Monsters in the night

1

"I'll be back in a minute!" "Okay!" The front door closed. The excited tipples of paws were audible on the pavement. He held his dog back. "Calm down mate!" His voice was affectionate. The streetlamps threw a yellow-ish light over the scenery. His steps turned towards the nearby park. From away he could hear the sounds of footsteps. Probably another person walking their dog. Or maybe some crazy jogger. The steps came from the opposite end of the way. They came closer.

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The television spread a blue-ish light through the whole living room, making the four faces in front of the screen glowing in a cold, scary way. The four people were a woman, a man and two girls who were squeezed between the two adults. The older girl had her hear rested on the shoulder of her mother while her younger sister was laying with her head in her dad's lap, her legs draped over her sister, feet on her mum's legs.

The two adults didn't mind the close position at all, quite the opposite - both of them enjoyed that their daughters would allow such a physical closeness without complaining. They had both one arm on the backrest of the couch, hands touching lightly, and sometimes they would take their eyes off the screen for a moment and look at each other instead. It was like a simply perfect evening with a beloved family.

Anthony McPartlin, how the man was called, couldn't believe his luck. Actually, especially over the past years he had often stopped and thought about how lucky he was. But it were moments like these - seemingly simple, yet so meaningful - that simply gobsmacked him. He would find himself overwhelmed with emotion from one second to the other, wondering what he had done to deserve such a wonderful life.

Ant looked at his girlfriend, who was unaware of her boyfriend looking at her this time. Anne-Marie's eyes stayed on the screen while her free hand unconsciously tickled her younger daughter's feet. Ant smiled, love and affection swelling in his heart so he thought it must burst every second.

His eyes wandered over his two gorgeous stepdaughters who pretty much meant everything to him and were laughing about the TV at the moment. Ant's smile brightened, he shot a quick glance over at the screen, shaking his head lightly at the cartoon - Poppy and Daisy had begged their parents so much that they had finally given in and allowed to watch the film.

Ant - he would never admit it to Anne-Marie, god forbid his stepdaughters - had actually already seen it. He had watched it a couple of years ago with Dec - nobody knew what had gotten into them this night. He hadn't liked the film, he hadn't hated it either, but he could've easily thought of something more interesting to watch on a Saturday evening. A work free Saturday evening, to be precise.

That was also why he didn't focus on the movie again but let his gaze wander through the room, stopping at the black window that showed a small part of the street. A streetlamp wasn't really visible, but the shine of its light gave the complete blackness a touch of grey that made it possible to make out silhouettes.

The darkness had something calming and scaring at once, Ant thought. Or, to be precise, sometimes it had something calming and sometimes something scaring. As a child, Ant had been scared of the dark - which child hadn't at least been nervous about it? As he had grown older he had learned to see the comfortable sides in it - anonymity, something undefinable, something miraculous. A place to hide, to escape. During the hardest times in his life, Ant had surprisingly often found comfort in the darkness. He had been able to simply switch his head off or let his tears flow - nobody would see him. In the dark, he didn't feel like he had to hide or hold anything back, simply because it was hidden anyway. The dark was like a giant mask, covering everything that shouldn't be seen. But in the dark, you couldn't see as far as in the light. If you could see anything. You would never know what could come next until it was already really close.