By Streetlight: Part 1

Darkness consumed all within its path, slowly though, as if the day were hard to swallow. A cool, clean-smelling breeze swept through the trees from the left side of the path. Closing my eyes, I stopped in my tracks to savor the moment, glad for the calming affect on my previously wracked nerves. I could have fallen to sleep standing there in the middle of the road. My thoughts began to drift back to better days, back when it was okay to stop and smell the roses without someone telling me to stop dawdling. Thoughts of my current situation brought to mind the fact that I’d best be getting back before the old bitch called the cops again. If I were as little as a few minutes late, she thought that I’d ran away and tried to make them believe I was indeed a missing person. The cops always found me and took me home, laughing that they knew how crazy she was. In my opinion, not even I knew the bredth of her insanity and I’d known her for half of my life. 1

I wouldn’t have minded if a certain cop came for me, I didn’t think he would have minded either. But the others were getting tired of having to go hunt me down. It was as if they couldn’t tell her no. My “aunt” was like that. Very persuasive. Very mean. The very day I’d been brought to live with her in her old, musky-smelling house was the beginning of the worse days of my life. I’d been 15 at the time and my parents had been killed in a car accident. The only survivors of my family were my sister Gretchen and an old aunt I hadn’t even known existed. Maude Folsom was as old as her house and seemed to fit within the walls perfectly along with her furniture and draperies. She wasn’t our biological aunt, either. My mother had been an orphan (pretty much the same way as Gretchen and myself) and my grandmother had chosen Maude to be caregiver. They’d been friends as children and had written to each other up until my grandmother died. 2

Just thinking of the wretched old lady turned the sweet breeze to a very nasty puff of rotten air. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Dr. Malone’s old house and that I’d stepped off the path. Had I been walking as I thought of my aunt and not noticed it? Perhaps, but it didn’t seem to me that I could walk that far. 3

The rotten smell was coming from the house and I began to wonder if maybe a poor dog had come to it’s end without the doctor knowing it. Looking around, I noticed that his Mercedes wasn’t in the driveway and that the garage was empty. He was probably still at the hospital with that McAllister woman (Gretchen had called me during work and told me that the woman had given birth in the middle of the street and there had been blood everywhere.)4

I gave the grounds one last look before looking up at the house. It was such an odd place to build such a nice home, way out in the woods away from everyone. I had heard that the doctor spent most of his time sleeping at the hospital and staying at a near-by hotel because he was the only doctor the town had. Everyone spoke about him in whispers, with their mouths held behind their hands as if to conceal the secret that the entire town knew. His daughter, Rose (who was in the same grade as I was), had been killed in a fire ten years before and it had driven him to work more and more. He’d never requested any help and had never recruited another doctor. The word was that he had something to do with his daughter’s death and he felt very guilty. So, he was working himself to death? No, I didn’t think he had anything to do with the death of his daughter. He always seemed stressed out before, so losing his only child would only make him feel more so.5

My eyes caught movement in the top window, the curtain falling back into place from where someone had been looking out. In the second it took for the lacey white curtain to fall, I saw two very blue eyes against the blackness of the room, so very sad and vicious that I gasped. Taking this as a cue to leave, I turned and ran back towards the road. Once I was a safe distance from the house, I looked back to see the eyes in the window again, smaller but yet so bright and angry. I was so distracted and terrified that I ran right into a car.6

Looking up at the driver, I was glad he was smiling. The car wasn’t just any car, but a police car. The officer inside was none other than Lieutenant Angus Morton, my best friend.7

“What if I’d been actually driving towards you, Meredith? What then?” he asked, pulling out his serious-cop persona. He still wore his fantastic smile, so nice that I almost forgot about the eyes in the window. Turning towards the house, I was relieved that I could no longer see the window.8

“Well, you would have hit me and I would play dead. Then you’d have to give me mouth to mouth,” I smiled, walking to his window.9

He looked up at me, brown eyes sparkling mischievousness. “Guess what?”10

“I know. I’m sorry you had to come out here. I would be home but…” I began, but he reached up and covered my mouth with his hand.11

“Let’s run away together and get the hell out of this crazy town.”12

I nodded. “Good idea. Your sister been giving you hell again?”13

He motioned for me to back up so he could get out of the car. Sighing, he leaned against the door after he closed it. “She wants me to move to the attic, right? So, I spend my entire day off moving my shit up those small-ass stairs. She gets home and tells me not that room of the attic, the other one. The smaller one! God, I hate my life. I make enough money to get out and get my own place but I can’t leave her there with him…” his voice trailed off. 14

He had to live with his sister and help take care of their dad, who had a heart attack the day his wife died. He hadn’t spoken since and didn’t want to do anything for himself. Angus had once said it was like caring for a mentally retarded person. With as badly as his dad had treated him before, it shocked me that he wanted to stay. Angus was a good person. I loved him for it, among other things.15

“Aw, well, you can come sleep with me,” I said, wrapping my arms around him, closing my eyes as he returned the hug.16

He sighed again. “I wish. Your aunt would tell everyone that I was raping you…”17

I smiled up at him. “You just had to remind me, didn’t you? Well, I suppose you should take me home before she thinks we’ve both been kidnapped.”18

He tilted my head back and looked into my eyes. “I want to kidnap you. Will you let me?” His voice was soft and low as if he only wanted me to hear the words. I brought my head up to his and licked the tip of his nose. 19

“You can’t get fired. What are you doing Saturday? I can tell her I’ll be at Rachel’s and Rachel can cover for me.”20

He looked out into the trees, pretending he didn’t hear me. “What was that sound? Something about covering you? Okay, if you insist!” he said, smiling as he lightly kissed my mouth. I melted against him, forgetting for a moment where I had to be and what I’d just seen in the window. The kiss became deeper and Angus pressed me up against the car, lightly flicking his tongue into my mouth and against my own. 21

A flashing light brought both of us back to the present. Another police car was parked behind Angus and the smiling face from the window made us both sigh in relief. Frankie Carter, Angus’s partner, stepped out of the car and walked over to us, wagging a finger.22

“You are bad. Oh, Gretchen says hi,” he said, laughing.23

I shook my head. “So, it worked? You got to be alone for how long?” 24

He blushed—not something Frankie did often, if ever. “Oh, six hours.”25

Angus shook his head. “Six hours without anyone bothering you whatsoever? What’d we get? Six seconds?” He asked me.26

Frankie smiled slyly. “Don’t worry, bro. Your girl scratched my back, so I’ll scratch yours,” he said, moving to hit Angus on the back. Angus backed away quickly and made a don’t-even-think face. This was weird, because Angus and Frankie were like two dogs when they were together, always hitting and fighting playfully. 27

“OH, forgot. Anyway, you’d better get your nice ass home. Your aunt called a second time already. Be glad they sent me. Colonel Custard is at home with his wife. His “new” wife.”28

I laughed. The “new” wife was only called so because she’d gotten big breast implants. All the police chief (who’s name was actually Custler) wanted to do was stay home and play with his new toy. I knew that part because I worked at the diner that his wife owned and we were pretty good friends.29

“Come on, hun. Take me home,” I said, gently rubbing Angus’s back, feeling a wide bandage. Even with how gentle I was, he still winced.30

“Good night, Meredith,” Frankie said, walking back to his car.31

I held my tongue until we were both in Angus’s car. He sat behind the wheel and turned the engine over. “Don’t ask. I already told the boys at work a lie, don’t make me tell you one too.”32

I shook my head, already knowing what happened, or at least who had done it. “Baby, you can talk to me. I’m not gonna make you say something you don’t want to. But I’m here, how ever much I can be.”33

He drove down the road, turning the car so we were going in the direction of my aunts home. “I know. Trust me, I feel right now that I’m driving in the wrong direction…I don’t want to take you to your aunts. I want you to go home with me.”34

I smiled over at him and ran a hand though his thick, black hair. “There’s always tomorrow. It can only get better than this.”35

And I just thought I had it bad.36

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