Sally looked out of the window into the darkness.
Rain was hitting the glass panes with increasing force and Sally knew that the storm was going to get worse as the night wore on.
She'd lit the fire in the fireplace behind her, because it'd also gotten colder.
She walked back towards the fire and felt it's warm on her skin.
She rubbed her hands together briskly to try to take away the feeling of unease she felt tonight.
She couldn't understand why she was feeling uneasy, but she had the strangest feeling that something bad was going to happen tonight.
She'd not often had these feelings, but when she did, she usually paid attention to them.
It'd had saved her one before when she felt this way.
She'd felt uneasy once before on a night the same as tonight.
Wet and stormy.
She had been about to fly off to see her sister who lived in Boston.
However just before she was due to board the plane, she'd felt something crawl over her grave.
She'd decided not to board the plane; the feeling of someone walking on her grave seemed to ease as she re-booked the flight for the next morning.
She'd been driving home in the storm with the car radio on and then came a news flash.
There'd been a plane crash at the airport she'd just left.
She listened as they said what flight had crashed, killing nearly all on board.
It'd been her flight!!!
Something or someone had been looking after her that night.
Sally still couldn't seem to shake the unease that was within her.
Even the warm heat from the fire didn't seem to help.
She walked back towards the window and stood there trying to understand the weird feelings within her.
She was looking out into the darkness, when suddenly; a flash of lighting lit the blackness outside, scaring her.
She'd jumped back away from the window with a frighten gasp as the lighting flashed across the sky.
She walked back towards the window to see if there was anything out there causing this unease within her.
Maybe something was wrong with her sister?
Sally turned and walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver to call her sister to make sure everything was all right her end.
All she heard from the earpiece was silence.
Her phone line was dead.
The storm had most likely brought down some lines somewhere.
The feelings increased as the storm increased intensely.
Sally rubbed at her arms, which had become covered with goose pimples.
Sally replaced the handset and walked back towards the window.
Just as she reached the window, another bright flash of lighting lit up the entire front yard.
Sally's hand flew towards her mouth to smother a scream.
There was someone standing in the rain in her front yard!!!
Then the darkness returned to the outside world.
Sally stood there by the window waiting for more lighting to flash again, so she could see the person standing outside.
It took a minute or two before lighting flashed again.
But try as she could, Sally couldn't see anyone standing outside in her yard.
"Nah, I'm seeing things now." Sally half laughed, but even to her own ears, her laughter sounded hollow.
Sally waited for the next bolt of lighting and when it came, she tried to make out a man standing in her yard, but where he'd stood, or more to the point, where she'd thought he stood, was empty.
Sally's house was miles away from the nearest neighbor.
She'd brought this place a couple of years ago, not long after her husband had been killed in a car accident.
She'd needed to get away from all of the bad memories of her and her husband's life together.
Even in death, the memories of her brutal husband scared her.
He'd been a very cruel man, beating her every time he felt like it.
When he made love to her, it wasn't love as such.
It'd been pure and painful rape.
He enjoyed hurting her every time he entered her.
He'd ram his penis as hard as he could into her, pinching her nipples hard as he did so.
She'd wake in the morning covered with bite and pinch marks all over her body.
She shuddered as she remembered his cold seed leaking out of her vagina and her anus as she stood in the shower, trying to scrub his presence from her body.
When he'd been killed in the car accident, Sally had felt no remorse for him.
They'd never found his body; it was believed to have been washed away in the flash flood that'd caught his car, as he'd been crossing a small ford near their house.
She'd had to wait for seven years for the law finally decided he was indeed dead.
They released the money in the bank account and insurance that'd been tied up all that time.
Sally had had to work as a barmaid and as a waitress to make ends meet until the money came through.
But even though she'd hated it at first, just the fact that her husband was no longer beating and raping her anymore, was more than enough for her to put up with those jobs.
She'd never been with another guy since her husband's death.
Sally was far too scared to trust another man in her life, let alone her bed.
Finally, deciding that she must have mistaken a small tree for a man in the semi-darkness, sally went back to the fire and stoked it up enough to cast an even brighter light in the lounge room.
But the feelings of unease stayed with her.
Sally had dimmed the lights in the lounge room so that the warmth and brightness of the fire filled the room.
Suddenly there was a loud crash of thunder shaking the entire house.
Sally jumped with fright as the lights went out.
"Damn, first the phone and now the bloody lights." Sally muttered, trying the light switch
"Oh well, at lest I've still got the fire." She giggled nervously.
Sally lay down on the lounge in front of the fire, feeling its warmth sweep over her.
She was just dozing off into sleep, when she heard the sound of glass breaking downstairs.
"Shit, now what?" Sally cried out, sitting upright on the lounge.
