Late Night Visitors

Late Night Visitors

My eyes flew open with a start. Were those voices I heard outside my bedroom door? I looked at the clock, 3:40; it was the middle of the night. Who could that be or was it a dream? It certainly wasn't my two cats, they were sound asleep on my bed. The voices seemed to be arguing.

My hearing had been going for the past few years so I wasn't sure if I was dreaming but without my hearing aids I couldn't be sure. I had lived alone for the past 15 years since my husband died and had never opened the door to anyone after dark in all those years. The only people who had a key to my home were my son and the nurse who came three times a week. It couldn't be my son, Kevin; he was travelling the world and had stopped in France to work. He had been gone for years. In fact he had married a French girl and intended to stay there.

I lay perfectly still and listened. There had been stories on the news about home invasions where old people had been raped. God, I was scared. Rigid with fear in fact.

Just in case of a night prowler I had a baseball bat hidden under my bed. What thoughts whirled through my head in this time of terror? I couldn't believe I was thinking if the bat was dusty. Good gracious, who cares if it is dusty, I could still crack a skull whether it was dusty or not couldn't I?

Slowly I reached under the bed, careful not to make a sound. Slowly and quietly I sat up. There was no sound from beyond my door.

Maybe it was my late husband coming to get me, I thought. Is this my imagination? Is this the way god tells you that you have died in your sleep. Are the dead coming to get the dead? I relaxed a bit and thought perhaps that was it I had died in my sleep and someone had come to take me to heaven.

Would I go to heaven? Where was heaven anyway? For that matter, where the hell was hell? It was amazing how many thought could travel through my head in a matter of seconds.

There were the voices again. This time I distinctly heard words. I had convinced myself by now that I was dead and they had come for me.

"But she is deaf," I heard a man's voice. "So we can't knock on her door, it would scare the life out of her." Little did they know my life had already been scared out of me.

Quietly I tip-toed to the door - bat at the ready.

With all my strength I swung open my bedroom door and there stood my son, Kevin and his wife. "Shit, Mom, don't hit me," he shouted as he dropped to the floor taking his wife with him. "It's me, Kevin."

"What the heck are you doing scaring me half to death, son?"

"Well, we were travelling and decided to come visit you but our train was late and there are no hotels in this forsaken neck of the woods, so we came straight here. I still have the key you gave me all those years ago."

"Lordy, lordy, you do know how to scare a poor old woman, don't you? You near gave me a heart attack, son. You wait until I get my robe and my hearing aids and we'll go downstairs."

"Oh mom, do you have anything to eat, we're starving."

"Haven't changed a bit, have you son?"

Well, at least I'm not dead, I thought. And I won't find out where heaven and hell are tonight. I wonder!

Word count: 625