Sarah

The beam of her headlights briefly illuminated the trees flanking the driveway to her house before she turned the ignition key, extinguishing the lights. Sarah found herself enveloped in darkness as she sat in her car.

Stepping from the vehicle she waved her hand expecting the motion detector to turn on the security lights, but she remained marooned in the dark. There was no moon to lighten the sky.

“Damn!” she muttered. “The power must be out.”

Cautiously, she walked along the path to her front door, and even though she told herself it was simply a power outage, that there was no one waiting for her in the shadows, her heart began to beat harder, her breath unsteady.

Her hand shook as she searched for the keyhole, eventually she managed to put the key in the lock and open the door. Closing it against the cold wind, she breathed a sigh of relief but that was to be short lived. Sarah flicked the hall light switch, but the house remained in darkness.

“Tonight, of all nights.” She spoke the words out loud just to break the tension.

Her hand scrabbled into the bottom of her purse for her phone. Turning it on its glow gave her a little comfort. She pressed her husband’s number.

“Hi, sweetheart, did you enjoy the show?” His voice reassured her a little.

“I’ve just got back. There’s an outage, I’m in the bloody dark!”

“Oh, darling. Is it the whole street? Can you see any lights next door?”

She opened the curtains and peered through the lounge room window to check if she could see any lights and dropped the phone with a clatter on the hardwood floor.

“Darling? Hello? Hello? What’s happening?”

A leather gloved hand across her mouth prevented Sarah from answering.