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            Aaron was running upstairs for the attic door, heedless of the clawing of his back, Leah’s panicked face his only focal point, when his feet missed the fact that there were no more steps up and he pitched forward. He hit the floor with an “Ooph!” that might have been comical under different circumstances, face forward, his chin striking so hard that his teeth rattled. There wasn’t even time to get up before he saw Leah step back and reach for the doorknob.  He made a desperate guttural sound and tried to launch himself forward, but the door slammed shut. Aaron fought with the door, trying to force it open. When the hands of the dead grasped him, he howled, more in frustration than fear.

 Leah jostled him awake. “If you want to wake the neighborhood, Aaron, I can buy you a bullhorn.” She sounded both groggy and grumpy..  

He sat up, sweaty and trembling. The room had the grayish hue of pre-dawn and he could hear the cacophony of early morning birds. Leah undeniably looked more annoyed than panicked. He even sounded slightly whiny to himself when he tried to explain, “I had that nightmare again.”

“No kidding!” Leah muttered. “And if you’d get it into your head that you have it every time you sit up late watching schlock and stuffing your face with junk food, maybe we could both sleep a little better on the weekends.”  She rolled onto her side, literally giving him a cold shoulder, and pulled the blanket up high.  The room felt suddenly large and lonely. He scooted closer to her, but she was obviously harboring a grudge and pretended not to notice.  Aaron sat quietly and watched until Leah at last relaxed her grip on the blanket and began softly snoring.

Too tense to return to sleep, he got up as gingerly as possible, so as not to reawaken her, and paced the room in bare feet, reflecting intensely on his night’s anxiety until he managed to give himself a headache. The bathroom medicine cabinet was sorrowfully devoid of ibuprofen. He should have gotten some when he was out stocking up on his midnight snack supplies. Instead, he settled for a hot shower to try to ease his mind and the pain.

The shower actually did the trick. Soon he was relaxing in his recliner with the remote on his lap and the scent of brewing coffee surrounding him. Idly, he flipped through channels: infomercial, infomercial, old sitcom, infomercial…the usual early morning lineup. The terror hit him solidly and without warning when the channel surfing came to an abrupt halt on a movie network. A one-armed, bloody ghoul was running at the screen. Fuck! The “Dawn of the Dead” remake was on!

He sat silently and unblinkingly, as if bewitched, not even realizing that he was shaking again. When the forgotten remote slid from his lap and onto his foot, he yelped and sprang from the recliner.  He stared stupidly at it for a few moments, then sighed and slumped a bit. “Idiot!” he thought to himself. At least it had broken his peculiar TV trance and no one had seen him freak out over a movie he’d watched at least two or three times before without a problem.

He picked up the remote and turned the television off without looking at the screen again.  It left the room uncomfortably dark. The hairs on his neck seemed to twitch and tingle. He ambled into the beckoning light of the kitchen in what he hoped seemed a calm manner and poured himself a cup of hot, comforting coffee. He noticed that the curtains over the sink were open, revealing a hazy view of his neighbor’s home. The fog was thick this morning…no wonder the house was still dark.

A gust of wind rattled the glass and he jerked the curtains closed, sloshing his coffee over the rim of the cup in his haste. The burning made him feel sheepish again, but he chose to wipe his hand on the leg of his pants rather than wash it off at the sink. The window looked more ominous now that he couldn’t see through to the other side.  Not that he rationally thought there would be an invasion of zombies, he told himself almost convincingly. When the arm wrapped around his torso from behind, he yelped, ducked, and dropped his cup.

“I’m so sorry, Aaron!” Leah gasped.  She grabbed the dishtowel from its ring over the counter, ran cold water over it, and stooped down to apply the coolness to his burnt feet. Aaron was shivering and had not yet regained his voice. Leah looked up at him with concern, set the towel on top of the coffee puddle, and stood. She led Aaron back to his recliner, now bathed in lamplight. He offered no protest when she sat him down and tugged the footrest up so that she could examine the tops of his feet more closely. She left him for a moment and returned with a tube of burn ointment and gently rubbed it over the red patches.

He began to recover his wits as she worked the ointment in. His heart stopped racing and the shaking subsided. As Leah recapped the tube, he was ready to get back on his feet and get past the foolish nervousness.

“I really didn’t mean to scare you,” Leah said sincerely, tears welling in her eyes now that she had time for them. “I heard you out here and came out to apologize for what I said earlier. I wasn’t very sympathetic. Now look what I’ve done to you.” She was the one trembling now.

Aaron shook his head and held her for a moment. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning. It was an accident. I’m just on edge and I don’t know why.”

They walked back into the kitchen together. She finished sopping up the spilled coffee, then he swept up the remnants of the cup into a dustpan and dumped them into the wastebasket. The window was still rattling, but it wasn’t bothering him so much now. He avoided looking at it, just the same. He poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down at the table. Leah stood by the sink and studied him for a moment.

“Do you want to talk about the nightmare,” she asked.

“No.” He took a sip and yawned.

“It’s still early,” Leah said. “Maybe you should try and get some more sleep.”

Aaron thought of returning to the dimness of the bedroom alone and involuntarily shuddered.  Leah noticed, of course. She set her own cup down and walked over to rub his tense shoulders. That was even more effective than the shower. He yawned again. She patted his back affectionately and tugged at his arm. “C’mon. I’ll fix fresh coffee later with breakfast. We could both use some more sleep.”

She was right, though he had doubted it when sitting at the table. He slept like a log for several hours. Leah was solicitous for the rest of the day, still feeling guilty over the coffee injury. It was almost worth the burns to get out of weekend chores and be urged to sit with propped-up feet in front of the TV all day. She had even gone out while he slept and rented movies for him…80s westerns. Sweet!  He wondered how he could manage to do it again the next Saturday, only with less embarrassment and pain.

When evening crept back in, Aaron was feeling fine and frisky. Leah was reading in bed, a pillow propped up behind her back and the blanket tucked over her lap, when he decided to retire the videos for different entertainment. She closed the book and set it aside when he slipped in beside her. She reached for the light, but he took her arm and pulled it back.  He began kissing her neck and his hands slid down the front of her nightshirt. Leah leaned her head back and made a satisfied sound deep in her throat. Mmmmmm. Aaron stopped kissing to smile at her and she smiled back, her jaws exposed through hanging clumps of rotting pallid flesh in a permanent grin.  Maggots squirmed from her nostrils. Her dead eyes stared through him.

Aaron screamed and leapt from the bed. Leah came up fast on the other side and ran to him. Her clothes were in tatters and he could see things crawling through the remains of her hair. He backed into the corner, waving his arms to fend her off. Her mouth moved with what might have once been words, but was now only a soulless moan. She tried to grasp him with those decaying arms and he swung at her wildly. As he connected a blow to her cheek, his vision seemed to shift and she was Leah again, but it was too late.

She staggered backwards with a stunned look on her face, tottered for a moment, then lost her balance and fell into the window.  She hung halfway through it, face to the moon and the night sky, glass glistening on her shirt. One single whimper, a twitch, and nothing more. Aaron lurched to his feet and stumbled towards her. He lifted her from the window and sank to his knees, glass crunching under him, cradling her. He was the one moaning now, low and incessantly.

He could hear voices at the window.  The face of one of his neighbors peered in hesitantly, but Aaron’s world view did another of those strange shifts. Instead of a man he had known as a friend for years, he saw a fiend with eyeless sockets and a bloodstained face.  Aaron rose to his feet, clutched her tight, and backed away. They had come at last, the walking dead. They were going to try to take Leah from him. He had to protect her. He could hear more of them behind the first. They had surrounded the house! Where could he go?

 He had to get to the attic.  He lifted Leah into his arms and ran with her towards the stairs. There was a banging at the front door. Run faster, his mind screamed. Fingernails clawed his back as he ran up the steps. His feet failed him, just as they did in his nightmare, and he fell forward. Leah tumbled off of him and astoundingly began to crawl away. Frozen in surprise, he could only watch as she crept towards the safety of the attic.  He didn’t move until her frightened face was hidden when the door swung shut.  He was still moaning and fighting weakly with the locked door when the hands of the authorities finally grasped him.