A/N: Also originally part of No One Like You, I just do not believe this needs to be anywhere in association with that fic! It's way too dark, strays into weird territory, and is generally just not what you want in Parks fic I don't think? I don't know, there aren't many of them.
It was a cloudless night in Pawnee, replete with a nearly black lighting and few cars or people roaming the streets. There weren't many days where the so-called nightlife of the Midwestern town sprang into action across the entirety of her but it was especially quiet and still. In between hedges, a few figures would move, but they were usually just household pets left out too for the night when their forgetful owners returned from a night of drinking. The animals were the only real denizens of the roads and sidewalks at that hour, padding up and down from house to house searching for their owners, rodents to kill, or already dead rodents they could drag away. On one such street a short, dark-haired woman slams the door of her house shut as a tall man, half-dressed and bleary-eyed, screams something at her in a split between rage and begging. He sits in the car in the driveway for a few minutes before starting it up and backing out, leaving the woman behind in the house.
There wasn't much to speak of in the house, at least nothing remarkable, but that – in its own way – gave the place some charm. A few scattered, dirty plates lay on the tables, some actually broken and others just covered in forgotten meals, and the carpet was in dire need of repair or replacement. A few pictures hung on the walls of the woman and the man, smiling and holding each other, but they were far between and scarce enough that a visitor would have to wonder what the two actually mean to each other. The place didn't reek like some would expect just from seeing it, but it did have a faint odor of a violent mixture between bubble bath and sex. A football jersey was slung over a doorway leading to a bathroom, and the bedroom was missing a door – and judging from the hinges still remaining there, it had been broken off in either a fit of romance or fury. Or both, because based on the relationship of Andy Dwyer and April Ludgate, no one ever knew what to expect from the two of them. Likewise, no one expected anything but marital bliss for them even though April knew better. As far as she was concerned they just hit stumbles every once and a while, nothing more, but sitting there and trying to maintain steady breaths she had to wonder.
She hated having arguments with Andy, but sometimes she couldn't stand some of the things he did. Staring angrily at the contacts on her phone, April hovered over his name for a while before she put the phone away and walked over to the kitchen to try and find something hard enough to put her asleep for a while. Sadly the only thing in their fridge were two beers and a box of veggie-fried rice that definitely wasn't any good, so she took one of the beers out and took a few sips before pouring the chilled piss-water out into the sink.
Tapping her fingers against the counter and considering how much of a problem the fallout of the night would be, April sighed. She just wanted him to understand her a little better was all, and she didn't need the level of conflict that things had escalated to. Still, this is where they were so April just hoped he drove to a familiar place like City Hall or Leslie's and slept it off.
"…and that's Ya Heard with, your host, Perd Hapley, signing off. And since it is both nighttime and a good night, I shall say: goodnight Pawnee."
The TV had been running all throughout their argument but April had never focused on anything. She should have been glad because the annoying ramblings of Perd would have made her unreasonably angry, which would have probably been directed at Andy. Shutting the TV off, she sat down on the couch and pulled one of the pillows into her lap and started playing with the frayed stitching. She couldn't even remember where they got it, or how it had survived so many years surrounded by two overgrown children that somehow made it to adulthood and a dog. Pulling at a string that had run off the stitching, April ended up squeezing one of the corners into a messy bunch before she had to put it down. Sitting down alone, it wasn't long before the three-legged dog limped over to her and, with some assistance, moved up to the couch to rest his head on her lap.
"Hey Champion," she whispered to him, scratching the fur on his neck, "you don't know why your dad's such a dick, do you?"
His only response was to look at her with those big, dumb eyes like he wanted to answer her but just couldn't. Since he was a dog, it seemed pretty reasonable to April.
"Yeah, thanks," she groaned.
The house was silent save for the uneven breathing of the dog and April occasionally muttering to herself and pulling the phone out of her pocket to stare at it and shove it back. Looking out through the sliding doors that led to their backyard, April tried to find something out there to occupy her rambling thoughts, but in the end it was just a fence and some trees. Maybe a few of those leaves would rustle and she could imagine what it would be like to see a wild animal come smashing through the yard, but she wasn't going to get that. Instead all there was to be seen was a black, shrouded night and the flicker of two bright lights, off and then on before quickly rotating their beams through the house. When April focused on them they quickly pivoted away from her and were gone, leaving the yard once again in its previous midnight embrace.
"What?" she said to herself, pushing Champion aside softly and trying not to disturb his sleep.
Walking over to the see-through panes, April tried to search for the two lights again. To her they looked like flashlights clicking on, and the lights that shone through her house weren't particularly bright. Outside, however, it was still a sea of black with only the occasional movement of leaves in the higher trees forcing a slight image of the yard into focus. It must have just been some dumb neighborhood kids trying to creep on her again, she figured, so April sat back down next to Champion and waited. It only took a few minutes for her prediction to come to fruition, this time a singular beam of light striking through first her bedroom window and then into the living room once again. Jumping up the moment the beam started to move, April threw the door open and called out when there was a sound of hurried footsteps. However, the light stayed there unmoving.
"Just go on the internet if you want tits you fucking idiots," she yelled out, holding her arm up to block some of the light out.
The brightness shone for a few moments more, almost like it was hovering there. Quickly, it died out again but no footsteps followed it like she anticipated. When April yelled her voice didn't echo, but on top of the strange silence from the kids staying behind the reverberating silence was unnerving. April didn't like the absence of everything that night. Sliding the door closed again, this time feeling her hand shake a little for some undefined reason, she closed the short curtains that hung mostly unused to the side of the doors. Something about the lights, and the return of just one of them, made April shiver. It certainly wasn't the cold night, since they finally figured out how to get their thermostat working, but she could feel a coarse hand running along her spine when she thought about the narrow beams breaking through the doors like inquisitive eyes.
Normally she didn't care about kids being kids, since she regularly did much worse to other people, but something about them – there was definitely something about those little eye-lights – made April shut off the living room light and slip into her bedroom. Any worrying about Andy would have to wait until morning, because she was too busy closing the curtains in all of her rooms. By the time April made it to the bedroom, the sounds of light footsteps – burst of little pitter-patters like running children – sounded from around the house. Shrugging it off as annoyed kids looking for another method ingress, or just the neighborhood strays going about their nightly business, April finished up in the bedroom. Something about those footsteps should have been alarming, or at least they should tipped her off by the proximity of the noise, but she had gone past the point of focusing on them and tried to figure out whether she should just call Andy and let him back in the house; for all she knew he was sleeping on a street corner with no pants on.
At least, that's what she was thinking until those footsteps returned to focus. Returned to focus only for her to turn around, trying to find the source of them. By now she realized they were a lot closer than they should have been. From the bedroom, looking through the door, everything seemed fine in the living room – Champion was still asleep, drooling a little on the couch but otherwise undisturbed, and all of the curtains and doors were still shut. Taking a tentative step forward, April looked around the threshold and wondering where her sudden anxiety was coming from; there wasn't a sign of anyone there, however. There couldn't be anybody inside anyways, since Andy definitely didn't have his house key and every point of entry was closed off, but April still felt that same spark run across the ridge of her spine.
This is stupid
April couldn't help but laugh at the moment and the empty room, causing Champion to stir. Now she was just scaring herself for no reason other than the fun of it she mused to no one. The moment she stopped laughing, in the silence of the Pawnee night, a small childlike laugh answered hers. It was distant, almost imperceptibly far away, but she heard it. She heard the laugh, and then the footsteps again, but she didn't hear something heavy slip into a hand and fall crashing into the back of her head.