And Then I Woke Up

by Malcolm Devlin

Night means darkness, darkness means introspection, introspection dredges up all kinds of monsters and my god, do those bastards keep us busy until dawn.

So that’s how I got the room next to Leila’s and I swear it sounded as though she drew a breath when the lights went off and didn’t release it until sun-up. There was a strange and disquieting quality to her silence, but it didn’t bother me the way it did Sizemore and everyone else. It was seductive. Like the patch of darkness you can see through an open window that you keep staring at because you have an idea something might appear there.