(June 11, 2010)

I awoke fast.

I came out of sleep in an instant, not knowing what time it was, for an instant not knowing where I was, only that the dream I was having was pleasant, and left me with a cheerful, almost peaceful feeling gracing my belly, though it obviously seemed to be fleeting. I was on the couch. Outside the window, before the thick gray day and the touch of drizzle, a dark mass leaning against the glass, head cocked, watching me.

As these several brief observations flickered across my brain in the blink of an eye, I sprang from my perch and fell to the ground, knocking my elbow hard against the floor. I flailed my arms and scrambled away from the window and when I looked back to the glass I was sure the specter would have disappeared, evaporated in the way of all bad horror films, but damned if he wasn’t still there, staring in at me in exactly the same manner, curiously, as if I were a specimen. I was reminded of the Stranger.

Was it Kyle? Playing a prank? The thought had to be considered, and considered fast, my heart rate pounding, demanding action. No, I decided. My brain hated the thought, threw up its hands and I muttered “Enough with this,” but it wasn’t. The face was too shrouded. The sun was not bright enough to silhouette. It wasn’t a mask. It wasn’t black and conformed, it was black and without depth. And the edges defining the head’s outline were fuzzy, as if out of focus. Before even wondering if it were my eyes, I blinked away sleep gunk, but my vision remained clear, all other lines crisp.

The air felt thick again but I barely processed it until later.

“Please don’t watch me,” I moaned. “Please go away.”

I was still moving across the floor, almost unconscious even of the motion as I scrambled, the ghoul getting farther and farther away. Making it to my bedroom door, I threw a hand on the latch and crawled back inside, slamming it behind me, the only sound was the easy patter of drizzle from outside the window I was now afraid to look at, wondering if maybe perhaps there was a second, or even the ridiculous notion that maybe the first had come around suddenly to continue his observation.

I lay there, breathing hard, wondering if I should make another break for it to the bathroom, where it was windowless, when my senses finally began to come back to me, and my brain kicked in with its relentless disbelief.

Kyle.

As my body settled, the memory became more muddled. The image became even harder to picture in my mind, for it was never very distinct at the beginning. Maybe it had been someone wearing a mask. In fact, it even seemed likely. In my just awakened state I attributed more to it, I was surprised, that makes sense. Could it have been another one of Kyle’s silly pranks? I thought so. It was certainly one of the easier ones.

Some part of my brain let float an image of Kyle standing crouched against my window, black mask on, his back to the parking lot where residents came and went all morning. Someone was bound to be suspicious. Someone would have noticed him. Was he really so bold? Would he have called it a prank? Somehow I didn’t think he’d be taken well, scaring a girl in her own home.

It didn’t seem to fit, was the matter. Kyle always seemed quiet and thoughtful. Now, with these pranks and this guise of philosophy to study it, he was an entirely different person. Was one all a mask? Was he really so uncaring to other’s feelings? It seemed nonsensical, but still altogether very, very plausible. I wasn’t ready to give the little prick even the benefit of the doubt.

My brain suggesting rational, tolerable, very practical answers with solutions, I opened my bedroom door, slowly. I looked at the window. Obviously it had been enough time to give the pervert his joke, and he’d seemed to abandon the scene. The window was empty.

I moved into the bathroom to start my shower, determined not to give in to the manipulations of the cruel pranksters, and went about my day in relative peace, the rain falling gently when the clouds weren’t hanging low, waiting.