Missing Louisa

Diet Coke: check. Popcorn: check. Box of Kleenex: check. Blankets folded neatly and placed in their respective spots on the couch: check. All the fixings of a typical, beloved Saturday night. All that was missing was Louisa.

Rye stood in front of the fridge and frowned, glancing at the clock above the sink. It was well after six. The living room window showed her that the streetlights were on and the sun had gone to bed. That meant Lou should have been home hours ago.

Chewing absently at her thumbnail, Rye checked her phone. The last text between them had been at four o’clock, when Lou had reminded Rye that she was stopping at the grocery store, and did she need to pick up anything for their movie night? It had become a ritual of sorts, with one of them staying in in order to get everything ready, the other hurriedly making their way back home after being out and about for whatever reason.

It had been Lou’s turn to choose the movie and Rye, who favoured horror, had rolled her eyes at the other woman’s selection. Romcoms were Lou’s guilty pleasure, and she didn’t ask to watch them often, so Rye tried not to complain much when she did.

She’d been working on compromise, something she often struggled with, being an only child. And Lou, with her infinite patience (she had a younger brother, after all), handled it well. Lou had always handled her well, from the very beginning. There was a reason they were still roommates after four years.

Outside, rain began to tap at the window with impatient fingers, and Rye frowned. Checked her phone. Only a few minutes had passed since the last time, and there was still no sign of–

There came a knock at the door. Rye froze. A shiver unfurled, spreading over her arms, up her spine and across the back of her neck, leaving goosebumps behind. Taking a deep breath, she made her way up the carpeted stairs to the side door, the door to their basement suite. The outside light had been burned out for months, the landlord promising to get to it every time Lou reminded him, but that didn’t stop Rye from the habit of flicking the lightswitch.

“Shit,” she muttered when the dark through the triangular little window stayed that way. She heard a shoe scuff on the cement step outside and winced, thankful for the gauzy scrap of yellow fabric Lou had tacked over the window.

With a shiver, Rye cleared her throat. “H-hello?”

There was another light knock, as if the person on the other side had done it by accident, and Rye nearly jumped out of her skin when the mail slot squeaked and spit a piece of folded paper onto the floor.

Footsteps as the person on the stoop outside took off running, but Rye was too preoccupied snatching up that paper. Unfolding it, a cold hard knot formed in her belly as she read the words scrawled across it in blue ink.

Missing Louisa?