The silence was oppressive and the air was hot and stagnant. Through the darkness the endless ticking of the wall clock was the only sound, the only hint of life other than her quiet, careful breathing.
It was summer. Early July. The air was thick and humid, and her tiny breaths stopped and hung in the space above her bed like spiders, dangling with legs moving soundlessly, suspended in mid air. When night fell she could do nothing but breathe. She breathed in rhythm with the sound of the clock. In for five seconds, out for five. Ten seconds gone. Six deep breaths and a whole minute of her life had passed. 60 seconds she would never have to face again, one minute wasted in the dark of a moonless, windless night. With the light on she felt as if she were being watched from just beyond where the light reached, so she stayed in the dark. She thought that if she lay still enough she would make it through the night undetected, unseen and untouched by the black night creeping through the dead space around her. So in the blackness she breathed, exhaling into the velvet dark all around her, breath sticking to the night like flies on fly paper.
She would always fall asleep in the moments just after sunrise, when the light from the waking sun began to tiptoe over her window sill. She would wait for the light to be just bright enough to see that no one was watching her, for the morning to be just far enough along for neighbors to begin starting their cars and for newspaper vans to start their rounds. She would wait just until life began to surface from underneath the cover of heavy darkness and then she would close her eyes. Time had not stopped. Life would indeed go on.
Every night she was vigilant, waiting quietly for the thief to come.
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