"You Will Never Believe the Night I've Had."
by Janine Slayton
Casey's eyes flew open, wide with fear as her heart threatened to pound
out of her chest. A crash from another room in the house had roused her
out of a deep sleep.
She tried to convince herself the noise had been in her imagination,
merely a dream she had been having that felt real. She was unsuccessful
in persuading herself that the noise she had heard was really nothing,
though. She lay unmoving in her bed, her ears on high alert for the
slightest noise from elsewhere in the house. A minute later she heard
another rustle from the same general direction as the crash. This time
it seemed a little closer, and her heart fluttered faster.
Casey wondered why she hadn't taken up her parents' offer to stay at
their house for the night as she imagined all of the horrible things
that could be on the other side of her bedroom door. Casey's boyfriend
Grant was gone for the weekend with some friends and it was the first
time Casey had spent the night alone in the house since they'd moved in
a few months before. Naturally, her one night alone in the house would
be the night mysterious things decided to start bumping in the dark.
Casey was not the kind of girl who believed in ghosts and ghost
stories. Even if she had been, she and Grant had never had any spooky
encounters up to this point, so why would one grace her with its
presence tonight of all nights?
Burglars and murderers, on the other hand, Casey did believe in. She
pictured a dark, shadowy figure on the other side of her door, stalking
the hallways with a glistening blade in hand. She hoped if it was a
burglar, he would just take what he wanted and leave. There was no
reason to hurt her. She wasn't going to stop him if he wanted to walk
out with her TV. She thought that if he decided to come into her room,
maybe if she just pretended to be asleep he would leave her alone.
Maybe she would get lucky and he wouldn't notice her at all. She tried
to use these thoughts to calm herself down, but to no avail. She
couldn't help but picture an intruder with murderous intentions and a
deadly sharp, glistening blade in his hand.
Just as Casey was picturing what the burglar might do with that deadly
blade, she heard a muffled scraping noise just outside her door. It was
at this moment that Casey discovered that it was not actually possible
for a heart to beat so hard that it freed itself from a person's chest
entirely. If that had been possible, Casey would probably be staring at
her bloody heart on the bedroom floor.
Casey realized that she needed to start thinking defensively. After
all, if the person or thing outside her bedroom door was, in fact,
armed, lying there helplessly was really not going to improve her
situation. She thought about calling the police from her cell phone,
but was afraid that whoever was on the other side of the door would
hear her talking and put a stop to her phone call immediately. Silence
seemed a better option. She wished now that she had taken some self
defense classes, or that the hours she had spent watching Alias and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
had paid off. The reality was she was no Sydney or Buffy. She was 5'3",
a little over a hundred pounds, and far from the most coordinated
person in the world. She was going to have to get creative if she
wanted to be on the winning side of a conflict with whatever was on the
other side of that door.
Casey's eyes, adjusted to the darkness by now, began to search the room
for potential weapons. Unfortunately, there weren't many options. There
was her bookshelf, but she didn't think a paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye would do much damage, aside from a few stinging paper cuts. Her best bet there would have been a hard cover Harry Potter book, but even that would depend on how hard she could hit the enemy with it, and she didn't like her odds.
Her eyes shifted to a stack of DVDs on the table next to her bed. She
envisioned whipping them like a Frisbee towards her attacker's neck,
but then thought about the Mythbusters episode
where they debunked the myth that a playing card shot at a high enough
speed could slit someone's throat. Granted, a DVD was significantly
more substantial than a playing card, but she'd still have to throw
that thin disc through the air pretty damn fast to do much damage. At
best, she might whack the intruder in the windpipe and shock him for a
second, and at worst it wouldn't faze him at all. That idea was out.
There was a soft thump against Casey's bedroom door, and she realized
she was running out of time. She needed to decide on a weapon, and now.
Her eyes rested on the top of her dresser where she had an array of
lotion and some perfume. She thought about it for a second and decided
the perfume was a winner. She could use it to temporarily blind the
burglar while she high-tailed it out the front door and called the
police from a safe distance.
Her heart thudding in her chest harder than ever, Casey grabbed her
cell phone off the night stand and slowly got out of bed, making her
way to the dresser as quietly as possible. She couldn't stop herself
from shaking-fear had overtaken all of her senses. The last noise she
had heard had been the closest yet, and she knew she couldn't have much
time. Casey grabbed the bottle of perfume, making sure that the
spraying end was facing away from her.
Trying to keep her breathing as slow and even as possible, Casey
tiptoed to her bedroom door. She stood there for a moment, her hand on
the doorknob, sure that the beating of her heart would give her away
even if she didn't make another sound. She closed her eyes, listening
for any sign that someone was on the other side of the wooden door,
before she slowly turned the knob. She cracked the door open the
tiniest bit, peeking through the tiny sliver of a view she had created.
Making sure she had a tight grip on her perfume bottle, her index
finger poised to push down the trigger, she finally opened the door
wide enough to exit the bedroom. She cautiously stepped into the
hallway, her eyes darting from left to right, trying to avoid getting
attacked from behind.
Seeing nothing ahead of her, a terrified Casey started making her way
down the hallway. As she took her second step, she heard another
thumping noise, this time coming from the kitchen. The thought of the
source of her terror being near knives and other utensils that could
potentially be used for stabbing only intensified Casey's fear, but she
and her perfume bottle knew they couldn't turn back now. Casey slowly
crept down the hallway, leaning back against the wall just as she
reached the corner that led into the kitchen. It was then that she
realized she hadn't been breathing. She took a deep breath and said a
little prayer before she turned the corner, perfume bottle raised high
into the air.
Just as she stepped into the kitchen, Casey felt a sharp edge hit her
in the shin and she screamed as she went airborne involuntarily,
spraying perfume into the air, and dropping her cell phone. She heard
it shatter as it hit the ground.
"REEOOOOOWWWRRRR!!!!!!"
Once Casey came to her senses a little, she looked down and started
laughing hysterically. Down at her feet, the intruder bumbled around,
knocking once more into her leg. She realized she had dropped her cell
phone right onto his back, which he had obviously not appreciated.
"Hudson, what in the world did you do?" Casey asked her through her
nervous, relieved laughter as she pulled the rectangular Kleenex box
off of his head and picked
him up. "How in the world did you manage to get the box stuck on your head, you little monster?"
An inquisitive meow and wide amber eyes staring back at her were the
only response Casey received from Hudson, who was obviously glad to be
free from his self-inflicted prison. Casey picked up the pieces of her
cell phone, piecing it back together before she switched the light on
and walked into the living room. Once there, she began to see what had
had her so terrified just moments ago. One of the lamps had been
knocked off the end table where the Kleenex box had been, and the shade
was sitting at an awkward angle between the floor and the edge of the
couch. Casey picked the lamp up, putting it back in its place on the
table and straightening the shade as she surveyed the rest of the room.
"You are such a terror," she told Hudson, stroking his soft fur as she
sat down on the couch and saw a mess of Kleenex spread all across the
living room floor, some still relatively intact, while others were
shredded into pieces. She was exhausted, now that her adrenaline rush
was dissipating. "I thought cats were supposed to be graceful, Hudson.
Getting a box stuck on your head is not graceful."
"Meoooow"
"Is that an apology?" Casey asked as Hudson squirmed and she set him on
the arm of the couch. He promptly picked up a piece of tissue, holding
it with his back paws
while he shredded it with his teeth. Casey just laughed, her heart
finally slowing to its normal pace again as she cleaned up Hudson's
mess.
A few minutes later, after double checking-twice-that all of the doors
were locked, she headed back to the bedroom. Hudson nipped at her
ankles as she walked.
"You were a very bad boy tonight," Casey told Hudson, picking him up
and wagging a finger in his face to emphasize her point. Hudson just
batted a paw at her finger and tried to bite at the ponytail holder
around her wrist. Just then her phone rang-Grant calling to check in.
"You will never believe the night I've had," Casey sighed as she leaned back against the headboard.
As Casey chattered on the phone with Grant, telling him the story of
her adrenaline-filled night, Hudson sauntered his way back down the
hallway and into the living room. He gracefully jumped up onto the end
table that contained the fallen lamp
from earlier in the evening. He settled himself into aguardian-like
position, sitting and sticking his head through the slats of the blinds
in order to better see through the window to the outside world. The sun
was just beginning to rise over the neighborhood. Hudson pushed his
nose forward a little, sticking it through the hole in the thin mesh
screen. His nose twitched a little, as though searching for a scent it
recognized.
On the ground just outside the window were a few wet, dark, red
spatters, trailing from just below the window down the driveway. Hudson
backed away from the window, settling himself into a more comfortable
position, having found no more unwanted shadows creeping about in the
darkness. He stayed on the table, lapping up the small drops of crimson
that had fallen on the table before Casey had emerged from the safety
of her bedroom. He then undertook the task of cleaning his paws,
getting rid of the evidence of the night's events.