Only In The Movies

What a bunch of nonsense.

He sighed and looked at his watch: easily another thirty minutes. If the score wasn’t so loud he’d at least be able to nap until it was finally over. He looked down at his date: she had curled herself up in her seat and was holding tightly onto his arm, using it as a shield whenever a scene became too unbearable for her to watch.

He looked back to the screen: what garbage. Look at that idiot going into the house like that knowing what he knows. Like someone would really do that.

He sighed again and wondered how someone whom he he had met in the library’s science section amongst all the physics books and who had seemed to him to be so rational and perceptive and…smart, could, firstly, choose such nonsense for their inaugural date and, secondly, enjoy the nonsense as much as she seemed to be enjoying it.

There came a sudden scream from the screen, then, near-simultaneously, came a scream from his date, and then, finally, from within his own head came the loudest scream of all as a self-chastisement for killing so many of own brain cells with such nonsense.

#

The car came to a stop in front of a lonely, darkened house. She put the transmission into park and pressed the button to kill the already silent engine.

He sighed.

She looked at him with a seductive smile and said, “So, didn’t you say something about having the house all to yourself this weekend?”

“Did I?” he said brusquely.

“Yes, you did,” she replied. She lightly placed her hand on his thigh and leaned across him to look out his window. “Your house looks so dark and lonely. Maybe I better come in with you so you don’t, you know, get scared in there all by yourself.”

He scoffed and opened the door. “Look, thanks for such a…well…interesting evening. But I’m a little tired so, perhaps it’s best that we just say goodnight here.” Without waiting for her to reply, he got out of the car, gave her another quick thanks, and then closed the door.

Incredulously, she watched as her date walked toward the empty house. As she sat there in the driver’s seat trying to figure out what had just happened, she noticed the silhouette of a rather large person in the second-floor window looking down on the scene below.

She was certain her date had said that his roommates were going to be gone for the weekend. She looked back up at the window. Still, someone was in the house.

Both she and the large silhouette watched as her date unlocked the front door, stepped inside the house, and closed the door behind him. She waited for a light to be turned on but the house remained dark.

She looked up at the window. The silhouette was gone.

Goosebumps, hardly having subsided after the haunting movie, returned with a chill as she pressed the starter button. The engine softly came back to life and then went silent as she quickly, but resolutely, drove away from her disappointed date’s lonely, darkened house.