In the distance

The woman sits in the dark, staring out the window. Her room is filled with strange and creepy shadows, so she stares outside to avoid them. The power had inexplicably gone out about an hour ago. The whole block sits under a veil of darkness. Fallen leaves occasionally dance and crackle down the street as tree branches click like bones in the warm autumn breeze. Silence. No dogs bark, no cars pass on the street. The silence unnerves the woman, makes her edgy. Even the breeze is dying. Life seems to have ground to a halt around her, like she was the last of humanity.
She stands up and walks to the phone to call the electric company. As she reaches out to the receiver, a chilling thought runs through her head: what if the phone is dead? She scolds herself for behaving like a scared child. The phone will be fine, she assures herself, this isn’t one of those awful horror movies. Her hand shakes uncontrollably as she touches the cold plastic of the phone. She pulls away. Stop it! It’s just the phone! Pick it up! Her heart beats faster as her hand darts out and grabs the phone before her mind can stop it. She stares into darkness in disbelief. She drops the receiver and backs away, as if the phone is a deadly snake ready to strike. The phone comes to rest on the floor, silent.
In the distance, a scream pierces the silence of the night. The woman quickly backs herself into a corner, equal distance from the open window and the dead phone. She crouches low, tighter, trying to make herself disappear. Another scream rings out, this time much closer. She covers her ears, her mind racing. What is going on?
After several minutes, she uncovers her ears. Silence again rules the night. After a moment, the silence seems to grow unbearable. More comforting than a scream, though, she thinks to herself. She stands up in the corner, embarrassed and braver as the time passes. She believes it kids were screaming, perhaps a Halloween prank to scare any trick-or-treaters still on the loose. That, maybe, or she may have even imagined the screams. That could be it, she tells herself, my imagination is going crazy in the silent darkness. Realizing that she is sweating, she walks over to the open window to cool herself in the fading breeze. Pulling the curtains back, she sees him: A man with an awkward grinning face, and a large knife dripping blood. She screams.
In the distance, an angry woman slams her window shut. She found it impossible to sleep with all the crazies in the neighborhood screaming at the tops of their lungs. “one power outage, and the town goes nuts,” she mumbles to herself as she kicks of her slippers and gets back into bed. After several minutes, the room becomes stuffy. Unable to fall asleep because of the heat, the woman gets up and throws the window open. She returns to bed. As her head hits the pillow, the power comes back on. Squinting in the blinding light, the woman sees the strange grinning man with the bloody knife beside her bed. She screams.

In the distance…
A grin…
A drip…
A scream…


I wrote this as a 2004 Halloween story for my daughters. They enjoyed it very much.