The Glass ghost

Abstract

It was an oppressive night, still and sticky, a blanket of leeches to drain her body. She could feel the melt between her breasts, the wet of the nightie as it clung to her back. She had come into the lounge in search of the cool, sipping a glass of tepid water and telling herself that there would be time enough for sleep. For now just rest. Try and think of something other than this infernal gyp and the stab of arthritis in her knees. She eased herself onto the sofa and stared out the bay window - too tired to think any more, baffled by the heat and the deadness of the hour. She would later realise that she must have dozed off, if only for a few seconds, because one moment there was the view across to the Beaufort villa and the next, a figure was obscuring the two-storeyed house across the road. It was a man, a brown man, standing on her grass verge and swaying from side to side as if to some unheard rhythm. She crept to the edge of the curtains and saw that he was naked, lean muscles flexing across a broad back and something dark writhing across his shoulders. Dreadlocks, a row of black snakes charmed by the cadence. He stopped and turned his head, sniffing at the night as if suddenly aware of another's presence and trying to divine its location. To her it seemed almost the act of a predator, so feral that she instinctively recoiled against the curtains and willed herself invisible for fear her scent be caught. But it was too late. The man looked directly up at her darkened window, his discovery pushing the breath from her lungs, a trickle of urine escaping down her legs.