T H E K N O C K
Apprehension began to seep into her thoughts, until the feeling made enough dull noise in her mind that she couldnt ignore it any longer. She frowned unpleasantly, wondering why her irritation and anxiety were rising up out of the blue. She had fought hard to overcome the buzzing in her head since she was a young woman. Her grandmother had always told the family they possessed a sixth sense of a sort. She said it would be prudent to head any such premonitions when they came along, and that all the members of her family were blessed enough to have such a skill. It had helped the family prosper when it came to important decisions, which her grandmother credited to the family's ability to aquire the wealth and good fortune they enjoyed. The woman, who was now nearly as old as she remembered her grandmother being when she was once a little girl, had struggled with the feeling. If there ever was such a gift, she was more sensitive to it than her parents or siblings...the noise, the feeling had once been for her a constant thing a slow and constant torture. She eventually had received psychiatric help, and after so many years of boredom and routine, it became less of a curse, now the warnings were muddled in the mediocrity of mundane life and only anxiety pressed her thoughts most days. She couldnt filter them apart any longer, the anxiety and the premonitions, and had long since stopped trying to. Feelings of doubt were what raised the hair on the back of her neck nowadays, the inevitability of her own mortality, how finite everything appeared to be as one grew older. She didn't live in the wild after all, and she had quite enough money to be quite comfortable, where she could pursue her hobbies and live in peace through her welcome, albeit early, retirement. "After all," she idly thought, "that's what the constable and his men are for." If some....animal did get into the city and manage to make enough of a hassle to trigger her inherited sense of unease, if there was something unfortunate happening out in the town, it mattered not a bit to her. Her house was as secure as a fortress, and she was only a stone's throw away from the constable's station, located smack dab in the best part of the city. A little security and safety went a long way towards silencing the voices in her head. If a problem did arise, she knew it would be resolved with vigor and enthusiasm by the authorities. She decided that was simply that and did not give it another thought for awhile as she slowly sipped her tea by the crackling fire. Suddenly she jolted violently, spilling a great deal of the hot tea all over her hands as she was startled by a sharp, heavy knock at the door. She paused a moment, wondering if she had even heard it, or if her mind was playing tricks on her. There was nothing more for several long moments and she almost began to believe that she had merely dozed off and imagined it. She relaxed and got up to pour out her tea. Then she heard the knock return even more loudly as it echoed through the main hall. The rythm of the sound had not changed at all, it was not more loud nor more quick and urgent than when she had heard it the first time. A sense of dread arose in the pit of her stomach. It was quite late, and she knew not a single soul that would pay her lonely old bones a visit, not at this hour certainly. The knock sounded again, the same even rythm, not rising in speed or urgency that would indicate some sort of emergency. It sounded to her quite purposeful. She gathered up her courage, and walked to the front, as the beautifully colored blue door suddenly opened. She stopped dead. For a moment she couldnt remember whether she had unlocked and opened it or if the person on the other side had picked the lock and opened it themselves. Her brain was a dark fog of swirlng confusion and stark denial that the door was swinging open towards her. Then suddenly her mind snapped with clarity, and her body responded at the same time. She sprang forward behind the door to close it with force, but it did not budge an inch, instead she was tossed backwards herself slightly. She tried again to push and lean against it, panic rising like the tide over jagged rocks, concealing deadly risk for ships that came near the beach. She pushed again, starting to shout beyond the door into the open night air. She could see a faint shadow start to stretch taller across the floor as someone stepped into her house. She dared not look behind the door for terror had siezed her heart in an ice-cold vice and she could not bring herself to do it. The door slowly began to open inward, moving her backwards. She pushed against it frantically, her slippers sliding unhelpfully across the polished floor, but she struggled in vain. The door was not swung completely wide, but stopped suddenly, hanging halfway open. They both still could not see each other save for their shadows on the lacquered floor. Her heart was pounding, her breath caught still in her throat as the moments ticked by, stretching into an awkward pause. Then she caught a flicker of movement and she flicked her eyes upwards to witness a masked face tilt into view slowly around the edge of the door. She screamed and stumbled back as her lungs found some courage. The masked figure stepped nimbly around the door, coming between her and any chance of escape into the cool night air. She longed for the freedom she had always taken for granted more than anything in the world at that moment. Still facing her, the burglar slammed that lovely blue door shut with the back of his heel. Her mind, fuzzy as it was, could not observe any specific details about the intruder, other than the fact she knew the bastard was tall. She guessed him a man, but he seemed a shadow to her. She trembled, creeping backwards away from him, if only to keep even a centimeter more space between them. "What do you want from me?" She asked, the breath once again leaving her lungs as her voice croaked in a strangled whisper. He said nothing, only shook a gloved finger at her face, and turned abruptly around. Before she could blink he had snapped shut the locks on the door, closing both of them off from the outside world, trapping her inside with him. As he turned slowly back around to face her again, the blood that had drained from her legs came rushing back. She ran.
