text: It had been six months since his wife had left him. No explanation. No remorse. No sadness. She was just gone. One day everything had seemed fine - the next, everything had changed. She had changed. It was just now starting to really sink in. She was never coming back. He laid in the darkness of the barren bedroom in his small apartment and stared at the ceiling. The loneliness was killing him. It was so quiet here. Too quiet to sleep. “I need a smoke,” he said to his dog - to nobody in particular. He threw the blankets off carelessly and tied on his robe as his dog hopped up and waited by the sliding glass door to the back yard. Tom grabbed a cigarette and a lighter and slid open the door. As he stepped out into the biting cold his dog ran off into the darkness to do her business. He lit his cigarette and hugged himself against the chill of the night. Standing there he realized what a silly thing smoking is - here he was: outside, in the cold, at 3:25 in the morning in February, all for a stupid smoke. Dancing around in the dark and shuddering in the cold he looked up at the wall next to his sliding door at the porch light. He hadn’t really ever noticed it before. Tom slid the door open a crack and held his cigarette out in the other direction to keep the smoke from coming in. He reached inside and flipped the rocker switch to the light. Nothing. He flipped it a few more times - just to be sure, as people do - and decided now was as good a time as any to replace the bulb. “At least it’ll give me a reason to be standing out here in the middle of the night,” he thought to himself. He set his cigarette on a small table with the cherry hanging off the edge. This would only take a second. He slinked his way inside and grabbed an old bulb from a box in the garage. Soon, he was back outside in the cold, standing on a chair with a cigarette dangling from his lips as he battled the enclosure. He slipped the opaque plastic housing off the base to see that there was no bulb installed. “Well, that explains that,” he said to himself. As he began to thread the bulb into the base it suddenly flicked on, and just at the exact instant that his brain began to tell him, ‘you left the light switch flipped up’ he saw a woman, completely nude and soaked from head to toe standing inches away from the sliding glass door and his face - inside his bedroom. He jumped backward instinctively, fell, and let out a guttural shout, “OH!” as the plastic housing and cigarette both when tumbling to the ground. She just watched him from the darkness of the room. Expressionless. He sat there on the ground for what felt like an eternity, the two of them just staring at each other. Just then, the dog came running up to investigate. She looked at Tom and then, sensing another, she turned - startled - to look at the woman. Her hackles raised and a growl welled up from within her. She let out a bark and at the exact same moment, the woman let out a blood-curdling scream and slapped the sliding glass door with both hands - hard. As soon as her hands hit the glass there was a loud ‘POP!’ and the light went out. Tom’s eyes darted up to look at the light and then darted back to look at the woman - but she was gone. His heart was racing a thousand miles an hour. He felt like it might burst out of his chest. The dog just stared and growled in the darkness. The last thought he had before he fainted onto the cold concrete was of the raised hackles on his dog’s back. “She saw it, too. She saw it, too...” ... Tom blinked his eyes. “Light. Morning. Blanket. I’m in my bed,” he thought to himself. He looked around his room and saw his robe hanging on the hook. He saw his lighter and pack of cigarettes sitting on the bathroom counter. “How did I get in my bed?” He remembered the cold, the light bulb, the... the woman in the dark. Naked. Water dripping on the floor in streams. Slapping the door - and that god-awful scream. The way it sounded muffled through the glass but still so piercing he could hardly stand it. It was still ringing in his ears. But it must have just been a dream. He looked at his watch. “7:30! Oh god, I’m going to be late!” As he rushed into the bathroom and started the shower he noticed his dog standing on the other side of the glass in the backyard, looking longingly at him to be let in from the cold. “I’d better leave her outside,” he thought to himself. “The smell is getting pretty strong and I don’t want her getting into the bag while I’m in the shower.” He climbed into the steaming water, letting the warmth soak the morning cold out of his bones. Twenty minutes later he put his toothbrush back in its holder, spit into the sink, and cinched up his tie. On his way out of the bedroom, he looked at the body of his dead wife wrapped in black plastic trash bags on his bed. “I miss you,” he said sadly - wishing for the thousandth time in six months that he hadn’t killed her. “I really do.” On his way toward the front door, he shot a glance to his dog at the sliding glass door - and stopped dead in his tracks. He could hardly see his dog’s face through the condensation on the glass door. The steam from the shower had frosted the glass as it met the cold outdoor air, almost completely obscuring all sight of the outside world. But the steam from the shower had also revealed two small, feminine handprints on the glass - fingers splayed in terror and desperation. Anger. And it was only then that he noticed the dark, wet spot on the carpet just inside the door.