11:59

Part I

My pills are missing. I riffle through the bathroom cabinets and sweep all the papers off my desk looking for a glimpse of the familiar orange plastic bottle. Nothing. I must have misplaced them. There's no other explanation since I live alone, ever since I moved out of my childhood home to the outskirts of the city. I decide to skip taking them this morning. I'll take them tonight once I find the missing bottle. I stop looking.

Somehow, I pull myself together and out the front door. My cranky old neighbor Madge is out in her front yard. She glares at me over the fence between our houses. I return her scowl with a little wave. She's the closest thing I have to a friend, besides my mom, of course.

Another day at the office. It passes in a blur. By the time I get home, I'm too tired to bother looking for my pills. I peel off my dress and fall into bed. Sleep comes quickly.

I wake disoriented. It's the middle of the night. The clock on my nightstand flashes red through the darkness filling my bedroom. It's 11:29. A strange coldness creeps across my skin. Something feels wrong. I lay still for several moments, staring up at the shadowy vault of the ceiling. Then, slowly, I turn my head. The curtains to my bedroom window are open, and faint light from the street outside slants into the room. I can see the sky, starless and heavy with clouds, and snatches of glistening pavement through the windowpane. Suddenly, I start. My skin is alive, crawling with something colder than dread. A dark silhouette is standing in the street outside my window. A man, illuminated in the dim glow of streetlamps. His figure is strangely shapeless and blurred, turning him into a faceless shadow.

My heartbeat becomes audible, pulsing in my throat as a slight movement passes over the dark figure. As if feeling my gaze, his head turns towards my window. The pale glow of a near by streetlamp falls across his face, and I see his eyes. Only, they aren't eyes. Empty white pits fill the sockets where his eyes should be, shining in the faint light. I open my mouth, but no sound passes my lips. He stares, seeing but unseeing, at the front of my house. I suddenly can't move. I'm paralyzed, frozen in bed. A prisoner to my own fear as I wait for the shadowy silhouette to move closer. But it doesn't. He stands deathly still on the street outside, staring, staring.... And I continue to lay, paralyzed, waiting, each tick of the clock painfully slow. Until, after what seems like forever, times blurs, darkens, around me and although I never see him move, the man is suddenly gone.

I'm almost too disturbed to go to work the next morning, but somehow I make it through the day. I still can't find my pills, but I make myself a warm cup of tea before bed to calm my nerves. This time, before climbing into bed, I make sure to tightly close the curtains over the window.

I startle awake to grainy darkness. The red lights on my bedside clock blink 11:39. A cold pit of dread opens in my stomach, and I know even before I look. The curtains are open.

There, silhouetted outside, is the dark figure of man standing on the street—standing slightly closer than before. I try to sit up, to move, but once again, my fear has woven its paralyzing net around my limbs. Outside, the man moves. His shadow shifts as, once again, he begins to turn towards my window. I catch a glimpse of his chilling eyes, pale and blank as a corpse's. Then I see a flash of white. The moon must have slipped out from behind its shroud of clouds, and its light catches on his teeth, lighting up the curve of his grin. I struggle to breath. Horror strangles the breath in my chest, suffocating me.

Suddenly, the street outside brightens. A car curves into view, and as it passes, the shadowy figure of the man seems to vanish into the glow of its headlights, erased by the light instead of becoming clearly illuminated. I gasp for breath as the rumble of the car's engine fades into the night.