After Midnight

After Midnight
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 469

It was well after midnight, when the dog began to whine, growl and then bark. It may have saved them. Not long after Rusty woke Jim and Trudy Livingstone, they heard a faint rustle at the back door. The door knob jiggled about like wind chime being blown by a soft summer breeze and Jim could tell someone was trying to break in.

“Get my gun,” Jim said, picking up his baseball bat as he walked down the hall towards the kitchen at the back of the house. The corridor seemed alive, with shadows dancing in the moonlight before Jim’s eyes.

By the time he reached the kitchen door, Trudy was at his side with the loaded pump action shotgun, held tightly in front of her chest. Jim put his finger to his lips as his wife was about to say something.

The door handle rattled, then the couple heard the chamber of the lock click open. Time seemed to go in slow motion, and the door handle turned slowly anti-clockwise.

Rusty, the neighbor’s German Sheppard, growled loudly, and the door knob creaked to a stop. A white flash shot across the back porch and Rusty whimpered sharply.

Jim motioned for his wife to aim the shotgun at leg height at the back door. He did not want her accidentally killing the intruder when he opened the door.

The door creaked open and a large figure in a musky smelling, black robe stood covering the entire height of the doorway. The figure held a scythe in its right hand that reflected the moonlight on the gap where the face should be. A pale, yellowy white, bony face stared at Jim and Trudy in the moonlight.

Jim and Trudy were speechless. Though Jim was ready to read the riot act to the intruder, no words would make the journey to his mouth now, apart from an incoherent, ba...baa baa.

“Good evening,” the figure said in a hollow and deeply British sounding accent. “I am Death, and we have an appointment.”

“Ba...baa...baa,” Jim stuttered.

“Which one of us?” Trudy managed to say.

“Sorry, madam,” Death said. “With your husband, Ivan Trundle.”

“Ba...baa...baa”

“Ivan Trundle?” Trudy said.

“Yes, madam. Mr. Ivan Trundle of 94 Bottlebrush Road.”

“The Trundle’s live next door,” Trudy said. “This is 92 Bottlebrush Road.”

Death would have looked embarrassed, if he has a face rather than a lifeless skull.

“Oh,” he said, turning slowly towards the yard with the dog he had just zapped with a small bolt of year remover.

“Ba...baa...baa” Jim stuttered.

“Do close your mouth dear,” Trudy said.

“I do apologies for any inconvenience,” Death said. “Third time that this has happened to me this week.”

Death turned and walked down the stairs from the porch, shaking his head as he moved towards number 94.