Page 89 of Play Nice

I laughed. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Mariella told me she would come by that weekend, along with a few members of her collective.

Thankfully, it was a weekend the girls were with their father.

I got off the phone with Mariella, and for the first time since I moved in, I felt like I could exhale.

That night, the girls and I had breakfast for dinner. We flipped pancakes to Fleetwood Mac, sang into spoons.

Thunder only happens when it’s raining…

I woke up in the night to a crack of thunder. A brutish summer storm.

At the sound, my eyes flipped open. It took a moment for me to realize I couldn’t move.

It felt as though something heavy was sitting on my chest. I found it difficult to breathe. My entire body was rigid, with pins and needles up and down my limbs.

I attempted to relax back into sleep, but a white flash of lightning warned of more thunder and put me on edge.

There’s something terrible about that time between lightning and thunder. That cruel purgatory of anticipation, waiting for the universe to scream.

I realized I still couldn’t move. I’d never experienced sleep paralysis before, but my sister Helen had. She went through a spell of it in her teenage years, so I knew what it was. I didn’t immediately panic.

Not until something moved in my peripheral vision. My eyes followed the movement.

The door to my room. It swung open. Slowly. So slowly.

I expected to see one of my daughters. Cici.

Instead, there was a hulking shadow. It took up the entirety of the doorway.

A voice in my head. Don’t look.

Sweat drenched my hair, my back.

Don’t look.

It was there. It was there.

The house shook. Thunder.

It stepped inside. Inside the room. Inside the sound of the thunder, to hide its own noise. Its step.

Don’t look.

How could I not?

The shadow moved in such a way that I knew it wasn’t a shadow. It prowled, crawling along the walls. Into the dark spaces. The corner.

And shadows don’t have tails.

Close your eyes.

It was in my head, but it was also standing in the corner of the room, watching me.

Another flash of lightning, and I saw it.

The beast of the house. The demon.