The Skitters

Funny how a little darkness can bring on the skitters.

In daylight, the scratching noise from the back corner of the garage might've made me curious enough to investigate. A mouse perhaps, or one of the neighborhood cats, possibly even a raccoon. In the dark, however, I whirl around on a dime and jump back, expecting the worst although I have no clear idea what the worst might be. Nothing is out of place and there is no sign of movement but I know there is something there, unseen, in hiding, maybe watching and lying in wait. Don't be an idiot, I say outloud but I don't like the shaky sound of my voice or the way my breathing has suddenly turned ragged. I close the dryer door, set the timer, and hurry out.

In the warmth and light of the kitchen, the moment of panic seems like hysterical nonsense born of an overactive imagination and the Stephen King novel I'm reading. I shake it off, remind myself that I'm grown woman and more than a match for a mouse, a cat, or even a raccoon. Besides, and this is in my daddy's voice, whatever it was is way more scared of you than you are of it. A half hour later when I go back to the garage, I try to keep this in mind but at the last minute I decide it wouldn't hurt to take the old yellow broom. Just a precaution, I tell myself and am only slightly ashamed of my own foolishness. An image of sweeping a mouse senseless strikes me as the height of improbability but it's pitch dark outside and the garage is nothing but a jumble of trash and debris and there's no end of unseeable places to hide.

There's no sound except the whir of the dryer but just as a precaution, I scan the garage slowly - paint cans, old furniture, a stray lampshade, a dozen or so empty detergent bottles I'd never gotten around to throwing away, trash bags stuffed with clothing I'd always meant to take to Goodwill, cat carriers haphazardly stacked in a corner,
a leaf blower, an extension ladder - years of stuff I hadn't had time to deal with thrown carelessly into piles to mold and rot, all lit by a bare 25 watt bulb high on the ceiling. Each time I'd been determined to tackle it, I'd been too discouraged to start. I reached for the dryer door and as I pulled the clothes out, something stirred in a back corner, something small and skittery, making a grating noise, like nails (or maybe talons) might make if they clawed on cement. I spun around, brandishing the broom high and shrieking for fear that I would see a pair of malevolent yellow eyes glaring from the shadows.

There was, of course, nothing to be seen - no wild eyed, rabid raccoon ready to pounce, no feral cat with bloody claws, not even the whisker of a mouse. Grown women with brooms are not afraid of the dark, I remind myself sternly, but I don't return to the clothes immediately, choosing instead to try and get my breathing under control and curse defiantly. Get out of my garage! I yell into the darkness but nothing moves or makes a sound, no trapped, injured bird, no stalking serial killer, no small animal, no walking dead. There is just darkness and the whistle of nightwind. I am in my garage on a chilly January night and yes, the light is pitiful and yes, it's far too quiet, and yes, the shadows seem to have a life of their own but it's still just a garage, not a chamber of potential horrors. My daddy's voice speaks again, There is nothing here that can harm you except your own fear, I hear him say, This is just laundry. I become aware of an ache in my fingers and realize that I have a death grip on the broom. I force my hand to relax - just a little - and turn back to the clothes spilling out of the dryer. The smell of clean sheets is reassuring and the towels are still warm but I don't like having my back to the windowless garage wall, don't like the feeling that I'm being watched from behind a mountain of junk, even if it is no more than a scared mouse and not a fast moving, red eyed creature with a taste for blood and gore. Or, my common sense tells me, a tree branch scraping againt the roof. I jam the clothes into the laundry basket and still clutching the broom, back carefully out, not bothering to shut the double doors (and trap some unspeakable something?) against the cold.

Outside there are stars and a quarter moon and peace of mind. The garage is just a garage again, barely visible from the kitchen window once the backporch light is off, a plain enough old structure with it's doors hanging loosely on the hinges and it's formidable contents just so much neglected trash that I can't find time to throw away. Even in the dark, the only monsters are the ones I conjure in my mind.