MIDNIGHT

It must have been past midnight.

Cold air and a thin layer of fog filled the entire town. It was incredibly quiet, but he didn't notice, at least not at first. He had been standing out in the yard for a while staring at the stars wondering about Cyrus and Stuart. The Judge, especially. He remembered what it was like to always have them around, a nuisance at times, but they were his friends.

"Friends, yeah, right", he thought to himself.

"Co-workers would probably be a better description… if even that…." his mind trailed off the thought with a sense of guilt.

It was October and the chill of the night began to cut into his bones, letting him know that it was time to go back inside.

"The guys would think I'm really losing it if they saw me now." he mumbled lightly.

Turning his back on the moon above, he walked back into the small house, slowly shut the sliding door to the patio and walked over to the tall standing lamp in the corner of the living room. After fiddling with the switch – he often forgot which way it turned to – it clicked on and spread its yellow glow.

It's been a little over one month now that Frank Bannister and Lucy Lynskey have been sharing this small rental house. Lucy thought an apartment would have been a wiser choice, but Frank insisted that they would be more comfortable in a house. By "comfortable" he meant "less likely to have any ghosts hanging around, but he didn't tell this to Lucy. He didn't want her to worry. Things that were normal to him, weren't normal to anyone else and he always tried to keep this as under control as possible. It's not always easy to hide the fact that someone recently deceased is standing right beside you, yelling obscenities or asking questions, but he's become quite good at it in the past five years.

He walked over to the small piano that was in the middle of the room, pushed up against a wall. He thought about how much he wished he had learned to play an instrument as a child. Music might have been a way to escape.

"A guitar or drums would have been nice." Not that he would be able to play them right now, anyway.

Lucy had been sound asleep since 10:30 P.M. Even after all they'd been through recently, she could still sleep well. She was used to the grueling schedule that was u[-all night studying and testing during medical school and the haphazard routine of being on-call as an intern. Sleeping at any given moment, even if it was for only ten minutes in 24 hours, became a luxury and she deeply valued being able to sleep all night.

Frank picked up one of the photos on the small piano and traced around the figure in the frame. He never had trouble sleeping before the accident.

"Come to think of it, even after the accident I wasn't up all night, every night."

This night would make the third day in a row that he couldn't sleep. He managed to doze off on the couch yesterday afternoon, while Lucy was out, but he'd hardly call it restful. He was jolted awake by the sensation of something heavy on his chest.

He only saved a small amount of items from his so-called "dream home". He didn't want to muddle up too much of their new life with the past. Everything else was still at the house, he didn't care what happened to it. He was hoping to destroy the place one day, anyway.

He looked around the room and decided it was too bright, he walked over and clicked off the lamp, with slightly less struggle to get the switch to turn the correct way. Why was it always easier to turn it off? Was that a metaphor for life?

"These sleepless nights are getting to me."

He walked into the kitchen and looked at the small clock on the microwave, it was blinking "12:00".

"It can't still be midnight?", he grumbled to himself.

"Just before I went outside it said 11:59..." and in a split second he realized that if the time was blinking, not stationary, the power on it must have been reset.

There was only one thing in the world that could zap an electronic on and off without anyone noticing or intentionally destroying it.

He narrowed his tired eyes, focusing in the dark as best as he could, the only light that was coming in was through the vertical blinds that faced the moon. He paid close attention to his surroundings and listened for any kind of noise.

"An emanation of some kind must be hanging around."

AN: this is just as i wrote it, no editing, i apologize for any mistakes. i wrote this years ago and don't want to edit it, but figured it was worth posting.