Lights out

He shifted his hips forward in the most subtle of thrusts and let out a low grunt. A thrill of victory shot through me, only to be dashed a heartbeat later when he pulled his thumb free, stepped back, and shook his head, just once. He pointed at me, then toward my bedroom. Then he clapped his hands together, tilted them sideways, and rested his head against them, miming sleep.

I nearly kicked at the floor like a petulant child. But I don’t wa

He must have seen the mutiny in my expression because he crossed his arms over his broad chest and widened his stance in a way that brooked no argument. Okay, that was kind of hot. But also, maybe he had a point. The fact that I felt like throwing a full-blown temper tantrum, tears and all, probably meant that I had whizzed right by overtired and was now deep into delulu territory.

“Fine,” I said, and he relaxed a little. “How are you getting home?”

He uncrossed his arms and typed out a response. I parked down the street.

“Of course you did,” I said, glancing skyward in exasperation. “And I can feel you smiling about that right now, you weirdo, so stop it.”

His shoulders were shaking with silent laughter when I glanced back down. He made deranged look more adorable than concerning, which was why he was so dangerous. Because if he was deranged and mean or a bully, my instincts would have put me off him, made me want to run screaming in the opposite direction. His humor and needling only drew me closer and lowered my guard.

I really hoped he wasn’t pla

He started typing again, one-handed, and I scrunched my nose while I waited, feeling sorry again. There had been many times I’d felt like stabbing men in my life. It was just my luck that the one time I actually did was accidental.

He showed me his phone. I’m going to leave now. Even though I don’t want to.

“Then stay,” I blurted. Oh, God. Clingy much, Aly? If the stabbing didn’t scare him off, surely my lack of chill would.

He shook his head, pointed at me, and mimed sleeping again. Then he closed the distance between us and leaned down to bump his masked forehead against mine. The plastic was cool and lifeless, almost jarring after all the time I’d spent anthropomorphizing it. I caught the slightest whiff of what might have been the soap he used, piney and crisp and clean-smelling, before he pulled away.

Even though he said he was leaving, he stood there, staring at me for a long moment before letting out a low, frustrated sound and striding away. I took it as a good sign that he’d lingered. He must have genuinely been into me if he had a hard time saying goodbye even after I’d stabbed him.

It made me feel better about my borderline obsession with him. People always said you shouldn’t meet your idols, but after months of following his account, the reality of him left me even more intrigued than his online persona. In my fantasies, he was one-dimensional, an archetype I’d created for my pleasure alone. The man walking toward my front door, being chased by my equally unchill cat, was even better because of the enigma he presented.

Who was he? Why wouldn’t he speak to me? And how long did he plan on toying with me like this before he got bored and moved on like all the other men in my life had?

He paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to me. We looked at each other for another drawn-out moment. There was so much I wanted to say to him that I didn’t know where to begin. Did he feel the same pull between us? This borderline-unhealthy fixation? He’d been watching me at work, so the assumption was yes, but I wanted to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the same need that had overtaken me was bearing down on him, too.

He nodded one last time, leaned down to scratch Fred behind the ears, and left. I stared after him for far too long before a headbutt to my shin and a demanding yowl broke me out of my thoughts.

I scooped Fred up and buried my face in him. “I should have named you Benedict, you little turncoat.”

He purred and started making biscuits in my hair.

Twelve hours later, I woke to a noise. It sounded like a door closing, but I’d probably just been dreaming.

I rolled over and was about to go back to sleep when the past 48 hours crashed into me. The mass shooting. The Faceless Man breaking into my car. Me, getting into the passenger seat in a move that would have had horror movie aficionados screaming at their televisions. And yet, here I was, still alive. I was either one lucky bitch, or my instinct that I wasn’t in danger was correct.

I was pretty sure it was the latter. After all, I knew danger. Intimately. I faced it daily. In the past week alone, I’d had to block a slap from one patient, dodge a grope from another, and bite my tongue while being cussed out by countless more. My instincts were so honed that I couldn’t remember the last time someone caught me off guard. I always saw it coming, knew which patients I needed to be careful around. People only laid hands on me these days when I was distracted or had my back turned.

Most of my co-workers had the same sixth sense, with Brinley being the one exception because she was so new, but she was already learning, and if she stuck it out, she’d be as battle-hardened as the rest of us within a month or two.

All that to say, I was 98% sure that the Faceless Man didn’t intend to harm me. The other 2% should probably be concerning, and it was, but unfortunately, it also lent an exciting edge to our interactions. It was that tiny little sliver that drove my desire higher, similar to how the risk of getting caught made fucking in public so much fun.

Last night, he’d asked me if I wanted him to take the mask off and ruin the fantasy, and I’d had to clench my jaw and turn away to keep from yelling, “NO!” Because what if he did, and the excitement disappeared? I needed the mask on to feel alive. Needed the knife in his hand to make me remember how precious my life was and that I was lucky to be living it.

The only thing that might up the ante was finding out who he was on the sly and keeping it to myself. The thought of turning the tables and breaking into his house to place my own set of cameras so I could taunt him back was almost as thrilling as getting fucked by an anonymous stranger.

And yes, I realized precisely how fucked up that was.

I sighed and rolled onto my back, wondering how I’d gotten to that point. Was I simply overworked, or was it genetic, and darkness had lingered inside me for years, waiting for the chance to come out and play?

No, I told myself. Most of my family had been law-abiding citizens. There was only one exception, and I decided not to count him.

It must have been trauma-induced, which meant I really needed to put in for a two-week vacation. For more reasons than one. I’d just woken up from a long day of deep sleep, but I was still exhausted, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I needed to be back at work in a few hours, I could have easily dozed off for the rest of the night.

I’ll put in for leave as soon as things settle down at the hospital, I told myself.

So…never? came an answering thought, unbidden.

I shook my head. Why did I always do this? Put off taking care of my mental health and prioritize the welfare of everyone else above my own? I knew what my therapist would say: that I was still internalizing Mom’s death and blaming myself for it. After all the years of work I’d put in trying to recover from her loss, guilt still rode me. I couldn’t save Mom, but with every life I saved at work, I felt like at least I could save someone else’s loved one.

I sat up in bed and put my head in my hands. “The hospital will not collapse if you decide to take a few weeks of PTO,” I told myself. “Between Tanya and Seth and all the other nurses, they’ll be fine.”

Maybe if I kept repeating those words to myself, I would believe them. It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in my co-workers. Tanya and Seth, the senior day shift nurse, were the most competent nurses in the hospital. I would trust them implicitly with my life. It was the thought of not being there when I was needed that gave me pause. The chance that my absence might spell someone’s demise. What if some critical symptom or sign went unseen because I wasn't there?

“Okay, stop,” I said. Now I sounded full of myself. Like I was some super nurse, and without my presence, all the hospital’s patients would die. That wasn’t true, and it also wasn’t what drove my thoughts. What I felt was closer to FOMO – the fear of missing out – than self-aggrandization.

Before I could talk myself out of it again, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and emailed my supervisor, asking for the time off.

I let out a deep breath afterward and tried to come to terms with the thought of two weeks of freedom. It felt like so much time. Too much time, honestly. How would I fill all those hours? Going to the gym, certainly. Catching up on all the TV shows I had saved to my playlist sounded good, too. Maybe I could finally learn how to knit.

A soft meow interrupted my spiraling as Fred padded into the room. He leaped onto the foot of my bed and strode right up to me, arching his back when I reached out to pet him. I still couldn’t believe how much he liked the Faceless Man. The fact that he’d sat in his lap last night was wild. Then again, he’d always been my little empath, snuggling close whenever I was sad or had a bad shift at the hospital. Maybe he’d sensed the Faceless Man’s pain and wanted to comfort him.

Yeah, let’s go with that instead of Fred choosing a masked stranger over his mother.

“You ready for breakfast?” I asked.

Fred chirruped in response and jumped from the bed, leading the way to the kitchen. I followed him, tugging on my heavy robe and slippers before leaving my room.

My house was bathed in the golden light of the setting sun, rays glinting off the holiday decorations I really should have taken down by now. Or was that just societal pressure telling me what to do? There was no official mandate saying when holiday décor season ended, and the neighbors across the street still had their tree in their front window. I’d been low-key waiting for them to remove it before I packed my stuff away, and every time I got home and saw the merry glow coming from their house, I smiled, knowing that festive cheer had lived to see another day.

A thought occurred to me as I set about brewing a pot of coffee and preparing Fred’s breakfast. What if my neighbors were doing the same thing I was? Were we stuck in an unintentional standoff, each waiting for the other to make the first move? Would January turn into February, and we’d become the ridicule of the rest of the neighborhood? Paula and George were from the deep south, and if country music had taught me anything, it was that some Southerners took pride in leaving their lights up all year round.

I grimaced. Christmas in summer. Yeah, no. The decorations needed to come down.

I’d do it on my next day off.