Synopsis: When a thunder storm brings nightmares to a neighborhood, Mary finds comfort with an old friend and unknowingly reveals feelings for him she wished to conceal and vice versa.

I dunno what brought this story on, but, I wrote it down and that's that. Spent a night at a friend's place yesterday, far from home. An electric storm rolled through and the entire neighborhood was up, trying to find sleep that wouldn't come. And it must have produced this. This uses characters I'd figure I'd never use again. Not sure if it's good cause it's pretty on-the-spot and with a genre that I'm really not used to, but, enjoy anyways.
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Thunder booms and lightning flashes, illuminating and outlining houses across the street for but a few seconds before plunging them back into darkness. The thunder ripples through the sky and announces the coming storm. As the sound dissipates back into the black of the night, the house is silent and dark.
The lawn which stretches around the old, blue house, ending only when it hits the edge of the macadam street and driveway. In the summer the lawn is dry, dying and has become browned with the heat. But now it seems to stretch towards the sky, expecting a feast about to be poured down upon it from the giving sky.
Neighbors and friends have all gone into their houses for the night. All of them sensing the coming storm and knowing better to fear the darkness and the hell that nature can inflict, have retired to their bedrooms and turned off their lights. The entire neighborhood stands quiet and still, the houses seeming to crouch down to protect themselves against the rain like bullets.
But despite the relative calm of the old neighborhood, there is one person that dares to break that stillness. Mary rushes up across the lawn, holding a jacket around her body. It is the only thing on her that is suited for the outdoors. Other than the jacket, she only wears a pair of nightclothes and slippers for her paws.
She draws in air through her muzzle which is set agape, her chest convulsing and forcing her to draw and push out fresh air with each passing second. Her eyes scan around the dark lawn, only illuminated by the crescent moon and the electrical candles in the windows, as if she suspects somebody to be there. But, seeing nobody, she continues onwards.
Passing by the trees and small gardens that have been there for nearly twenty years, if not more, she steps onto the brick walkway that leads to the front of the house from the driveway. Her pawsteps sound audibly when the fabric slaps down onto the brick, only muffled by the moss growing between the red stone. Still drawing quick, short breaths, as if she were crying, she turns and steps up onto the stoop.
Stopping in front of the door, her blue slippers standing on top of a thirty-year-old, worn out welcome mat, Mary raises a furry hand up and then clenches it into a fist, ready to knock. But when she goes to knock, she holds her hand steady and then stops entirely. Still holding the jacket around her shoulders with her free hand, she looks to the door and wonders what she’s even doing there.
“Knock knock.”
Mary jumps and loosens both hands up. Swinging her head around, she looks up the porch that runs half the length of the house, towards the dual windows that look in upon the living room. The jacket slips from around her shoulders and hits the ground with a loud thud. Her tail hugs her bottom. Through the darkness, Mary sees a figure sitting in one of the two padded seats there.
A red dot hangs from one side of the chair. She watches silently as the figure raises the red dot up to where its head is and suddenly the red dot becomes much brighter. The fur lowers the cigarette to the arm of the chair and lets a plume of smoke rise up into the thin, cool night air.
“Daniel.” Mary says gently.
It is true; the wolf sits shirtless on the old metal chair, sucking on a homemade cigarette, staring off gently into the night air. Danny doesn’t move much more than turning his eyes away, back towards the road. He must have seen her coming from where he sits, but, it’s unclear why he didn’t say anything.
Mary calms down, loosens up again, and then begins to twist her hand around her opposite wrist as she holds them in front of her lap. Her eyes go down to the brick between her paws and she stands, embarrassed that she’s here at eleven at night, in her nightclothes and nothing more.
“Sleep wouldn’t come.” Daniel says gently. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
Daniel gently turns his head and looks to her. Mary raises her head up and then begins to gently walk forward, to the wolf who sits only in a pair of jeans and held up with a leather belt. As she begins to approach him, Daniel crosses his legs, holding up a bare paw with a sock of white fur, juxtaposed against his coal-black pads. He then places the cigarette into a crystal ashtray on the glass table between the chairs.
Mary holds her arm with the opposite hand as they hang at her sides. She still feels the embarrassment dwelling within the pit of her stomach. Danny staring at her doesn’t make it feel any better. But still she shuffles forward until she stands in front of the second, unused chair.
“I . . .” She begins, raising her eyes up to her friend.
Biting her lower lip, she lowers her muzzle towards the brick and then lowers herself gently down into the chair. As the metal frame of the chair creaks under the new weight, she looks away and then crosses her arms, embracing her body.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Daniel guesses gently.
Mary nods her head and then looks away, ashamed at such a thing. Daniel doesn’t move but instead sits silently and turns his eyes to look back out onto the street fifty feet beyond the white, PVC plastic support beams and railing. He sighs and then puts his hands down into his lap.
“It was the one about Dad.” Mary suddenly says. “The one where he’s still the same old Major he used to be. Screaming, yelling uncontrollably. Then the bright colors and terrorizing sounds, all frightening me. I just . . . I just didn’t know what to do.”
Daniel turns his head slowly, quietly and looks to her, a bit confused as to why she’s here, on the front porch of his house at eleven o’clock at night, just before an electric storm will light up the sky and douse the area in four inches of rain. His eyebrows go up gently and his tongue runs around, over his teeth.
“So you came here?” He says slowly. “Why?”
She shakes her head and then curls up slowly into the chair, lifting her legs from the ground and leaving the slippers behind. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she holds herself like a makeshift, blue walnut, staring out at the lawn from between her legs. She hides her face away from him, trying not to make him judge her.
“I don’t know.” She says. “It was the only thing that I could think of. I was terrorized.”
Daniel doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns and looks out towards the street and keeps quiet. Mary closes her eyes and sits silently, slipping closer and closer to sleep again, but, afraid to go back under, in case the night terror would come back again.
“The one I had was the one where I’m chasing a cloaked fur through the train yard. All the cars are moving around and I almost get crushed between two Santa Fe engines. And when I finally catch the cloaked fur that I think killed my parents, I rip off the hood and see that it’s me.” Daniel says.
Mary lifts her head slowly, completely silently from between her knees and looks to Daniel. She doesn’t say anything as she looks over the wolf’s face, trying to sense if what he told her is a lie. But when she remembers that he’s been smoking, she knows that it’s true. He only does it when he’s either extremely anxious, or terrorized inside.
“It was just a dream.” Mary says.
“So was yours,” Daniel says in return. He turns his head and they connect eyes for just a few seconds. “But why can’t we forget them?”
She looks away and sighs.
“Because they seemed so real,” She answers, more to herself than to him.
“I still don’t know why you came all the way down Snyder Drive, or, whatever the road is called now, just to come here after a bad dream.” Daniel says. “Why do you want me to comfort you?”
She looks to him and her eyes begin to water up gently.
“Because you’re my best friend, that’s why.” She answers, feeling embarrassed.
Daniel’s eyebrows go up and he slowly looks away. He feels strange inside as well, but, does his best not to show it. As he lowers his eyes to his lap, thunder again rumbles in the distance, though he doesn’t see the lightning. Within a matter of seconds, rain begins to trickle down from the sky.
At first the drop are simply droplets, one or two slapping against the brick and smashing into the grass. But after a few more seconds, the sky begins to dump its hefty load down upon the earth. The rain picks up and then soon it is coming down like bullets; as large as forty-fives and with as much power as an Olds Rocket engine.
Both of them sit quietly as they watch the rain come down just a few feet from the ends of their noses. For a short time, both forget what they have said and soon those feelings that have been dwelling in their stomachs and clenching around their hearts loosens until they are gone completely.
Across the street, in the bi-level there that was built in 1987, a light flicks on up on the second floor. Both of the furs plant their eyes onto the illuminated pane of glass through the pouring rain. Daniel sighs and then clenches the ends of the arms of the chairs, digging his claws into the metal.
“It seems that we’re not the only one’s having sleeping problems.” Daniel gently comments.
“It’s the storm.” Mary says gently. “There’s a strange energy in the air. Everybody on the street can sense it, I just know it.”
Danny nods and then re-crosses his arms, but lets them gently fall into his lap. His eyes hang tiredly, but a whirring mind behind it refuses to allow any rest to reach his body. Through the beating rain he can hear his heartbeat and can swear that she can hear it too. She thinks the same of her own heart, pounding out that one lone note of energy brought on by fear.
Letting her arms slide through her clenched arms, Mary loosens her hold on her knees and then lets her legs touch down onto the cold concrete and brick that makes up the porch. Leaning forward, she hugs her body and then looks down to the solitary paw that Danny allows to touch the ground. She sits on the edge of the seat and quietly comforts herself.
“Are you all right?” Danny inquires.
Mary shakes her head.
“My stomach is twisted. I can still see those images in the back of my head. Why they’re terrifying confuses me, but, they just are.” Mary replies, her eyes focused on the ground.
“Terrifying enough to make you come to me?” Daniel continues to ask.
She looks to him and smiles gently.
“Don’t even think that I came to you because you’re some knight or something.” She says. “Just because you run around beating the crap out of petty thieves and drug dealers doesn’t mean you deserve a suit of armor and a hand-and-a-half sword.”
Suddenly lightning strikes in the field beyond the row of houses built in the mid eighties. Thunder rumbles the entire street, shaking everything within the house and making strange noises. Mary’s eyes widen, her ears go up and she quickly stands up from her seat. Before she can think about what just happened, her tail hides between her legs and she reaches for the closest thing to her: Daniel.
Landing hard into the wolf’s lap, she clenches her head to his neck and wraps her arms around his back. He jumps and his body tenses up, but not because of the lightning, but because of the woman that just tackled him like a linebacker. Inside the house, the grandfather clock begins to chime, signaling midnight. The metal and glass decorative bowls and other such items jingle and jangle as the sound rattles the house. None of that stuff has been moved since the nineties.
As the thunder rumbles into the distance and all the things settle into the house, Daniel watches over the shoulder as more lights come on up the street. Everybody has had a night terror and is now definitely awake. Breathing gently and reaching out into the air with open hands, Danny looks down the blue night clothes that cover Mary’s brown and white body.
He listens to her sob gently, no doubt having seen the face of her tyrant of a father screaming his military orders at her like a drill sergeant. Smiling gently, he gently places his arms onto her shoulder blades and then relaxes his body, sitting back into the padded seat and sliding down into the cushion.
Mary’s weight shifts onto him fully and she begins to loosen up as well. When the episode of fright passes by, she lifts her face from his fur, but doesn’t move fully away. She steadies her breathing; slowly realizing what she’s done, but, doesn’t make any attempt to leap away.
“Okay,” she says after a few quiet seconds, “I did, but, don’t you go running to your drinking buddies to tell them about this.”
He smiles gently and then rests his muzzle onto her shoulder. She holds onto him a bit tighter and begins to make herself comfortable, digging her head into his body and lifting her paws from the cold-as-ice ground. He holds onto her and relaxes.
“I don’t have drinking buddies and if I did, your secret would be secure with me.” He assures her.
She smiles gently, hoping that he can’t see it and begins to settle finally. Having been trying to get back to sleep in her own bed for an hour, it takes less than a minute to make sleep come whilst with a friend. Her mind clears and then she dives towards sleep. On the other hand, Daniel stays awake, his mind now running on another topic.
His fear now entirely gone, he thinks about something he read in the paper: A job opening in town, at the candy factory. They were looking for experiencing mechanics to work on the new Dove lines that they put in about two years ago. Apparently skilled mechanics don’t come straight out of college like, well, candy out of a dispenser.
Reading it, he knows that it’s a good job. It’s close to home and it’s even working with something he knows and has been doing for years. It’s the job that his father held before passing. But the best part is that they start of good mechanics at 68,000 a year, salary. He would have to deal with morons, constantly breaking down, Italian-made machines, and swinging shifts, something that destroyed his father. But it’s good money and it’s a family tradition to work a stint at the factory.
Holding onto Mary, he suddenly imagines a different kind of future, one that he’d never dreamt of, never feared and never imagined. It’s one where he has a day job, supports his lifestyle honestly, has a wife and a kid and lets his past go. Sighing gently, he rests his head back into the cushioning and looks out towards the rain.
It’s something he’d never even thought of, something he thought was always behind bars, standing on the other side of glass, beyond lock and key. But now he can feel it closer than ever: an end to it all. And the worst part is that it’s been living up the street and is now lying in his lap. Rolling it over in his mind, he thinks it over until his mind has touched every little bit. Then he places it aside as the rain lulls him into a well-deserved sleep.