Suddenly the monopoly board isn’t visible, hidden by the darkness that suddenly surrounds us. I look in the direction where Katrina last sat.
“Did you turn out the lights?” I ask.
“No?’ Katrina whines in a worried voice.
“Then we have a problem”, I yelp, scrambling for the light switch. Katrina screams while searching for a flashlight. She beats me to it. The weak stream of her flashlight, creates an eerie glow around the room.
Something moves across the room but the ray of light isn’t strong enough to reach the intruder. I lunge for the light switch and the room is flooded with bright fluorescent light. Each of us stunned by the sudden burst of artificial glow. Katrina and I recover first but stand in place, not daring to move.
“But… but there is no one in here” she says, looking to me as if I have the answer.
I’m just as confused as she is. Everything seems the same, the large Mrs. Pacman machine sits firmly in the corner as it always has, the warm pan of popped popcorn rests, undisturbed, on the stove top. The only thing that has changed is our pieces on the monopoly board, but either of us could have bumped into it in our frantic search for light.
“Do you hear that?” Kat asks, staring at me, wild eyed.
“Yes, be very quiet” I whisper. A faint, scratchy breathing is coming from behind the Mrs. Pacman machine.
Quietly Kat retrieves the pan, filled with warm popcorn, off the stove and hands it to me. I grab it and make my way to the corner. My free hand grips the corner of the machine and I peek just around the screen at the masked intruder. The racoon hisses at the sight of me, causing me to fling popcorn everywhere. It darts away, up onto the counter, scrambling for the open window. Using the lightswitch as footing, it climbs out of the window into the night and we are plunged into darkness once again.
The realization of what has just happened causes the two of us to collapse on the floor in a fit of laughter. After catching our breath, we clean up the popcorn and shut the window.