Our House in the Middle of the Night

   The Sentinel  A Little Fact and a Little Fiction

Sunday at approximately two in the morning I awakened to the faint sound of music. This is not in itself unusual. This time though there were clear voices along with the music. I listened to the sounds for a few seconds and concluded that Joyce must have had the television on downstairs. I stumbled out of the bedroom and into the upstairs hallway and then leaned over the stair rail but when I peered into the darkness, there was no flicker of the television and no sound coming from down there.

The next thing I thought of was my son-in-law’s statement that burglars usually hit places at two or three in the morning. I felt my way along the hallway toward the east bedroom which our granddaughter has commandeered for her toy storage room. I did not want turn on a light for fear that the burglars would see me before I saw them. I needed to see out that upstairs window to know what I was up against so I knew how many rounds of ammunition to draw. It was still pitch black as I slowly eased my way into the room, remembering how the furniture was laid out and trying to slink my way around it. I thought I had cleared the twin bed and began to move toward the center of the room to peek out the drawn curtains when my bare toe slammed into the metal upright of the roll around bed frame. The kid had moved the bed back to have more play space in the center of the room. At that point I could have groaned, but no one would have heard me. I put my hand on the edge of the bed and used it to guide my way around and to the window just beyond. On the other side of the bed and at the center of the window, my face just inches from the glass, I thrust open the curtain and there right in my face was a monster from outer space! I reeled back, tumbled over the (still out of position) bed and landed on the floor in the open play area. It turned out that the monster was actually the granddaughter’s oversized “My Little Pony” figurine she had placed on the center window frame, but in the middle of the night, in the dark, just inches away from my face; it surely looked like some dreadful evil straight from outer space.