...The left half of my body practically lunged to the peephole of my apartment's front door after the knock, out of sheer terror, but my right half stood its ground and held down the fort like any good Texan would have done during those first 12 days at the Alamo. I was startled, to say the least. Fresh venison in the headlights of a hatchback. You see, I don't get many visitors where I live. And when I do, its either someone looking for the meth lab 2 doors down, or the kids from 415A scratching their names in my doorframe as their knees accidentally hit the door. Needless to say, after the initial shock of hearing 3 distinctive, heavy, (almost magical) intentional knocks, I wrangled both halves of my brain into the same bullpen, and became instantly curious about who that heavy hand was attached to. Excited, almost.
My apartment's small enough to where 4 steps makes a huge difference in the location of my body. I used to make myself laugh by calling my apartment my "12-Step Program" because it only takes 12 steps to circumvent the entire thing, including that sick yellow toilet of mine. I never DID figure out if that thing was originally white when it was installed, or if it really was genuine yellow porcelain. The window shades were yellow when I moved in too, but I was told that was because the woman who died here before I moved in smoked 4 packs a day for 30 years, and the shades, over time, got painted with huge brush strokes of emphysema.
2 and a half steps north of my desk and I was at the door. I leaned in and tilted my head at just the right angle to get the widest field of vision as I glanced through the peephole.
No one.
I put my ear to the door and listened. I mentally switched on my selective hearing and disregarded the incoherent rustle of the regular cretins who camp out in the hallway and focused strictly on feet of the mysterious knocker. I heard Wanda Syke's male counterpart walk further away from my apartment and I flew into a hurried conniption as I struggled to undo the 4 locks on my door and remove the duct tape from around the rim of the doorframe. Even if it was just some recovering crackhead pretending to sell Miracle Cleaner so he can get inside my apartment to case the joint, I still needed to put a face to those hypnotizing knocks.
FUCK. As I began to rip off the tape, a corner of it shoved itself in between my ring finger and my ring FINGERNAIL, separating the nail a millimeter or 2 from the skin. Not enough to whine about, but enough to startle me and halt the removal process. And possibly enough to abet Father Time in his act of robbery, because when I finally hurled the door open….he was gone completely. Looked left. Gone. Looked right. Gone. Like a prequel to that fucking retarded car-stealing Nic Cage remake, he was Gone In Less Than 60 Seconds. But when I looked down, there was a small box on my door mat. And it looked like it was leaking…