Monday, April 18, 2016

The Unwelcome Nightlight



The next day, Sophia woke to her cell phone in another room. Fear made her forget to set her alarm, and sheslept through her first appointment. Sophia did not need to be told this was no way to endear herself to country-folk. She assumed the call was from an angry customer demanding to know why she was not at their door with samples of dish soap as promised a few days before.

Instead, the call was from Beatrice. Swayze was dead. 

He'd eaten too much ScornFish, put nicotine patches all over his body, and went out for coffee. This time, there was not enough pot smoked or liquor drank to balance his heart rate down to a normal speed. He was left at home by a friend and dead on the couch a few hours later when his roommate came home from work.

Beatrice didn't know what time it happened, so Sophia called Janessa, who had dated Swayze a long time ago, before he started drugs.  Swayze and Janessa had remained friends. Janessa was clearly upset to hear from Sophia at a time like this, but she plugged it up and told Sophia that Swayze had died just before midnight. He'd shit himself. The couch was ruined.

Sophia nearly screamed when she hung up the phone. In her mind, there could be no other explanation than Swayze's ghost having one last torture session in her back yard the night before. 

Sophia cried and cried, but not because she was sad. Sophia's greatest fear had been that he'd go on and on and never die, and she would never be able to go home again. He was so smart and relentless that Sophia knew he'd fixate on her no matter where she lived, waiting patiently until she did try to return. He would find her then.

She wondered if Swayze had done this on purpose. His roommate was about to move because Swayze had not paid rent in months. He hadn't looked for work, but he had filled out a few papers for financial aid to go back to school. Anyone he could ask for money had stopped answering his calls long ago. With Sophia out of the picture for real, maybe Swayze had nowhere left to go. Sophia tried to decide if she was bothered by this.

Later that afternoon, she updated her online profiles with, "Woohoo! Swayze's dead!" She felt bad immediately, but could not deny the liberation. It felt good to release that chain and tell the world she was right and they were wrong.

The angry e-mails arrived in minutes, but these were people that let Swayze drive Sophia out of their circles and hangouts, and ultimately made her move across the country. She already knew she didn't need these friends, so their complacency had now cost those friends double. Sophia wanted to call each person back to say, "You backed the wrong horse."

She was pleased to receive a few more congratulations than she expected. Sophia wasn't the only one who saw Swayze's dark side. He was gone, truly gone, and Sophia was in a whole new world of endless possibilities. By the time she went to bed that night, Sophia wasn't even thinking about the flashing lights, and she was so exhausted she didn't think anything would keep her awake.

Sophia hadn't checked the exact time the flashing started the first night, but the second night they started again in the same time-frame, just as she'd turned off the lights and was climbing into bed. This time they came in rapid bursts, then waited a few seconds before firing again. Sophia collapsed by the night stand, and if she could find her voice, she would have screamed to no end.

This time, the lights lasted only a few minutes before they turned off for good, but Sophia was sure she heard a loud crash in the front yard. She stayed huddled by the bed a long time, and may have even slept a little before building up the nerve to climb into bed.

Continued Monday

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