The Little Red Light

Tonight, look at the little red light in your bedroom.

It's 3:12 a.m. You don't know what woke you. Not a sound, not a dream. Just your eyes opening all at once, as if someone had said your name. Everything is dark, the blinds let in barely a line of grey. Everything is dark, except that light.

On the charger, across the room, on the floor by the dresser. A red dot, tiny.

On. Off. On. Off.

You've seen it a thousand times without seeing it. Tonight, it's all there is to look at. And after a while, you notice something.

It's blinking with your breathing.

You breathe in, it lights up. You breathe out, it goes dark. You slow your breathing on purpose: it slows down with you. It's silly. It's a coincidence, a charger blinking at a rhythm that happens to match yours. But at three in the morning, it almost makes you smile, the idea that something in the room is breathing like you.

· · ·

So, just to play, you hold your breath.

One second. Two. Three.

On. Off. On. Off.

It keeps going.

You keep the air in your lungs, mouth shut, heart starting to pound. And now that you're not breathing, now that your own breath isn't covering anything up, you hear it.

Breathing.

Slow. Calm. Right next to the bed. At the level of your ear, on the other side of the comforter, where the mattress ends and the dark begins.

· · ·

That light was never following your breathing.

It was following theirs.

And for hours, maybe since you fell asleep, they've been matching yours. Breathe in when you breathe in. Breathe out when you breathe out. So you'd never hear one breath too many. So you wouldn't notice a thing.

You don't move. You're still not breathing.

On the other side, the breathing stops too.

The light goes out.

And this time… it doesn't come back on.