Lorie — In the Dead of the Night

Lorie awoke to the sound of a thud in the middle of the night. She assumed the source to be a large suitcase landing on its side. Kevin was clumsy, but he wasn’t supposed to be home until the weekend. She shut her eyes and called out to her husband, expecting to hear his voice in return, but all she heard was her own, echoing through the dark.

Lorie pushed herself upright and lethargy disappeared in the blink of an eye. She called out again, afraid that it wasn’t a suitcase that fell, but her husband himself, as a result of having one too many. Her concern turned into fear when the lights in her room wouldn’t turn on, the fan wouldn’t either; the power was out. Kevin must have stumbled over something in the dark and broken his nose or a bone in his body. Difficulties are never alone, and often without reasonable explanations, she thought as she stepped out of the bed, barefoot. She thought about the possible situations that could follow.

Lorie grabbed her phone and trod downstairs, but couldn’t find Kevin. She walked to the door, pointing her phone’s flashlight at it. The door was locked from inside, and there was no out-of-place luggage, which meant that Kevin wasn’t home. That, however, didn’t calm her down. Lorie’s creativity was limited to predictions of misfortunes. Someone could have cut the power to the house and could already be waiting inside. Kevin wouldn’t play such games in the dead of the night.

A chill ran down her spine as she imagined a burglar inside her house. She realized that leaving the torch on would give away her position, and so turned it off and silenced her phone. She had seen enough horror movies to know what happens to careless people. In a group, only the lead actors and the comic relief stay alive. The screamers are the first to go, the tough ones are the last. When alone, however, only those with a presence of mind live through the plot. Although she had a tendency to overanalyse, Lorie was smart, and she promised herself she would live through the night; she tried to be unafraid.

Lorie crouched into the living room behind the stairs and scanned the room for either a sign of an intruder or the source of the thud. When she could find neither, Lorie loosened the grip on her phone, stood up and began to convince herself that she must have been dreaming. She and Kevin were going to laugh about it after he returned. Her relief was momentary, however, as she heard faint, slow footsteps dragging beyond the living room.

She pressed her back against the wall and crouched again. She thought of calling Kevin up but decided against it as it could prove to be counterproductive. She held her phone to her chest and felt her heartbeat rise. Lorie realized that a phone wouldn’t help her defend herself against anyone, it makes an inferior weapon. She would have better luck in the kitchen, to the left of the stairs. Lorie nearly screamed upon entering it. She spun away into a crouch, hidden from view, and held her breath, as she hid from the man in her backyard.

Lorie was smart. She did not peer around the edge of the wall to get a better look at the intruder but instead used her phone as a makeshift mirror. She only saw the silhouette of the man and thought at first that the shadows were playing tricks on her frightened mind. The man was tall, but fat and faced away from her. It must have been the sound of him jumping over the fence that woke her up. The slow, shallow footsteps belonged to the enormous creature who almost dragged his feet when he walked. He seemed to be pacing back and forth in the yard. He was alone.

When he turned around, Lorie could see that he was taking a video with his phone and muttering to himself, or his intended audience. She recognized him and panicked. He was a nameless face, but what made him particularly memorable was that she had caught him clicking pictures of her wrapped in a towel that morning through her bedroom window, and had flipped him off before drawing the curtains. He was definitely a pervert, but now he was also a possible threat. It was possible that he knew about Kevin being away. It was possible that knowing that Kevin was away, gave him the confidence to think that he could do whatever it was that he had intended to do. Lorie couldn’t quite understand why he was pacing in the yard and not looking for her inside the house by now. Maybe he’s recording a vlog, or talking to someone else, or maybe he’s having second thoughts. Whatever the reason was, she knew she had to deal with this menace. Had he been a burglar, Lorie would have called the police, but she was enraged at what she thought the man had in mind, and would teach him a lesson herself. She would tell Kevin all about it after he returned.

She stood up and let out a silent sigh of determination. A combative spirit overwhelmed her. She timed her movements and tiptoed into the kitchen with the proficiency of a cat burglar and headed towards the counter, where she couldn’t be seen from. She didn’t mean to kill, only to maim or seriously injure, and thus chose a steel ladle over serrated steel as her weapon. Lorie clenched the sturdy ladle in her left hand and checked the yard. The man had placed his backpack on the ground and had just turned the other way. She left the phone on the counter, slid the door open and sneaked into the yard, her heart beating faster than ever.

The man wasn’t as tall as Lorie thought him to be. He was wearing a jacket, denims and a familiar red and white cap. She could see him swiping away furiously at the screen, muttering impatient chants of ‘Come On!’. He hadn’t heard her sneak up behind him. She prepared herself to scream at the intruder and swing the ladle as if it were a golf club, and when she was close enough, she did, pretending that the man was a golf ball. The man turned towards Lorie and his ear met the ladle. Crack! The horrifying sound echoed through the empty streets. The blow launched his cap in the air and made the ladle bend at a right angle. He collapsed face-first into the ground.

Lorie shouted at the pervert to leave. The commotion awakened a few neighbours but their lights were out, as the entire neighbourhood faced an electricity outage. The man didn’t respond. She prodded his feet as he lay motionless in the grass. He seemed to be unconscious. She raised the weapon and walked around to his head to get a better look at his face. It was surrounded by a pool of blood and his eyes were wide open. She began to panic when the realization set in. Lorie dropped to her knees in disbelief.

Was he dead? No, he couldn’t be. How could a ladle cause such damage? She hadn’t hit him that hard either. Or had she? How would she explain this to the police? She would tell them the truth about him being a pervert. But that wouldn’t stop her from being put into prison for murder. She didn’t have evidence either. She would tell them that it was an accident, that she only meant to scare him. No, the police wouldn’t believe that either. She would have to tell everyone that he had attacked her. Yes! That way she was defending herself and could gain sympathy. Nobody was around to check if he did or didn’t.

She looked around for witnesses. If there were any, she figured that they couldn’t see her or the man under the dim moonlight. She had to call the police and inform them right away. No, she would have to wake the neighbors up and gather support for herself. Better yet, she would call Kevin. He would tell her what to do. She picked up the blood-stained phone, which had a red and white ball bobbing sideways on its screen. It looked familiar, just like the cap, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on it. The smell was nauseating. She pressed the home button and dialed Kevin’s number after ignoring the notification that appeared on the screen, when the ball stopped moving, ‘Gotcha!’. She proceeded to explain to a sleepy, unsuspecting Kevin why there was a dead man in the backyard. Only he would ever know the truth, nobody else. Nobody, however, would ever know, how and why Lorie came to kill a man whose only crime was that he wanted to be ‘the very best like no one ever was’.