I woke up early one morning that summer from a dream about the rapist.  I had dreamed that Eric, my husband, had left our basement window open and the rapist had gotten in.  Eric is a heavy sleeper, and it is easy to imagine that at night something could happen and he’d sleep through it and not be able to help me.  I woke myself up before anything could happen in the dream, but I was still really scared.  I looked at the clock and the numbers 3:00 glowed blood red, the first of the two hours when the rapist would do what he did. 

I got up and while I was in the bathroom, I thought I heard someone walk down the hallway and into our bedroom.  I imagined a dark figure with a face drawn in pencil, just like the composite drawing of the suspect I had seen on the evening news, waiting for me on the other side of the bathroom door.  Every muscle in my body tensed.  My hands went numb, the skin of my forearms began to sting, and the rest of my body went cold, except for my face which flushed fire hot.  There was a sharp pain in my stomach, like I had swallowed a piece of barbed wire.  I tried to breathe quietly, but felt a sudden need to gasp for air.  There was a pressure in my chest and combined with the pounding of my heart, I couldn’t get my lungs to expand and I was choking.  I tried to fill my chest, but it was like trying to breathe water. 

Eric’s heavy dark bathrobe hung on the other side of the door and through the crack between the door and the wall, I couldn’t tell if the shadow I saw was the rapist or the robe.  After standing frozen for a long few minutes, I managed to take a deep breath and pushed open the door, hard…but no one was there.  If there had been, I’m not sure what I expected to do, being that I was naked and weaponless.  At around 5 a.m. that morning, I was finally able to fall back asleep, but I made sure that I did not have my back to the door.