Backyard

Evening arrives and darkens the scene. The young boy sees a girl, a few years older than him, dangling playfully from the branch of a crab apple tree in the corner of the yard. It is autumn. The above ground pool to the left of her is closed up and winterized. The tool shed to her right is padlocked. In the increasing dark, the girl leaps to the ground and runs across the patio and into her house. The house is a split-level ranch. There is one light on in the dining room where the rest of the family is sitting down to dinner. She joins them. The boy is alone now, listening intently to the wind that rustles through a tall swamp maple slowly shedding its leaves.

The air grows cold. The boy suddenly remembers that he is invisible. No one will notice if he takes a peak through the window into the dining room.

The window is high up from the ground and cannot be reached unless he devises something to lift him up to the windowsill. He finds a nearby toy chest, props it under the window and climbs it, finding the entire dining room scene before his eyes.

No one is there.

The overhead chandelier above the dining room table suddenly turns itself off, shrouding the interior in darkness.

The boy is relegated to imagining the possible scenes within the house while stranded in the yard. None of the family members living there can be seen. Furthermore, they are unaware of him. In fact, no one is aware of him. He turns his attention away from the house, which lies completely blacked-out into a silhouette against the faint, orange light pollution of the evening sky. He now focuses his eyes toward the fence at the back of the yard. In the midst of his focus, he spies a shadow crossing over its aluminum fretwork. Studying it for a while, he seems to recognize the shadow as his own. His initial response is to walk toward it in order to discover its true source (he doesn’t believe that it is him). The scene doesn’t make sense to him. Where is the light coming from that makes this shadow possible?

Approaching the shadow, he is able to confirm that it is certainly his. The paradox: it does not follow his movements. It moves by its own volition toward an expanse of darkness to the left, obliging him to follow it.

Beyond the crab apple tree, the shrubs that strafe the aluminum fence and behind the swimming pool, the shadow is lost before his eyes. This does not disorient him. He can feel its movements now, descending further into the underbrush in the far back corner of the yard. Every sound becomes amplified. A chill runs through his veins and forms a ringing in his temples. Now, in the pitch black before him appears the figure of a great Doberman Pincher, standing completely still and staring him down. The boy is now unable to move.

The Doberman, with a sleek, majestic gait, ambles toward him and resounds an echoing bark that cancels out all other sounds. The yard surrounding their encounter has thoroughly disappeared. All that remains is the dog, with phosphorescent green/yellow eyes, and the sheer black nothingness surrounding his approach.