I never hated being a paranoid schizophrenic more in my life. I cursed the godzillion locks I had bolting the door shut. It's weird that in a state of panic you seem to forget how to do certain mindless tasks, like sticking a car key in a car door, speaking, or, in this case, turning a deadbolt. The feeling of panic came over me the second that fucking drunk-HAL computer voice said "RUN". But there was really nothing I should have seemingly been afraid of.
I just simply believed the television, I guess, as it didn't seem too far fetched considering the shit that has gone on here today.
My hands would not turn the second deadbolt. I was crippled by fear. Paralyzed the same old antics. I managed to undo the first one, I think by accident, or by force, as I practically threw my right side against the door panel. I tried to toss the box on the table that I originally set it down on, an event that seems like it happened months ago. "Did it?" I thought. For a second I remembered that, when I was little, I used to call rifts in time "cesspools" because I had heard the word somewhere and it sounded really sci-fi, and no one said otherwise, so I would freak out whenever I would hear news that a car or a building fell into a cesspool. I believed time travel was real, and that it was happening all around me. So for a second, I thought I might have fallen into a "cesspool" and that there COULD have been months between these events. "No, get your fucking head straight, calm down. Turn the bolt."
The box wouldn't let me throw it down. I figured that out as soon as it hit the table and an invisible sledgehammer hit my head and the pain caused me to fall against the counter by the door, ramming the counter's corner under my chest cavity, giving me the Heimlich. A small piece of food jetted out of my mouth and hit the counter. A full tortellini shell from the night before that had either got stuck in my throat, or simply refused to fall into the pit of my stomach to be disintegrated. I'd have been more grossed out if I could focus on something other than the ghost of a construction worker shooting nails into my brain with an invisible nail gun.
The instant I cradled the box with my left arm, the pain ceased. "Great", I thought, "I have a fucking Siamese twin now."
The relief I felt from the pain leaving my head allowed me to focus enough to get the second lock turned. Only 2 more to go.
I had nothing to fear, really, except that warning, which who-knew what kind of merit THAT held.
It turns out, that warning held more merit than evidence of evolution. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bit of movement from across the room, at the window.
The little amount of bloodied glass that still held on to the pane fell inward, and a grotesque half-gloved hand with its index and middle finger fused together appeared and gripped the edge of the sill and I could only imagine what type of arm and body was going to follow. My digital camera-eyes optically zoomed in like a thousand times and I zeroed in on an entire colony of ants meandering through the forest of blood and knuckle-hair that was coating the fingers that weren't webbed.
At this point I would like to translate, word for word, what my brain was processing before my mouth could even react:
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
The tsunami of fear drowned me yet again, instantaneously.
And again, my hands were as useless as diapers on a tree. I was fumbling even trying to TOUCH the locks.
I couldn't keep my head from shaking back and forth between the approaching hand and the deadbolts.
I finally got my right fingers to conform to the football shape of the lock and turned it clockwise.
"CLICK".
Breathe.
Look.
FUCK.
A second hand had followed, not as grungy as the first but just as yellowed and leathered. The hands both changed angles and I could see the top of a head and a huge set of shoulders rising over the horizon of the window sill…