“Alright. I’m heading home. Enjoy the rest of your shift, everyone!”
“Hold up.” The heavy-set, dark-haired woman that Melissa had grown accustomed to calling “boss” for almost three years now held up a resolute hand to stop the eager youngling in her tracks. “It’s pitch-black out there, raining, and almost midnight. Do you have a ride?”
“It’s only two blocks,” Melissa insisted. “And I have my umbrella and pepper spray.”
Normally, Mel got off around 6pm, before it got too dark out. But Sherry’s Boutique had been understaffed the last few weeks, so Melissa had been asked to stay late in exchange for a bonus on her next paycheck. She and her sister, Debby, had been having a rough go with finances lately, and their mother’s medical expenses were beginning to pile up. A bonus was sorely needed.
“An umbrella and pepper spray won’t be worth a penny if that crazy person gets you. Haven’t you been watching the news?” Sherry demanded.
The news was too depressing for Mel to stomach of late, so she had left that morbid responsibility up to Debby. Melissa often came home after a long day to find her sister seated in front of the TV with a pillow hugged tightly to her chest as she watched the newest story of mayhem taking place somewhere in the city. Melissa would take a moment to reminisce about her wish to return to their tiny town where winning the lottery was more likely than murder. Then she’d remember her mom and why they had moved in the first place, and she’d scold her sister for watching such atrocities around their ill mother.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll call you when I get home,” she promised.
Sherry wasn’t convinced, so she hollered over to one of the guys cleaning the back. “Dan! You can leave early if you take Mel home,” she told him.
Dan whooped with excitement and tossed his mop to Sherry. “You got it, Boss.” He disappeared for a moment before returning with his things, a cap pulled low on his head. “Ready, Gingertop?” he asked, ruffling Melissa’s already messy curls.
Though he was loud, and he teased her relentlessly, Melissa quite liked Dan. She imagined him to be the big brother she never had. He kept the boutique alive even during the slowest hours of the day. There was just a cheeriness about him that spread like wildfire to the rest of the staff whenever he was on shift. This cheery demeanor led them out to his truck in the form of whistling the tune of “Great Day in the Morning.” Although it was neither daytime, nor morning, it made Melissa smile to herself.
When they reached the car, Dan started throwing his belongings in the back, still whistling. He came around to open Melissa’s door when his phone rang. He made a dramatic show of looking at the caller and mouthing that it was his brother while rolling his eyes sarcastically before answering. “Y’ello?” he said.
A pause. Dan’s expression changed to distinct annoyance.
“Are you kidding me? We just replaced the last one, how could you manage to blow another already?” Dan snapped. “Don’t you dare say you were watching the road. Obviously, you weren’t.”
Melissa dropped her eyes to the ground and began a careful examination of the white, painted parking lot lines to avoid eavesdropping on their conversation. However, it only lasted a few more moments before Dan hung up. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and sighed heavily. “I hope I wasn’t this big a handful when I was his age,” he muttered.
“Is everything okay?” Melissa asked.
Dan shook his head. “My brother has a flat tire. He needs me to pick him up.”
While Dan wandered to the other side of the car to ponder a solution to their problem, Melissa thought of her sister. She wouldn’t want Debby stranded on the highway alone, especially at night. She couldn’t possibly ask Dan to abandon his brother for her sake. Family always came first in Melissa’s mind.
“Really, you don’t have to drive me,” she insisted.
“Are you sure?” Dan looked back at the shop nervously as if expecting Sherry to burst out the front door and scold him for even considering leaving Mel to walk home alone. They were both secretly surprised when the door remained shut.
“I’m sure. Your brother needs you more than I do right now,” Melissa assured him. “I’ll just have my sister come pick me up.”
Dan still seemed reluctant, but after knowing she’d still have someone to take her home, he agreed. The two parted with a wave as Melissa pulled out her phone. However, she paused, staring at her sister’s number. It was late, and she didn’t like her sister to drive in the dark. Not to mention, if her sister came to pick her up, she’d have to pack their mother in the car or leave her home alone, and Melissa didn’t like either of those options. Her mother was supposed to be resting. Melissa made the executive decision that the best option that avoided most of the problems was to make her way home on foot. After sending Debby a text to let her know she was on her way home, Melissa placed her phone back in her purse and started off.
Despite the lack of light, the walk home felt relatively normal at first. Cars still drove by, lighting up the sidewalk; people in restaurants and bars filled the streets with comfortable noise; and even the usual homeless wanderers that might have been cause for concern seemed either to be gone or too busy to bother with the petite girl walking alone in the middle of the night. It was as if the streets, aware of her presence, had prepared themselves just for her safety.
Then Melissa turned down a corner that took her away from the hubbub of city life, and everything seemed to go eerily quiet. During the day, when the sun was still high enough in the sky to light her path, the trash-laden alleyway was just another landmark on her journey home. But at night, the looming piles of garbage and dumpsters warned of potential, hidden threats. Rats, feral cats, stray dogs; anything could be lurking in the shadows, or worse, anyone. There were no car lights to illuminate the blackness of the path, or chatter from couples to fill the void of silence with ambiance, and the street was so dirty that not even the local homeless could stand the smell enough to stomach sleeping there. It was just Melissa, and the dark, and the quiet. And the feeling of something peering at her from the shadows.
Shivering, though it wasn’t cold out, Melissa hurried along more quickly. The walk home had never felt this long before. Had she taken a wrong turn? Was she lost? Melissa surely hoped not, but her fears were beginning to get the better of her. She thought back to the threat Sherry had warned her about: a crazy man murdering people in the dead of night. Melissa had overheard the other staff saying that he used a large pocketknife. He pounced on women when they were alone, secluded, and vulnerable. And he never left anything behind.
Heart sufficiently pounding in her chest from her own imagination, Melissa pulled out her phone. Debby had sent a reply to her text, but Melissa didn’t read it. She dialed her sister. At the very least, maybe no one would dare attack her if they thought there would be a verbal witness to the crime. The phone rang and rang and rang, but Debby didn’t answer. Sweat on her palms made her grip the device tighter. The voicemail kicked in, so Melissa hung up and dialed again. More ringing filled her ears, narrating her solitude, clanging like an alarm in her head and reminding her of how alone she really was.
When Melissa received the answering machine again, she started to call a third time, but she only made it to the fourth number in the sequence. Suddenly, somewhere to her left, a bag of forgotten trash that had been sitting on top of an overflowing dumpster was knocked to the cement with a crash that startled Melissa enough that she tripped on her own feet, and her phone went flying from her hand. Melissa stood completely still, staring at the dumpster. She waited for someone to come streaking out from behind it, brandishing a weapon as they lunged for her, but no one came, and eventually, Melissa’s fear diminished enough for her to control her own eyes.
Spotting her phone, she snatched it up from the concrete to find the screen had cracked in a web of jagged lines. She stood there momentarily, pleading under her breath for the phone to light up as she tapped the screen with her shaking finger. The device remained as dark as her surroundings. Mel shoved her phone back in her purse and took out the pepper spray. In her mounting dread, she realized how right Sherry had been. Pepper spray would do little to protect her against a real threat. Still, it made her feel just a little bit better to hold it in her hand, thumb on the trigger.
Picking up the pace to a run, Melissa raced to the other end of the alley, knowing that if she at least made it that far, she’d be back on a populated street with witnesses and passers by. To her surprise and tremendous relief, she made it. Across the street, her apartment building waited patiently for her. She didn’t slow down until she had punched in the community code and the gate swung open. Once inside, she forced the gate closed and took a deep, long, relieved breath of clean air. She made it, safe and sound.
Melissa began to trudge through the complex to her building, stomping up the stairs to her family’s second floor, two-bedroom apartment. She unlocked the front door, pushed it open, and was greeted by the familiar droning of the news anchor, going on in that deep, soulless voice of his, about some political issue that was “taking the world by storm.” She rolled her eyes and dropped her purse on the floor by the door. “Debby, how many times have I told you not to watch this stuff when Mom is home?” she called, walking into the living room.
To Melissa’s surprise, her sister wasn’t there. The couch sat empty and cold, the throw pillows lazily discarded on the floor. Melissa walked over and picked them up. “Debby? Mom?” She set the pillows on the couch as she looked across into the empty kitchen. There was no response.
Sighing in frustration, Melissa turned off the TV and walked down the hall. She pushed open the door to her mother’s room and spotted the elderly woman seated in her wheelchair, staring vacantly out the window. “Mom,” Mel said, entering the room. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
When she reached her mother’s side, the stench of urine and something else, emanated from the woman’s chair. Melissa slowed, confusion taking over. It was clear that her mother had experienced another accident while Melissa was at work, but why had Debby not taken care of it already? Mel rubbed her mother’s shoulder comfortingly. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll go draw a bath for you. I’ll be back in a minute.”
The frail woman turned her head to acknowledge the presence of her daughter, but she made no attempt to respond verbally. Melissa left the room and started the water to the tub in the bathroom. All the while, she called out to her sister, who did not answer. Finally, having had enough of being ignored, she stormed over to the door to the bedroom that they shared. “Debby!” she called. “Are you in there?”
Nothing.
Taking the handle, Melissa pushed the door open slowly, noticing the lack of light before anything else. Strange. Maybe Debby was sleeping. Melissa tiptoed into the room, reaching out in front of her for the bed that she was sure was there somewhere. Sooner than she expected, her feet hit something lying in the middle of the room. She pushed it aside with her foot and bent down to feel the sheets of her sister’s bed.
“Debby?” she whispered.
But the bed was empty, and when Melissa reached for the lamp on the desk nearby, she found it was not there. Confused, she returned to the doorway, tripping for the second time over the object on the floor, and flicked on the overhead light. She turned, and stared, and stared. Then her breath came in hiccups. Then sobs. Then a scream, ripped from the pits of her stomach in a way that shook the walls of the tiny apartment like paper.
Melissa stumbled from the room, shrieking for help. She made it to the front door just as one of her neighbors began to pound on it. She flung it open and all but fell outside, sobbing, and shaking, and pointing down the hall towards a horror indescribable with words. While her neighbor went into the house to see what had happened, his wife picked Melissa up and guided her into the apartment next door. Between the chaos of her mind and volume of her terror, Melissa could hear her neighbor on the phone with the police, telling them what lay in wait when they arrived. His words were foreign in combination, and Melissa screamed louder. Hands held hers, and a voice tried to shush her long enough to get some answers, but Melissa was inconsolable. Then, through all of it, Melissa heard that horrible, deep, soulless voice that only ever seemed to spout depression and fear:
“…in a more direct approach, this perpetrator has taken to breaking into homes. The police urge the public to, please, lock your doors and windows. They don’t know where he’ll strike next, but they don’t want to take any chances.”
Image Credit [Photo by Lisa Amann on Unsplash]
by 
Emma Croft
Recently, Emma graduated from the University of St. Thomas with a Bachelor of Arts in English with a Concentration in Writing. Currently, she lives in Texas with her husband and two beautiful cats. It is Emma’s dream to share her work with others who will enjoy it and find inspiration to begin creative adventures of their own of which they, too, can be proud.
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