Shave and a Haircut / /
Knock, knock, knock… knock, knock
Eyes open, but I am totally frozen. The only part of my body that dare move are my eyeballs. A little to the left, my eyes look out my open window and with their far-sightedness I see the darkness of the jasmine bush.
Archie, my Old English Sheepdog wakes as I wake. He doesn’t bark. But I’m pretty sure we both just heard Shave and a Haircut knock at the front door and I suddenly feel like I’m in a Stephen King novel.
1:30am reads my phone.
Archie gets up and walks to the front door. If he barks, I think, there’s a murderer out there.
I’ve been reading Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel about the San Fernando Valley, Trawler. Considering how many killers are around me went up considerably in brain time this year. But I know the real odds lie in our husbands murdering us. And I don’t have one of those, I think, my odds of being murdered are significantly lower due to that.
Archie never barks. There are no more suspicious sounds.
I fall asleep, having done this before, having moved nothing but eyeballs slightly to the left..
I’m now on my porch writing this in brown sweatpants, too hot in the sun. Weinhard’s Root Beer and Archie.
A murderer would never.
Atmospheric and relatable. I like how you share life snippets.
Do men ever do this - wake up and worry something malevolent is at the door? The amount of energy we expend concerned for our personal safety is astounding. And the fact that our own male partners are statistically more likely to murder us than anyone else (a hard truth) is pretty god-damned horrific. Yes, women do murder male partners, but despite what the media would have us believe it's pretty rare, and the majority of those cases are the result of women responding to long-term abuse. It's all so exhausting. Wait - who is "Shave and a Haircut"? Because that would be a pretty good moniker for a fictional serial killer.