Boogeyman at the Window (working title) (standard:horror, 3093 words)
Author: Finn McKool	Added: Mar 22 2001	Views/Reads: 4884/2798	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
time is long when you lay in the dark

Boogeyman at the Window (working title) 

Tawney was scared to look out of her bedroom window.  This was nothing
new.  She always had been.  She hated her bedroom window.  She had 
never been comfortable next to that big gaping eye into the night time 
world over her shoulder.  She had hoped that moving into her new 
high-rise would some how cast a new perspective on her phobia, and show 
her how silly she was.  After all what could come in the window twelve 
stories off the ground?  No robbers or rapists, right?  Yet fear 
doesn't take such logical shapes in the dead of night and time draws 
out like a blade from its sheath.  No, Tawney thought, her fear had 
followed her this far.  Why not twelve stories up? 

She remembered her childhood bedroom in suburbia.  It was the haven of
safety every child's room is during the day.  Dolls and dreamhouses, 
and marvelous adventures. But it was also the hell every child's room 
becomes when the sun goes down and the sane world is asleep. For many 
children the boogey man lived under the bed or in the closet.  But for 
Tawney it seemed just outside her bedroom window, just waiting for her 
to look, daring her to look.  But that was silly, because the boogeyman 
lives inside the dark caverns of every child's heart and mind, and 
slinks away when the light of reason shines in and innocence is lost. 

After all Tawney was twenty-five years old.  She was an investement
banker.  She worked with solid things like numbers, which always did 
what they were supposed to.  She was old enough to leave the boogey man 
behind, and still young enough to fear only the endless desert of the 
years ahead.  The fear of possiblillity.  But one thing still hadn't 
changed in all of her waking years.  She was still afraid of that 
bedroom window, which always seemed to work itself over her shoulder 
and next to her bed.  It taunted her, tempted her to look out into its 
darkness, even now.  But now its voice, which she always thought was in 
her head, like some bad dream gone haywire, seemed louder than ever. 

"Tawney." 

"Tawney.  Look at me." 

"Don't keep your back to me Tawney, it isn't polite."  The voice smiled.
 It was calm, and like a parent coaxing a stubborn child.  Not the 
voice of her father.  He never coaxed.  He commanded.  This was more 
the voice of a stranger.  The Stranger, really.  The one who offered 
you candy if you hopped into his black Cadilliac. 

"Come on, Tawney, look at me.  Just...one...little...peek into the inky
black night.  Just one look into the darkness, Tawney. Hee hee hee!" 

Darkness. 

Black. 

Donnie had been black.  His skin was dark.  But not dark like a tomb, or
that blackness outside the window, staring like a gouged out eye.  No, 
Donnie had been dark like rich chocolate.  He was Black.  But more than 
that, he was an African American. 

"And I'm proud to be both,"  he'd often say, when the occassion arose. 
Sometimes with peaceful pride, and civil fire, like when that redneck 
asshole refused to rent a hotel room to a black man and a white girl on 
Spring Break.  Sometimes he said it as a matter of fact, like when one 
of his black acquaintances called him "Niggah." 

"But sometimes, Tawney,"  he'd say over the paper, or evening news, "I'm
prouder than others."  This was usually when either continent of his 
heritage began some atrocity or folly. 

But he wasn't dark.  And he wasn't black.  He wasn't a tomb or an empty
eye.  No, he had been warm and gentle, and they had loved each other.  
Their love was sometimes fierce, and sometime's beautifully plain, but 
it had been love, every time. 

But then that was a long time ago.  Back in college.  Really only a
couple of years, but when you're twenty five, that feel long, long as 
the night.  Tawney had stayed in Lexington.  She had a good job.  This 
town was her home.  But Donnie had gone to Cinncinatti.  He earned a 


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