Erin woke with a start. Her eyes opened wide, staring at the dark ceiling above her head. Had she heard a sound?
A bump came from downstairs, and she sat straight up, clutching the blanket to her breast. She lived alone, with no pets or feasible causes of bumps in the night. Her imagination turned to intruders.
Her mind raced as she tried to come up with some sort of plan. She didn’t own a gun, she didn’t believe in them, and in her wildest dreams she had never imagined a scenario in which she might need one. There was some mace in her purse, but her purse was downstairs. The nearest telephone was in the living room, also on the first floor.
Slipping out of the bed, she tiptoed to the door. She eased it open, wincing as its hinges creaked, and made her way cautiously down the upstairs hallway.
She felt her way along the wall, eyes straining in the dark for anything at all. She had never realized how little light filled the inside of her house.
A peek down the stairway told her that the coast was clear, at least at the moment, and she started down the stairs. Her whole body was tense as she took one step after another. One of the stairs usually creaked when she stepped on it, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember which one.
With great relief she reached the first floor. Erin peeked her head around the doorway to the living room, but saw nothing. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the dark for her to feel confident that she was alone, and she nearly ran to the telephone. She dialed 911, and proceeded to give her name and address to the operator on the other end.
Her purse was next to the phone, and while she talked into the receiver she searched for her mace. Once armed with it, she crouched there, in the corner, and waited for the police to arrive.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the officer told her. He had arrived an hour before, and searched the house and the surrounding yard for any sign of an intruder. “I don’t see anything.”
“I swear to god, someone was here,” Erin insisted, glancing around her home nervously.
“That may be so, ma’am,” the officer said somewhat impatiently, “But he is gone now. I don’t see any trace of him. Perhaps you ought to check and see if anything is missing.”
Erin thanked the officer and showed him the door, thinking to herself how stupid and childish she had been. Of course no one had broken in to her house. There wasn’t any reason someone would do such a thing. She had probably just had a bad dream and not shaken it off before waking up. She turned the lights off again and went upstairs.
**
The next day Erin went about business as usual. Her routine involved getting up early to make a full breakfast, followed by a shower, and finally plopping down in front of her computer to work on her novel. It had been four years since her first publications, and she had come up with three ‘New York Times Bestsellers’ since then. It was an early start to a career, but Erin was thankful.
Her books were mostly based on her life, growing up as an orphan with relatives that passed her from family to family until she had turned old enough to move out on her own. Four years of school, a somewhat worthless journalism degree, and she was out in the real world. She had written her first novel about her mother, the stories she had collected from her relatives, and it was an instant success. The profit from the book gave her the chance to quit her job as a waitress and buy this house, and kept her comfortable while she wrote the next book. Since she had no close relatives, living alone was almost a dream come true. The shy 26 year old rarely ventured outside her home, preferring the company of her computer.
After a couple hours of typing out notes, the phone rang.
“Hello?” answered Erin.
Nothing. Silence was the only response she got, and she repeated herself. She heard a click, and then a dial tone. Erin shrugged and put the receiver back on the cradle, turning again towards the computer.
She lost track of time as she wrote her story, becoming involved with the characters and buried with their dialog. By the time she looked at the clock, it was already five o’clock, and Erin realized that she was hungry again.
Looking guiltily at the computer screen, sorry to leave the scene unfinished, she got out of her chair and went towards the kitchen. It would be no good to starve herself for her work, she thought. It was much better to take care of the author than the story. It would work itself out anyway.
Boxes of easy-to-prepare food lined the cupboards. Erin had selected pasta-roni and begun to prepare the food when the phone rang again.
Keeping an eye on the stove, she went back to her phone and picked it up.
“Hello?” she said.
