The Intruder

I’m 31 years old and have never pulled an all-nighter. I’ve never needed to. My study schedule for every exam in university had been carefully and methodically organized and scheduled. I never leave things until the last minute. I attend the occasional party but have never felt the desire to stay up past sunrise. But as I stare down at my fiancé's hospital bed at 7:03 AM, I realize this will be my first. And it’s my fault he’s here.

The Night Before

White chalk paint drips down the front of my oversized green sweatshirt. The garage door had banged open and startled me out of my concentration on painting the thin line of wood on my dresser frame, causing the paintbrush to splatter against my chest.

“Hannah, you’ll never guess what happened!” My best friend Charlie didn’t seem to notice my surprise or the mess. “Ally is cheating on Fletcher. Marcus saw her coming out of Cory’s house last night… at like 1:00 AM!” She exclaims without even waiting for my answer.

I have a vague idea of who Charlie is talking about—a neighbor down the street. Charlie has been my best friend since grade school, and we’ve never lived more than a couple blocks apart. With her recently moving in across the street, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find her already barging into my garage-turned-workshop.

“Ooooh, this is pretty!” She exclaims, running her fingers along the sticky, partially dry dresser. As usual, she’s already talking about something else before I even have a chance to acknowledge her gossip. Charlie likes to talk. A lot. 

“Yeah, I’m just about done with this one, then I’ll start on your bookshelf.” I eye Charlie’s fingerprints in the fresh paint, feeling a prickle of annoyance that I’ll have to touch up that spot. My fiancé, Austin, often affectionately refers to me as an “avid DIY’er with OCD.” There’s nothing wrong with wanting something to look good. I love painting anything I can get my hands on, and our old house gives me a lot of opportunities. First, it was painting all the baseboards white. Before that, it was painting our kitchen cupboards a rich, dark brown. My house has no shortage of yellow oak accents that, to me, just look old and dated.

Austin has always been very accommodating of my intrusive hobby, parking his truck outside so I can use the detached garage as a workspace, and lately navigating around laundry baskets full of our clothes while I update our bedroom dresser. 

Charlie is back to gossiping about another neighbor; Mrs. Lindwell’s cat is missing again. The batty old woman has called the police and told them it is their job to find Mr. Whiskers. I half-listen as I apply another coat of chalk paint over the smudged top.

“—and he saw him drive right by here!”

“What?” I ask. She is on to another new topic already. 

“Brandon! Toby saw him drive by your place last night. He is still so hung up on you.”

“No, I told you, Brandon is fine. He even has a new girlfriend. Brandon and I broke up two years ago.” I exclaim. “And besides, his office is just down the street, so he was probably just driving home from work.” Charlie likes Austin, but I’ve always suspected she wishes I had stayed with Brandon. She even tried to get us back together last year, but she claims it was an honest mistake that she invited Brandon to my surprise 30th birthday party. 

“Okay, whatever you say.” And with that, she is marching back outside to her house. I sigh in exasperation.

I start cleaning up my supplies and hammer the lid back on the paint can. I hear a door slam outside, and I glance at my wristwatch. It is nearly 11:00 p.m. Austin comes into the garage with an irritated look on his face.

“Hey babe, Charlie was here?” I nod quickly, and he continues, “You got to tell her to close that gate. She left it wide open again, and the back door wasn’t even closed all the way.” Lately, it’s been warm enough that I’ve been dragging the dresser into the backyard to paint. She must have checked there before she found me in the garage. 

“Okay, I will. How was coaching?”

Austin recounts the baseball game while laughing about his overeager assistant coach. “He’s 21 years old—just barely older than the players on the team!” He wanted coaching tips, so Austin had taken him for post-game beers.

Austin pops open the mini fridge in the corner and tosses me a beer; he cracks one for himself. He drops down onto the metal stool in the corner and continues talking about his team as I rinse the paintbrushes in the small sink Austin had installed last spring. Once I finally get everything tidied up and we’ve finished our beers, I have to suppress a yawn.

“Oh, yeah, it’s late. Let’s get inside.” He says. It took me nearly two hours to get everything finished and cleaned up, and it is now well past midnight.

Austin heads to the house while I strip off my paint-covered clothing, hanging them to dry over our shelving unit. As I’m pulling on my spare set of clothes, I hear a loud crashing noise from the house and Austin’s yelp of surprise. I hurry towards the back door of the house to find him sprawled across the kitchen floor, just inside the entrance. 

“What hap—”

“There’s something all over the floor,” he interrupts. “What was Charlie doing in here?” He seems agitated and is rubbing his shoulder, where he must have landed hard.

I find a smashed bottle of olive oil, which had leaked the slick liquid off the countertop and across the floor. Had I left that out after making pasta tonight? Had Charlie come in here looking for me and knocked it off? Austin had said the door had been left open, so she must have looked inside. 

“I’m sure it was just an accident,” I state as I wipe a kitchen towel through the mess. He grumbles and heads towards the stairs up to our bedroom. It is so strange—if Charlie knocked over the oil, why didn’t she clean it up, or at least tell me? I push the thought out of my head, planning to ask Charlie about it tomorrow. 

I yawn and head up the stairs to start getting ready for bed. Austin is already asleep by the time I get up to our room; his clothes are strewn haphazardly across the bedroom. I pull on my pajama shorts and pause when I think I hear a noise from downstairs. I listen intently; sure enough, there is a rattling sound that seems to be coming from the living room. What could that be?

I make my way to the living room, flipping the lights back on as I go, but find nothing to explain the noise. As I walk by the window on the way back upstairs, I glance outside and notice an unfamiliar vehicle parked across the street. Normally, our neighbor parks his white work truck there, but tonight he’s moved it into his driveway instead. I squint across the dark street at the dark SUV. I can’t make out the make or model, but it does kind of look like Brandon’s SUV. Charlie had said he’d been seen driving by our house last night; could he be parked there now for some reason? Surely it’s just a coincidence. It’s not like he’s the only one with a black SUV.

I head back upstairs and crawl back into bed, lost in thought about Brandon. He had taken the breakup very hard. Then he had shown up at my office just a few months ago, after Austin proposed, trying to convince me to come back to him. He had told me it was too soon to be engaged to someone new. ‘You’re throwing away seven years together for someone you barely know!’ I also haven’t told anyone yet about the frequent text messages I delete from Brandon or what he said at my birthday party last year—when he cornered me in the hallway and drunkenly slurred that he would ‘get me back’ and that Austin was ‘in the way’.

I shiver as I recall his hot, sticky breath on my neck and the drunken whispers. He had never been violent or aggressive, but he was possessive. I’d never told Charlie, or even Austin, about my discomfort with Brandon, always stating that our breakup was simply because he “wasn’t right for me.” But I’ve heard he has a new girlfriend now, so he just needs time to move on.

My thoughts are interrupted by a sudden, shattering noise. I sit up, gripping the blankets, and shake Austin awake. 

He blinks up at me groggily. “What is it?”

“Someone is downstairs!”

“Huh?” His heavy eyes stare at me in confusion.

“Come on!” I jump out of bed, spinning around to find something to defend myself with, but find nothing. Austin slowly gets out of bed and follows me down the hall to the stairs while I fill him in on the noise he’d slept through in a hurried whisper.

Immediately, my eyes spy a broken vase on the floor at the base of the stairs. Water and roses surround the broken glass next to the small circular table where the vase had been. Austin had just brought those home from work spontaneously a few days ago. At the time, it had filled me with love and happiness; now, a spike of fear shoots through me at the sight of the unexplained mess of scattered rose petals.

Austin grabs a baseball bat from the front entry closet and searches throughout the house, using his phone as a flashlight. The light bounces across the walls, casting eerie shadows around the dark rooms. After a thorough search, he shrugs and says, “I don’t see anything.”

“Well, the vase didn’t just jump off the table!” I cry in a panicky voice.

He wraps his arm around my shoulder to comfort me and starts leading me towards the stairs. “Maybe you bumped it earlier and it just fell off after?”

I consider telling him about possibly seeing Brandon’s car but decide against it. That would require a long explanation when I probably should have already told him about Brandon’s fixations. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing. He is probably right; it was most likely just a silly accident. But I don’t remember touching that vase on my way up earlier. Although, what was the alternative? Brandon may be possessive and occasionally hot-headed and temperamental, but I don’t think he’d ever actually try to harm Austin. Would he?

I pause as we pass the kitchen. The microwave light glows red, reading 3:37 AM. How did it get so late? I try to keep my voice from shaking. “I’ll be right up.” He nods, and I wait for him to disappear up the stairs before turning to the knife block behind me. Just in case, I think as I slide out the long, sharp knife.

I settle into bed, trying to calm my racing heart. I thumb the handle on the sharp knife to ensure it is still wedged against the headboard, where I had discreetly placed it while Austin was climbing back into bed.

After a few tense, long minutes of holding my breath and listening intently, I hear nothing else. Slowly, exhaustion starts to build and carry me towards sleep.

In a daze, within moments of sleep, I hear a creaking sound as our bedroom door swings open. I launch myself out of bed, grabbing the sharp knife. My eyes lock in on Austin’s shocked face, lit up by the moonlight streaming in through the window. He is returning from the bathroom. I halt too late and stumble over the laundry basket on the floor holding our temporarily misplaced clothes. I throw my hands up to try to catch myself as Austin jumps forward to try to catch me. He hasn’t noticed the knife in my hand.

I try to stop, but it’s too late. The momentum propels me forward and down, slicing through his flesh and ripping downward across his hip and around his calf as he twists away from the pain. With a howl of pain, he crumples onto the carpet.

I press my hands tightly to his leg, trying to staunch the shocking flow of blood as he whimpers. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and look up just in time to see Mr. Whiskers, the apparent source of all tonight’s mysterious events, slink into the bedroom across the hall. I have barely a moment to consider that he must have gotten in when Charlie accidentally left the door open before I focus back on my weeping fiancé.

I move back to the nightstand to dial 911, my fingers leaving dark red, bloody stains on the touchscreen.

***

The nurses have informed me that Austin will be fine, but the recovery will be slow and painful. He’ll need to undergo a long bout of physiotherapy. After a long, shameful explanation to Austin (and an even longer explanation to the police), I leave the room so he can rest, with promises of further discussion around my fears about Brandon. I feel embarrassed, knowing that if I’d just been honest and forthright, this all could have been avoided.

I pull my phone out of my pocket, scroll through my list of contacts, and make a call. “Mrs. Lindwell? I found your cat.” Then I head home to sleep at last.