Georgina was trying to fall asleep, but the moonlight was too bright and keeping her awake. She tossed and turned, but she couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard she tried. The moon had passed over her house when she heard strange noises outside her window. She looked outside but couldn’t see anything except an early morning sky. Maybe, she thought, I should investigate. She tiptoed down the hall past her parents’ room, skipped down the stairs like a dancer flowing into the kitchen and out the door to the garage where she parked her bicycle. She knew her parents would be angry when they found out she had taken a solo ride at dawn, but she was going to do what she was going to do.
She quietly pushed the garage doors open, walked her bicycle to the street, and took off. What a glorious feeling to ride her bicycle down the quiet street—no cars, no children, no parents going to work, no one waving from windows. She rode and rode around the block, counting each spin, around and around feeling a freedom she had never felt before and gloried in the fact that her mother and father had no idea what she was doing and couldn’t yell at her to get into the house, right now.
Suddenly, she heard strange noises like the ones outside her window and felt something breathing on her neck, breaths light at first and then heavier as if warning her that she was in deep trouble and needed to get home before she was attacked. Georgina was definitely in trouble, the breathing getting stronger and warmer and warmer as if it would swallow her up. She didn’t dare turn around to see who or what this being was.
She had to think fast to escape this weird phenomenon and peddled as fast as she could, up the street, around the corner, down the street, and up the driveway into the garage so relieved she had forgotten to shut the garage door. She jumped off her bicycle and pulled the garage door down, ran into the kitchen and up the stairs, past her parents’ room into her bedroom, and diving into her bed, pulled the covers over her head to stop the sound of breathing on her neck.
She finally fell asleep until her mother entered her room to shake her awake for breakfast, although her mother thought it very strange that her daughter hadn’t appeared at her usual time. “Good morning, Georgina, did you have a good sleep?”
“Oh, yes, Mama,” Georgina answered. “I dreamed I rode my bicycle around and around the block and felt as free as a bird.” Georgina never told her mother the whole story.
She could still feel the breath on her neck even in old age.
