the table and looked right through him.
“They are on their way. He is ready.”
Absolute, paralyzing panic flared in Tyler’s chest.
“What?” he gasped.
He gripped the rough wooden edges of the dining table until his knuckles turned white.
“Who is on their way? Who are you texting?”
She just maintained that dead, empty stare, refusing to elaborate.
The silence in the house stretched out into agonizing minutes.
Tyler’s mind raced through every possible scenario, none of them good.
He debated making a run for the back door through the kitchen.
He wondered if he could overpower her if she tried to stop him.
Then, the sudden, sharp chime of the doorbell echoed through the silent house.
Tyler jumped in his seat.
Heather got up slowly, moving with a bizarre, deliberate grace.
She walked down the long hallway to the front entryway.
Tyler stayed frozen in his chair, straining his neck to see who it was.
She reached out and turned the heavy brass deadbolt.
She pulled the massive door open to the crisp night air.
When Tyler saw who stepped inside the house, his stomach completely dropped out.
It was his stepmom Brenda.
His stepmom had arrived exactly an hour earlier than she had promised.
A massive, overwhelming wave of relief washed over Tyler for exactly one second.
“Wait, what are you doing here?” Tyler called out eagerly from the dining room.
He thought she had come to rescue him from this bizarre nightmare.
He thought she was going to yell at Heather for keeping him trapped here and acting crazy.
He grabbed his backpack and jogged down the hallway toward the entryway.
But Brenda didn’t even look in his direction.
She walked straight past him like he was entirely invisible.
She went right up to the tutor standing by the front door.
They wrapped their arms around each other right there in the entryway.
It wasn’t a normal, friendly greeting hug between two suburban women.
It was familiar, tight, and deeply intimate.
Brenda pulled back slightly and looked gently at Heather’s face.
“Great work, babe.”
Tyler’s brain completely short-circuited at the word.
“Babe?” he stammered out loud.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked back and forth between the two women who controlled every aspect of his life.
“What is going on? Why did she just call you babe?”
Heather turned her head slowly to face him.
Her fake, polite tutor smile was completely gone now.
Her expression was completely dead and devoid of any maternal or human emotion.
“You really do not recognize me, do you?”
Tyler had no idea what she could possibly be talking about.
He had met her for the first time three weeks ago when Brenda hired her.
“Recognize you?” he asked, his voice shaking uncontrollably.
“You are my math tutor.”
Heather let out a dry, harsh, humorless laugh.
It sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete.
“I am your mother.”
All the oxygen rushed out of Tyler’s lungs in an instant.
He literally stumbled backward a half-step.
He couldn’t process the impossible words hitting his ears.
“What? No way.”
He shook his head vigorously, backing away down the hallway.
“My mom left when I was a newborn baby.”
He gripped the wall to keep himself steady.
“I don’t even know what she looks like.”
Heather tilted her head, her dark eyes narrowing with cruel amusement.
“Well, now you finally do.”
Tyler couldn’t breathe properly.
The walls of the hallway felt like they were rapidly closing in on him.
This couldn’t possibly be real.
This had to be some kind of sick, twisted prank Brenda was pulling to punish him.
He jumped backward away from both of them.
He bolted straight for the front door, desperate for the cool outside air and freedom.
He didn’t even make it three feet before he was violently stopped.
Brenda lunged forward with terrifying, unexpected speed.
She grabbed him by the upper arm with a vicious, unyielding grip.
Her manicured fingers dug in so tight he genuinely thought his bone was going to snap under the pressure.
“Let go of me!” Tyler screamed at the top of his lungs.
He thrashed his entire body weight against her solid hold.
She refused to budge an inch.
He tried to scream for help again, hoping a neighbor might hear.
His voice cracked into a pathetic, terrified wheeze.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Hot tears of pure terror stung the corners of his eyes.
“What do you people want from me?”
Brenda yanked him roughly closer by his shirt collar.
She leaned in until her breath was hot and sour against his ear.
“Your father asked the exact same thing right before we killed him.”
Tyler completely froze, every muscle in his body locking up tight.
His blood ran absolute ice cold in his veins.
His dad’s car accident hadn’t been an accident at all.
“What?” he breathed out.
A sick, triumphant smirk spread across Brenda’s perfectly made-up face.
“Your daddy left everything to you in his will. But if you die, it all goes to her, and she will share it with me.”
Tyler completely lost his mind the second those horrible words left her mouth.
The paralyzing shock instantly gave way to pure, blinding survival adrenaline.
Tyler threw his weight forward and bit down hard on Brenda’s exposed forearm.
He sank his teeth in as deeply as he physically could.
He tasted sharp, metallic copper on his tongue almost immediately.
Brenda shrieked in absolute agony and surprise.
She stumbled backward, clutching her bleeding arm against her chest.
Her iron grip loosened just enough for Tyler to rip his arm violently free.
He didn’t even look back at their furious faces.
He sprinted blindly down the long, dark hallway of the massive house.
He didn’t know the layout of the sprawling mansion well enough to find the back door in the dark.
Their heavy, frantic footsteps pounded against the hardwood floorboards right behind him.
“Get back here!” Brenda roared.
Her voice echoed terribly off the high vaulted ceilings.
Tyler lunged for the first brass doorknob he saw in the shadows.
He practically fell into a small guest room and kicked the heavy door shut behind him.
He fumbled desperately with the cheap brass lock mechanism on the handle.
His sweaty fingers slipped twice before he finally twisted it until it clicked loudly.
He backed away from the solid wood until his spine hit the cold plaster wall.
His chest heaved violently up and down as he gasped for thin air.
His hands were shaking so violently he could barely even form a coherent thought.
He needed his phone right now.
He desperately needed to call the police before they broke the door down.
But a wave of fresh, nauseating panic hit him.
His main smartphone had completely died during third period math class today.
He had left it plugged into the wall charger in Brenda’s kitchen back home.
Then his panicked brain sparked with a desperate, tiny memory.
His old, cracked spare phone.
He had shoved it deep into the bottom pocket of his backpack this morning to listen to downloaded music on the bus.
He fell hard to his knees on the plush carpet.
He tore the heavy canvas zipper of his bag completely open.
He blindly dumped the heavy textbooks and crumpled homework papers onto the floor.
His shaking hand brushed against cold metal at the very bottom of the bag.
He pulled it out and jammed his thumb against the cracked power button.
The broken screen lit up with a dim glow.
It had twelve percent battery remaining.
It had to be enough.
His slick fingers slipped on the shattered glass as he rapidly dialed 9-1-1.
He pressed the tiny speaker flush against his ear.
He was completely terrified the women would hear the ringing from the hallway.
The operator’s calm voice crackled through the terrible speaker.
“911, what is your emergency?” the dispatcher answered.
Tyler aggressively cupped his hand over his mouth to muffle his shaky voice.
“Please, you have to help me,” he whispered as quietly as humanly possible.
Hot tears were freely streaming down his flushed face now.
“My stepmom and my real mom are trying to kill me.”
He rattled off Heather’s secluded home address as fast as his tongue would physically allow.
“They confessed that they murdered my dad, and now they’re trying to get to me.”
A massive thud suddenly echoed from the hallway.
The heavy wood visibly splintered around the painted frame.
Tyler shoved the dying phone as far under the guest bed as his arm could reach.
He left the emergency line completely open so the dispatcher could hear everything.
The door violently shook in its frame again, sending white dust falling from the ceiling.
“Open this door right now!” Heather screamed like an absolute maniac from the hallway.
Tyler scrambled to his feet in a total panic.
He looked frantically around the small, unfamiliar guest room for any kind of weapon.
There was no fire escape outside the single window.
The window itself was painted shut and too small to squeeze through anyway.
There was no other exit out of this deadly trap.
His terrified eyes landed on a heavy, solid ceramic lamp sitting on the corner desk.
He lunged for it and ripped the power cord right out of the wall socket.
He gripped the thick ceramic base with both hands like a baseball bat.
The brass doorknob jiggled furiously in the frame.
The solid pine door began to split violently down the middle.
They were absolutely going to get inside this room.
They were going to kill him for the inheritance money just like they killed his dad.
Tyler raised the heavy lamp over his shoulder.
He braced his feet against the carpet, waiting for the wood to finally give.
The final, massive kick from the hallway sent the door flying completely open.
The heavy brass deadbolt tore through the splintered wood, just like Tyler had feared.
Heather stood in the doorway, chest heaving, holding a long kitchen knife in her right hand.
Brenda stood right behind her, clutching her bloody forearm and glaring with pure hatred.
Heather took a slow, menacing step into the bedroom.
“There’s nowhere else to run, Tyler,” she said, her voice dropping to an eerie calm.
She glanced down and saw the glowing screen of the old phone peeking out from under the bed frame.
Her pale face went completely white.
“He called 911,” she hissed over her shoulder to Brenda.
Heather’s dark eyes went completely pitch black with rage.
“Then we need to finish this right now before they get here,” Brenda snapped.
Heather raised the gleaming kitchen knife and lunged across the small room.
Tyler didn’t hesitate or freeze this time.
He swung the heavy ceramic lamp with every ounce of strength he possessed.
The heavy base smashed directly into the side of Heather’s face with a sickening crunch.
Glass and ceramic shattered everywhere across the carpet.
Heather screamed in pure agony and dropped the knife instantly.
She collapsed to her knees, clutching her bleeding face with both hands.
Tyler dropped the broken lamp base and booked it straight for the open doorway.
Brenda reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt fabric as he tried to squeeze past her.
Tyler twisted his body violently, slipping completely out of the shirt.
He left Brenda holding nothing but empty fabric.
He sprinted down the hallway in his undershirt, his bare feet slapping against the wood.
He reached the front entryway and practically threw himself against the heavy front door.
He flung it open to the cool night air just as Brenda rounded the corner behind him.
Two police officers were already standing on the porch with their hands resting on their holstered guns.
Tyler practically collapsed into the first officer’s arms.
“Help me,” Tyler gasped out, pointing wildly behind him into the house.
“They’re trying to kill me.”
He caught his breath, his chest burning.
“They killed my dad, too.”
The two officers didn’t need to be told twice.
They drew their weapons and rushed past Tyler into the house.
“Police, drop the weapon!” one of them bellowed down the hallway.
Within seconds, the sounds of scuffling and shouting filled the house.
Both women were quickly forced face down onto the expensive hardwood floor in heavy steel handcuffs.
Tyler stood safely on the front lawn, wrapped in a coarse, warm blanket a paramedic had given him.
He watched the flashing red and blue lights paint the pristine suburban neighborhood.
The officers hauled Brenda out the front door first.
Her face was streaked with smeared makeup and tears of rage.
She glared at Tyler as the officer shoved her toward the back of the waiting cruiser.
Tyler pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders.
He looked his corrupt stepmom dead in the eye.
“Wrong answer, ho,” he said quietly.
Brenda opened her mouth to scream something back, but the officer shoved her into the back seat and slammed the door shut.
Heather was brought out next, a bloody bandage pressed against her cheek.
She didn’t even look at Tyler as they guided her into the second squad car.
Tyler took a deep breath of the cold autumn air, feeling truly safe for the first time in six months.
He watched the tail lights of the police cruisers disappear down the long driveway.
THE END
Tell us what you think about this story, and share it with your friends. It might inspire them and brighten their day.
If you enjoyed this story, read this one: When the lawyer read my grandma’s will, my entire family turned and stared at me.
Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
