Story Time

Hoboy. It's been a little while. School is busy, and work is even busier.
So tonight is Story Night. Where I get to tell you a funny, scary, or even sad story. Tonight's is partially scary, and it is in fact 99.999% true.

The Midnight Murdurer
I stared at the glowing screen before me, my heart beginning to defy it's regular pace. The message scrawled hurriedly across the small electronic device was insignificant in size, but I felt as if my life depended on it. I'd just gotten off work at my usual time, 9:47 PM. I sat in my car, relieved to know I'd at last be crawling into my warm bed in less than five minutes—the time it took me to travel home. But since I'd read the tiny warning on my cell phone, I wasn't so sure I would make it to my warm bed.
“lights r out...,” the text began. Then, “murderer b/w houses, dads loading his gun!”
It was from none other than my sister, who I knew would be the most worried out of all my family. I drove home, unseeingly unaware of just exactly what “lights r out” meant. I looked for my street, usually alight with an array of copper streetlights and house lights. But in fact, my street did not exist to the human eye. It was so incredibly dark, even in the city suburban area I was, that my car lights were barely sufficient. I found my driveway, parked, and stumbled out quickly, distracted by the unfamiliar darkness around me. I ran up to my house door, fumbling for the right key. Momentary triumph upon finding the key vanished with a noise. The sound made my eyes water instantly with fear. Days before we had an enormous garage sale, and had placed a wooden wind chime right outside our garage. In the silence, the bamboo chime twisted and swirled making a chillingly melodious racket which sent chills dancing up and down my spine. I turned my gaze to see it settling after its tiki-chant. For a moment, I almost laughed at myself for my pathetic reaction to a wind chime. Until I realized something.
There was no wind whatsoever.
At that moment, my hand thrust the key into the door and turned it as hard as I could. I could hear stirring behind my in the darkness, voices, whispered, footsteps. They called my name, ready to grab my shoulders, muffle me, and drag me away into the ever-blackening night. My heart began racing at an inhuman speed and my adrenaline drove me right through the door, up the stairs and into my parents room. They weren't there. Oh good Lord, I thought. I could see it in the paper headlines, “Girl Comes Home to Murdered Family.” I heard a light buzzing coming from downstairs. I tiptoed down, past the front door not even daring to look outside the window and burst into the TV room. There they were, all four of them, nested deep in the couch, watching Dancing with the Stars, while I was outrunning a killer.
I strolled in as nonchalantly as possible, nodded a hello, and added quickly on the side, “No worries guys. It's not like I was just followed by a killer. Like, who cares if I was murdered, you wouldn't want to miss your show.”
I got a few strange looks, and one smile. My sister.
“I was just kidding, you know. Except...not about the lights.” She said, and looked back to the television. I stared at her for a moment, and she glanced back. There was a moment of innocent silence. “What?”
I just stared and stared, turned around slowly, walked into my room, turned out my lights, and went to bed. And all night long, in the cold and bleak darkness, I dreamed about tiki wind chimes.