Still October 8th

As Louise swung the glass-paneled door open, we held our breath expecting alarms to pierce our eardrums. We knew it was impossible (no electricity), but it was our first break-in. No alarms sounded when we inched our way into the kitchen, and no people came running out of the dark, demanding to know what exactly we were doing in their home. However, the dark inside the house was so oppressive that if people had been waiting around the corner to brain us, we would have never seen them coming.

"Find a flashlight," Louise whispered.

"Okay," I whispered back.

Maybe it seems dumb for us to whisper in a potentially empty house, but it felt right at the time. Carefully, we rifled throughdrawers and cabinets in search of lights, candles, anything.

"Gotcha!" Louise squealed, forgetting to be quiet. She held up two battery-operated lanterns.

Armed with light, we tour our new home. I'll tell you what, it was the slowest, most gut-wrenching tour I've ever taken. There we were, stumbling through dark corridors, an underfed boy and woman. No one to protect us. We had to protect ourselves.

We got through the entire house intact, physically and mentally, but it took a dang long time. Part of what took so long was the size of the place. I'd never been in a house with seven bathrooms.

Who needs that many bathrooms, especially when there's only six bedrooms, and three of them are guestrooms. The other rooms consisted of a nursery, a room to be every little girl's dream of a pink princess paradise, and a master suite. All of them had an untouched look and feel, leading Louise and I to believe the house was some rich person's vacation home.

The trek through the house left us tired. We ended it by returning to the kitchen. I hadn't noticed at first, but red moonlight spilled in from a skylight. A skylight in a kitchen was another luxury I would never understand the need for. I wondered how much it had cost to have it installed, back when things had cost something.

Since we knew the house was empty (and sort of secure), we moved onto our next impulse: our growling stomachs. Being in an actual kitchen made me hungry, and Louise's eyes were telling me she was hungry too.

I didn't hold out much hope a vacation home would be well stocked, but I'm glad I was wrong. The fridge yielded only catsup and mustard, but the pantry...oh, the pantry.

The owners must have expected a nuclear holocaust for all the canned and boxed goods they stockpiled. It was like finding a treasure trove within a treasure trove. Louise and I searched the shelves with disbelief. If our lanterns weren't lyin' to us, then we had just become food millionaires.

Cookies, crackers, candy bars, soups, fruits and veggies (canned, dur), Vienna sausages, ravioli, the list went on. We had a junk-food feast all through the night. It was the best meal I'd had in nearly a year, even if I wanted to throw it up after. My stomach wasn't used to taking so much in, and it protested strongly when I reached for my sixth chocolate chip cookie.

Louise was filling her face with canned deliciousness, but she looked as green as I felt.

"We'd better quit before we empty out the pantry in one night," she said.

It was partly a joke, but I believed we could've done it. The outcome would've been pointless and painful, but cause of death? Exploding stomach. Didn't sound like a bad death after all the different ones I'd seen.

Louise suggested we sleep in the living room together for safety. I thought it was a capital idea. After all, we'd been sleeping in the same vicinity for over five months. A raid of the front closet gave us two hockey sticks, but no guns. Throw pillows and blankets on the sofas made for a luxurious sleep. Once upon a time, my dad used to complain about being sent to the couch, but I loved it. Compared to a bedroll on a cement floor, I slept like a king. In theory, anyway. I was actually too scared to close my eyes. Even with a full belly and Louise sitting up all night with a hockey stick, I couldn't feel safe enough to close my eyes.

Didn't help that we'd left the hall closet door open, and I could see the open doorway leading to oblivion from the sofa.

The dark abyss of an open closet door meant the possibility of monsters with fangs, viscous fluid dripping from them. With what we had seen Outside, it was plausible a demon might lurk in between the coats inside the closet. As each second passed, I was more inclined to believe a monster would leap from the shadows to devour us. Every second that did not happen, I was more convinced that it was going to. There was even one mad second when I prayed for it to happen, simply for the agony of the unknown to be over. It was paranoia that put me to sleep.

Something happened during the next few hours, and I can't be sure of the details. I heard movement, felt Louise get off of the couch, and then I heard more noise. The back door opened. Louise was screaming at an intruder. She brought down the hockey stick on them, and down again.

"Stop!" A familiar voice cried. "It's me."

When I heard that, I rolled off of the couch and sprinted to the back door. There, sprawled on the kitchen floor beside two duffel bags, was Michael.

~*~