In the Dead of Night

The hands of the clock glower back at me in the darkness. 2.15am. I can’t sleep. I’m standing at my bedroom window in the dark, staring down into the street. One or two houses show lights on here and there. Perhaps they can’t sleep either, or perhaps they live tranquil lives and are sleepily watching the end of a film on Netflix.

I usually fall asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours during the day. I try not to, but I do. Then, come midnight, I creep around the house like a thief in the night. I do this until the grey dawn leaks under the curtains. I creep because it’s the middle of the night and every sound I make seems to crash against the walls of the house. I have no one nearby to disturb. I have no one to share party walls with. I have no one.  I’m just me, Monica, on the wrong side of forty, afraid and tired: afraid of losing myself in these God forsaken small hours and tired of worrying about it. I continue to stare down into the street. It’s empty. I want to go out, to be free of these four walls. People say I’m a night owl, that I overthink things, that I should try therapy.  

It’s true. I do overthink. For example, is it so true that evil deeds are done mostly in the shadow of night? The street has always beckoned me after dark. It shouldn’t, but it does. Is it true that murderers, rapists, and muggers come to life at night, just like children’s toys, casting long macabre shadows as they search for victims to dance with?   I stare down my street. My street’s not like that. Look at it. It’s deserted. Not even a cat prowls around the bins like they do in late-night thrillers.  Pools of light from streetlamps shimmer on the pavements as if waiting for ne’er-do-wells to enter from stage right, flick knives glinting in the dark, awaiting their cue. But they never come.

Anyhow, how do they know anyone will come? Who is it that’s going to come along this street to satisfy their evil desires? What are the chances? How long will they wait before they get tired and go home?  A solidary car may pass by looking for an all-night garage, but no one else. I know this because I stand here every single night. There are no drunks staggering home, there never are. I know for sure it’s not a red-light district, which is a kind of shame because at least then there would be something, or someone, to watch.

So, the question is, do axe murderers and the like, just park themselves in a hedge for the night in the hope that a victim will just happen by? I think not. So, tonight I will go out. Do what I always long to do, have the streets to myself. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the light. Isn’t that what they say?  So, I pull on my coat and boots, I’m going out.

I feel a sense of liberation. I do indeed have the street to myself. No loud-mouthed teenaged girls pushing past me on their way to college. No distracted mothers with screaming toddlers, and, mercifully, no Mrs. Jacobs. A glimmer of light shines from an upstairs window at No.12.  I wonder if it’s her room. I wonder if she’s watching me. I give the window a mocking salute as I pass by. Tomorrow, she can tell me again how she couldn’t wish for a better son than Derek, who, as far as I know, just sits watching video games all day when he’s not dragging his fishing tackle down to the canal to just sit there all day instead. But not now. I don’t have to listen to her jabbering. I don’t have to be nice to her and her weird son. I’m invisible here in the dark.

As it turns out I don’t have the street to myself. In the doorway of Jolly Fryer fish and chip shop I see a huddle of greasy black rats devouring the detritus of the day thrown down by morons. I shudder. So much trash. I won’t be eating from there again. The heels of my boots make a sort of clickety, clipping noise as I walk past Mr. Pugh’s drapery shop. The sound reminds me of one of those cops shows on TV, where the showgirl totters home on her four-inch stilettoes and tight red miniskirt. You just know the axe murderer is waiting for her just around the corner.

It’s cold. I feel it seeping through my clothes. I see Charington Woods ahead. And then again, I don’t see it. I know it’s there but what lies ahead is just a swathe of blackness against the dark grey sky, like ink spilled on blotting paper, like those images they give psychopaths to look at, like the ones I looked at yesterday in my therapy session. Thoughts of Salem’s Lot and The Blair Witch project, neither of which ended well, flood my mind. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the light. Right? A malevolent moon strays from behind a cloud. The trees reach up their spindly branches to claw at its light. All the better to see you with my dear. From a distance I hear an owl hoot, low and long. I shudder. I need to go back. Maybe this was not such a good idea after all?

Mrs. Jacobs twitches her net curtain and watches Monica walk past under the lamplight.  She hates the way the woman sneers at Derek when his back is turned. She’s not surprised to see her walking down the street in the middle of the night, she’s always been strange that one. And she needn’t think she didn’t see her disgusting salute as she passed by. She hopes Derek didn’t see it.  Trash, that’s all she is. Just so much trash. Mrs. Jacobs knows Derek is a good boy, too good for the likes of that one.  She straightens the curtain, watching as her neighbour disappears into the gloom. Hateful woman.  Hadn’t she laughed in her face when she suggested that Monica and Derek go out sometime? Derek heard that cruel laugh.

Mrs. Jacobs stops sharpening the blade of Derek’s fishing knife. It glints like the scales of a fish just gutted. Later the rats stop sniffing around the pavement outside the chip shop. Instead, like an inky black oil slick, they slither towards the trail of blood dripping from the crumpled heap in the doorway of Mr. Pugh’s drapery shop like so much trash.