Scissors

A clattering noise sounds from outside Margerie's bedroom door that startles her awake. She listens, and wills her breathing to quiet the way she practiced so many times as a child. In her early years, when she was still terrified by the looming threat of monsters under the bed, she taught herself how to breathe so quietly that she couldn't even hear herself. 

Now all she hears is the thudding of her heart beat, deafening out all other noise. Watching the doors, the clattering noise sounds once again.

Claws clicking on the hardwood floors in the hall.

Margerie looks over at her still slumbering husband, who clearly has not heard the ominous scuttling noise. She slips her legs out from under the covers. Before standing, Margerie contemplates taking out the scissors from the cabinet in her bedside table. She is paranoid, but has not felt scared in such an irrational way in quite some time. It feels like she's living in one of the nightmares she used to have.

Finally she stands, forgoing the scissors due to what she tries to convince herself is the more real reason for the clattering: her son, Thomas, probably downstairs getting a snack out of the refrigerator. If she brought the scissors with her, Thomas would be convinced something was very, very wrong with his mother, more so then he might have previously believed. 

Silence. The noise is gone.

 She succumbs to the rapid pulsing of her blood and rampant fear shattering her thoughts, letting her primal instincts control her. 

It takes Marge several minutes to reach the bedroom door. As slow as possible, Margerie opens the door. The hall is bathed in gray and black, with only the faint light of the crescent moon to see by from the single window at the end of the hall. Marge waits, listens, scans. 

Nothing. 

Step. Pause. Step. Pause, listen. Always listen. 

Her heartbeat sounds to her like someone pacing on the gravel outside the house.

Margerie makes it to the kitchen. Nothing, no sign of Thomas nor evidence of a midnight refrigerator raid. No evidence that anyone or anything was in the house at all, and a small part of Margerie is relieved. 

She checks the rest of the house anyway.

Still nothing. 

Back up the stairs, and to her bedroom. Margerie doesn't bother to go through the process muffling the noise anymore. 

Jeff, her husband still sleeps soundly in the bed, and Margerie slips back under the covers. Her pulse slows, and she soon falls into a death-like sleep.

<X>

The alarm goes off in the morning, blaring like a siren. Margerie stabs at the snooze button. She curls back over on her side, in a fetal position, and lets herself pretend to sleep. Jeff would wake her up soon enough, anyway, if she didn't get up soon. 

She closes her eyes.

Two minutes. Three. Seven. Eight minutes go by and Margerie decides that her spouse is still asleep. 

She opens her eyes.

Jeff's face smiles back at her, stitches pull his mouth into the very position. Only, the smile doesn't reach his eyes.

Where his eyes once were lie empty pits devoid of blood.

Quavering, Margerie dumbly reminds herself that next time, 

she should bring the scissors.