Clueless

 

I guess I expected a lot more time to pass before pictures with a new boyfriend appeared on her Instagram account. She'd claimed I was the love of her life. Didn't that deserve a solid year of feeling shit? Maybe even two?

The answer seemed to be no.  Or no was the answer to another question I was now forced to ask myself: had she ever really loved me?  Because she sure looked happy with her new meathead boyfriend way less than a year after she collapsed into my mother's arms at my funeral. She'd even scrubbed all photos of me from her social media. I mean, okay, I'd left her first, but she didn't know that. She thought I was dead. Didn't death count for anything anymore?

 

Nightmare

 

The dog disappeared.  

Although it was after midnight, I wanted to look for him. I asked my mother to come with me. She said no; I pestered her until she agreed. 

Even with the streetlights to guide us, the neighborhood felt eerily dark, and devoid of life. But this was suburbia. I told myself I had nothing to worry about.

 

My mother chose our route. At first we just walked on the sidewalk, like normal people.  Eventually, however, she started leading us across lawns, and then into backyards. When she opened the backdoor into a bungalow, I protested, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” 

 

She laughed at me. “You’re the one who wanted to take a walk.” 

 

Not knowing what to do, I followed her into the house. We moved through the unlit rooms, until exiting via the front door, unseen. But my relief soon flared into horror, because my mother now insisted on passing through the next house, and the one after. Each bungalow seemed emptier than the last, until finally, inevitably, we came across a woman sitting on her couch. She greeted us with a welcoming smile. “The way you came in is now locked,” she said. “I'll show you another way out.”

 

She brought us into the kitchen. With a flourish she opened the oven door. "I'm afraid there's no other choice," she said. "You'll simply have to crawl through it."

New Month, New Project

    Megan woke with a start, her breathing ragged.

She reached over and ran her thumb over the smooth green stone on the bedside table. “I am here,” she whispered. “I am safe.”

Her heart rate slowly returning to normal, she took a sip of water from the cup next to the stone. Outside a dog was barking—probably the Hoovers’ Irish Setter, and probably what had woken her. With her aunt and uncle out of town, Megan would be alive to every sound in and around the empty house. As always at this time of night, she yearned for her tiny apartment, free of dark corners and spooky sounds. Her friends called it a shoebox, but they would never understand why Megan needed to see the front door from every corner of her home.

Now, though, she needed to sleep.

Megan lay back down and, closing her eyes, started reciting the alphabet backwards. The soft click of a door—or what she thought was the soft click of a door—made her fly up again.

You’re being ridiculous, she scolded herself. Her aunt and uncle’s house sat in a quiet, middle-class Minnesota suburb where nothing ever happened, except the occasional bike theft. The only burglary she knew of was the time Jim Clendenny broke into his grandma’s house to steal $10 for weed. He’d said he was sorry, and that was the end of it. The next-door neighbor was even a cop, for god’s sake.

Andy.

He was definitely home—she’d seen him a few hours ago, sitting on his mother’s back porch with his sister, the two of them chatting in low voices. She’d nearly gone out to say hello, but afraid to intrude, had decided against it. She and Andy already had plans to take an ice tea break tomorrow morning, while he painted the garage and she weeded her aunt’s flower beds. Megan had even made her aunt’s special ice tea recipe in anticipation of it.

She was trying to remember if there were any lemons in the refrigerator when she the sound of footsteps in the hallway shocked her into stillness. She hadn’t imagined it, or dreamt it, or simply feared it. Someone was in the house.

Whimpering to herself, Megan started to scramble out of bed, but she’d left it too late. A silhouette stood in the doorway of her bedroom.

“Megan Cooper,” a male voice said. “How nice to meet you.”