Lights Out

By Paul Thompson

Our new home. Every evening the same routine – switching off the downstairs lights in sequence, pausing at the last.

Waiting in the dark is the ghostly child, the cliché, the best my imagination can muster.

When I run upstairs it is two steps at a time, our bedroom illuminated and safe.

One evening I share this with my wife, my laughable childhood fear of the dark still chasing me up the stairs

“You can see her also?” she responds, putting down her book.

We agree to leave the lights on, and resolve to find a new home in the morning.