I wish that genies in bottles were real. Ironic, that I would wish that a being who grants wishes would exist to grant my wish for his existence. Kind of an oxymoron, I guess, as I just confused MYSELF. If genies DID exist, however, I would most certainly not be a grandiose wisher. I would simply ask for things that would just make my life temporarily a little EASIER. Not TOO easy. I was never one to cheat. But sometimes I like a little help. Case in point, right now I would really really like to wish for a pair of eyes implanted in the back of my skull. I don't have too much hair, so blocked vision wouldn't be much of a problem. I tried to remember if I had any old Egyptian perfume bottles laying around that had been unopened for hundreds of years that might contain a genie…Nope. Damn.
I had to take my eyes off of the door to see what the status was on the window man. Not good, it turned out.
Whoever the fuck was able to scale 3 stories and wrap his hands around broken glass was now slinking through the window and had one foot on the carpet. His hands were not deceivers. The rest of his body was just as dingy, if not more, than his ant-infested, crusty, over-exaggerated cartoony hands. His hands were fucking huge. I swear that he must have slipped on a pair of those "HULK HANDS" toys and somehow grafted his own rotten skin around them to amalgamate the two. I couldn't see his face. Not because it was covered in long hobo-hair or anything. In fact, I had a perfect view of it. It's just that it was…pitch black. Not like it was cloaked in shadows or anything. It was greasy, and glimmers of light radiated off of the sharp planes created by his face, enabling me to barley make out that yes, it was indeed a face. Just not like anything I had ever seen before. There seemed to be no eyes, and no nose. Only a mouth, which was barely visible except for the small, spread out teeth that he exposed briefly when he licked the left side of his mars-black upper lip. The blackness looked soaking wet. Drippy, almost.
The walls of my apartment have only seen 2 or 3 other visitors in the years that I have been here. I often thought they hated being the foundation responsible for holding my ceiling up, simply because of the lack of action they get to see. Sometimes, when the walls speak in creaks and moans, I can make out the word "Borrrrrinnnnggg". Well, as much as I have appreciated you for making sure the roof didn't cave in while I was sleeping all these years, FUCK YOU, WALLS, this is as far from boring as you can get. I hope you're happy.
Something long and blunt slid out of the drippy man's right jacket sleeve and that was as long as I could afford to look, I turned my head back toward the door.
I fumbled with the last lock. Not nearly as much as the previous ones, as it seems my panic ceased and I regained slightly normal motor skills simply by a desperate fear of....dying?
"CLICK."
Awesome.
I turned the handle for the door and tugged, almost ripping my arm out of its socket. The door didn't budge. Shit. In a series of panicked attempts to perform the simple task of opening my door, I completely bypassed the duct tape that I was so adamant about lining my door frame with to "annoy" any intruder for an extra 30 seconds. "Funny", I thought, "that extra 30 seconds is going to going to annoy ME, and possibly help me meet my demise in a horrifying manner. Rad."
I glanced back and Mr. Drips was about 3 steps away, exposing his teeth fully now, which looked like rotten baby teeth jammed into the gum-line of a bear.
And to add fuel to the out of control forest fire that is my life right now, my depth of field changes in my sight and I see another hand reach up through the window.
I bent down and grabbed the turned up end of the tape with my forefingers and pulled upward, extremely relieved to hear the sound of the tape's adhesive abandoning the door frame.
The sound of the tape was loud in my ears. Or so I thought. But it wasn't the sound of the tape I was hearing. An deep rumble escalated immediately, a huge shadow was cast in through the window and filled up the entire apartment and I felt the sun fall out of the sky.
The wall that was connected to the window literally exploded inward, shattering the hundred year old drywall and brick layers, being led in their destruction by a swarm of thousands of pigeons, flying so close to each other that I saw no light shining through them at all. There was a horrible squeal from the swarm as they poured into the apartment like God just filled a gigantic pitcher of pigeons and dumped it all into my apartment.
I didn't stop undoing the tape. I was almost finished.
Mr. Drips was raising his hand, holding whatever had slid out of his sleeve, in his fucked up huge hand.
I only needed about 3 more seconds, but I was sure I wouldn't make it.
As the end of the tape jerked off of the door frame, the swarm of pigeons attacked. But it wasn't ME they attacked. They engulfed Mr. Drips the instant his arm swung downward toward me and he let out a curdling scream. I couldn't see through the mass of pigeons attacking him, but I was assuming a similar fate had occurred to the other window-man, and whoever else was following him. I didn't stick around to see. Fuck that, not now. I opened the door enough to slide myself and the box out and I slammed the door behind me and leaned up against it, breathing harder than I ever have before…