Bump
Casey decided to check and make sure the doors were locked before he turned in. He would've sworn he did it earlier, but he wanted to make sure. He headed out to the living room and found the dead bolt was in place, and the chain. Now he could sleep a little easier. He turned around and about jumped at the sight of somebody on the couch in the dim living room light. Then he realized it was Kelly, and he did a double take because the Squad lieutenant didn't seem to even notice his presence.
"Kelly?"
As he walked over to the couch he saw Kelly staring straight ahead at something, not really looking at anything there, just seemed lost deep in thought.
"Kelly?"
"Huh?" Severide nudged just the slightest as he looked up, "Oh it's you."
"What're you doing sitting here in the dark?" Casey asked.
Kelly looked around the room as if he just noticed how dim it was. "Oh...I was just thinking about something."
"What's that?" Casey sat down beside him.
"Nothing really, just something that dawned on me," Kelly answered.
"What?"
Kelly looked at him and explained, "We've always heard the expression 'Things that go bump in the night'. But what's a bump?"
"Huh?" Casey asked.
"Well think about it," Kelly said, "in the night, things go creak like doors and floorboards, things scream like cats fighting outside, things crash...but what the hell is a bump supposed to sound like?"
Casey laughed, "That's what you've been sitting here thinking about all night?"
"Well?" Kelly shrugged, "Who came up with that term? What does 'bump' even mean?"
Casey thought for a minute, "I don't know...maybe whatever goes bump causes the crash, you know, you bump into something in the dark and something falls."
"But why do they call it 'things that go bump'?" Kelly asked.
Casey shrugged helplessly, "Beats the hell out of me."
"Yeah, me too," Kelly said.
The two of them sat there seated almost identically as they pored it over for a minute, trying to think up an answer.
"Well this is bizarre," Kelly said after a minute.
"I agree," Casey said. "Come on, let's go to bed."
"Okay," Kelly conceded as he got up from the couch.
"And don't stay up all night thinking about it," Casey added.
"I won't," Kelly replied, "will you?"
"You just had to put the idea in my head, didn't you?"
Kelly laughed. They went their separate ways and went to bed. Casey had crawled into his bed and pulled the covers up and was looking forward to sleeping, but he found himself staring up at the dark ceiling as he silently pondered over the question, what kind of sound was a bump? He remembered all the kinds of sounds that kept him up at night as a kid, floor boards creaking, doors slowly creaking open, the wind blowing against the house, the wind howling like a banshee, especially in winter during the blizzards, tree branches scraping against the roof and the siding, sometimes he swore he heard somebody up and walking around when he knew everyone was in bed asleep. But, what was a bump?