Work Text:
It was a dark and stormy night, in a great big house.
(Not that I'm bragging. About the house. )
(I mean
--there was this big storm.
And the night was dark.
And it WAS a big house, see?
)
(Wha--I'm not COMPENSATING for something !
--now you've completely destroyed the atmosphere !
Now where was I--)
It was a dark and--
Thunderclouds had swirled down from the north and were dumping the rain.
On the phone I had just talked with Jenny--who, with our son, was out-of-state on their road trip.
I was downstairs sitting quietly a moment because I was ready to go to bed.
The dark filled every room, all but disregarding a few puny battery-powered candles:
The only soul in the house, I was downshifting for sleep.
Power flashed out. The kitchen clock winked--otherwise I wouldn't have caught the blip, since I'd already had the lights out.
But over the din of the pounding storm, I made out some grating noises and then--footfalls. In our bedroom, over my head.
In my mind I inventoried what had caused this big house ( well, it is ! ) to creak like that from time to time. Creaking I could explain, yeah.
But there were also the little dull impacts.
Unmistakably--movement upstairs.
It sounded exactly like Jenny getting out of bed and walking across the floor--a sound I knew well from repetition, having heard it here above my head--sometimes every morning in a week--yes indeed: footfalls !
But with Jenny in Ohio, then: who?
The noise was--beyond my doubt now--a presence upstairs.
I froze to stone not wanting to be detected--trying to reassure myself thinking: It’s the noise of the storm--that’s nothing upstairs !
And when would the Nothing--responsible for what was starting to sound like angry bangs and thumps--descend the stairs, coming this way?
Starting to hear my heart in my ears, I mentally challenged the presence, trying to reduce it to any mundane cause I knew--finding it nuts--
Because nobody--especially in a raging storm--breaks into the TOP floor, while rain slides off the roof and sheets down windows.
Over the roar of the storm, I finally caught a distinctive sound: a plastic case, wheels on an axle jarring with an impact.
Our vacuum 'bot was loose.
I'd been petrified by what I found to have been the noise of his smacking into furniture like a clumsy bad actor who hadn't rehearsed for his action scene.
The power spike had jolted his dumb plastic butt off the battery charger, and boldly forth he went.
And in the dark and fury of the storm, he was--
VACUUMING.