Out of the Darkness|Episode 5

A Series of Vignettes

On the Soul’s Journey to Freedom

There it was again!  A knock.  Gosh, her heart jumped.  Who could it be?  Why were they here in the middle of the night?  Her arm subconsciously reached over to see if he was beside her.

Her heart sank.  Damn it!  Well, maybe it was just him coming home.  But then, he did always bang on the door when he was too drunk to open it.  And it was always accompanied by the familiar slurred words mashing together into the nothingness that was so close to what she felt her life was.

No, this was not him.  The knocks were clear and precise, with a pause in between that would only come from an entirely sober being waiting patiently for some reply.

Again.  Knock, knock, knock.  Maybe if she pretended she hadn’t woken …they would go away.  Maybe it would all just be a bad dream and she would wake up from it.

The baby cried in the other room.  Now there was no escape.  She couldn’t leave him, he wasn’t a go-back-to-sleep baby.  No, Little Andrew was Joe’s son from head to toe.  The knockers would soon know everyone in this house was wide awake.

Her heart sank.  She got up and trudged to the baby’s room.  She stopped by the bathroom to pull her robe off the hook as the knock sounded again.

“I’m coming.”  She called out with no sense of urgency at all.  Yes, she was coming.  She always came.

“Creeeeak.”  The door spoke after the grind of the deadbolt took its turn.

“Mrs. Joseph Hinlight?”

“Yes…” She felt her heart slump down with the news she half desired, always expected and never wanted to hear.

“There’s been an accident, Mrs. Hinlight.  Could you come with us?  It’s your husband.”

A tiny ray of light seemed to catch the corner of something.  Was this hope?  Did she seriously just hope that they indeed would say the worst news of all?  Was she truly so out of control of her life that she was tingling with excitement that another human being may be dead?  She cringed and hoped at the same time.  It felt so good to think that perhaps, he would never slur his madness at her again, and, so bad to think that she was actually hoping the one she’d pledged her life to, had made his transition off the planet.

The hope turned to something else.  Hope…yes, that was continued within it, but this something else was different.  This was hope tinged with control.  This was hope not in another, but in the possibility that perhaps… just maybe, things could be different.  Not because Joe was gone, but maybe because she could do something.

Was this HER?  Feeling like there was a way?

The baby smiled up at her and she absently stepped behind the officers.  It didn’t matter.  She would be okay.