The Life of The Guy
an excerpt

One of his biggest phobias, and keep in mind that when talking about this guy we are swimming in an ocean of phobias, involved his bedroom window.
He used to stare at that window, from outside the house, waiting for a shadow to appear behind the curtains. That was one of the remarkable things about him, is that he liked to ‘dare’ his fears. He had all of these detailed, scripted, little waking nightmares catalogued in his mind, and while he was, to be sure, terrified of the potentialities that any of these scenarios might represent if played out in his actual life, he was driven to put himself into the exact situations that could, perhaps, lead directly into one of those nightmares.
And so, at night, he would leave the light on in his room, creep down the stairs and out the front door, and he would stand on the front lawn, letting the wet grass brush dew onto his socks, and he would stare up at that window. He was waiting for a figure to appear on the other side of the thin curtain, inside of the room. In a house that was commonly empty (or if occupied, occupied only by his sleeping parents), that ominous silhouette would infer an intruder, most likely one with malicious intent, and maybe, just maybe, an intelligent, non-human threat.
Now, this dude was not the kind of wide-eyed dreamer that habitually faced his deepest fears because he just wanted some proof of Something Else, some sign that this grey, wonderless world was, in fact, actually wonderful. Our guy was terrified of wonderful things. In fact, all that he wanted was to reassure himself that the horrific little stories in his head, stories that starred himself as the main protagonist/victim, would not and could not ever actually happen. And so he stood, his feet wet and cold, and he watched absolutely nothing take place on the other side of the curtain.
Our boy also had a part time job, which he commonly arrived home from after the sun had set (and commonly also after his semi-present parents had taken their repose). And of course, as a hot-blooded, seventeen-year-old American male, he sometimes stayed out quite late on weekends and even on the occasional weekday. When he drove his dented, rusting ’88 Subaru up the long and twisting driveway that led to that looming and seemingly ill-intentioned house, he was more often than not thoroughly exhausted, and therefore he did not pause long on the front lawn to look up at the window, but he did pause.
Being a typical member of an affluent, disinterested suburban family, our friend did not usually expend the small amount of effort involved in slapping the light switch as he left his bedroom, although, the possibility does exist that he tended to leave it on not because of lethargy, but because somewhere in his mind he knew that once the sun was down, and he was walking from his parking space to the front door, he would feel a slight sense of relief when he looked up at that window and saw that the unnecessary light was casting no shadows on still curtains.
It was a ritual. He would pull the parking brake, open the driver’s side door, step out of the car, take exactly 7 steps (four with his left foot and three with his right) and then glance up and the window of the room that he slept in almost every night, confirm that there was no ghoulish shadow present, and then continue on.
One night, as our boy returned home from work to the quiet, lurking house on the quiet hill that lurked just outside of the guy’s calm, distracted town, he engaged in this years-old ritual. He paused in the yard and let the grass brush premature dew onto his cheap, worn out, skater-style sneakers, and he looked up at his bedroom window, and he saw that the light that he had (maybe) intentionally left on when leaving for work that afternoon was not, in fact, casting the shadow of a lurking, intelligent non-human threat on those anxious curtains (or, in fact, casting the shadow of anyone (or anything) at all whatsoever onto those very potentiality-soaked curtains).
It is truly unfortunate that he did not hesitate, unfortunate that he did not look upwards at the window for a mere moment longer. If he had, this story might be completely different. It might be a story of hope and valor and a world that is really, truly wonderful. However, the story must be told as it actually happened, and what actually happened is that our boy looked up at that window, saw that nobody (or no-thing) was lurking behind the curtain, and continued into the house, the antagonistic blades of grass slapping wetly against the cuffs of his pants.
If he had looked up at that window for one moment longer, he would have seen the shadow of his mother’s murderer.