The Harrow plea
A steady tick-tock, tick-tock came from the clock posted up on the kitchen wall, a back-and-forth rhythm that pierced through the room’s stillness, keeping record of lost time, a lost time of a life that had long lost its own rhythm, the life of Nathanael Grove. “Ugh! Every time.” Nathanael sat hunched in front of his laptop, his right hand pressed against his cheek after wiping away the tears from his eyes, with a cold glass of bourbon still clutched between his fingers.
The pale light from his laptop reflects his tired eyes burning away from opening rejection letters all night—CLICK! Each letter filling his heart—CLICK! Like tiny little needles stabbing away. At his already wounded heart—CLICK! Each subject line whispered the same tired sentence that, to Nathanael, were statements that had haunted him since his teen years: We regret to inform you… Unfortunately… Due to your criminal history…He closed his laptop—CLACK. “God damn it.” His shoulders sank as he stood, out of the kitchen, dragging himself across the tiny living room toward his bedroom, defeated, denied, useless.
His socks made no sound against the hardwood floor, the faint hums of engines passing by Nathanael’s apartment, an unusually satisfying sound easing Nathanael just as he reached the threshold of his bedroom—shuffle… thud—but an unsettling noise stopped him cold; his eyes flicked toward his front door, “What the fuck?” Someone was in the hallway. It was faint at first—it sounded like dragging, like shoes scuffing against the floor. “Help me,” a voice croaked behind the front door, faint, broken, and barely human. The sound grew closer. Shuffle… shuffle… until it stopped outside his door—THUD! His breath caught in his throat.
For a long moment, only silence pressed on Nathanael’s mind, like a repeating pulse suffocating within a fog; Nathanael’s fears, his uncertainties, now at the forefront. The silence grows too long for Nathanael; his fear is overwhelming, but his instincts loosen as his curiosity takes over. One foot over the other, Nathanael approaches his front door, hoping to catch a glimpse of who could be on the other side.
He leans into the peephole only to see the top of a mysterious man’s head; the man was pressing his body against the front door. Nathanael stood frozen, his hand hovering above the doorknob. His instincts waged war against one another, should he open the door to help the man… or pretend no one was home for his own safety. “Please!” Nathanael, shocked by the mysterious plea, stepped back; his uncertainties pushed to the side as he aimed for the doorknob; however, it wouldn’t budge.
The man from the other side of the door held the doorknob in place. “Please no! Don’t… let me in!” Nathanael, without hesitation, releases his grip from the doorknob, his confusion quickly turning to anxiety sinking in. “Ahhhh! Please, for the love of God, please don’t…ahh! Let me…” Nathanael’s mind flooded with paranoia stunning him completely, paralyzed in thought; maybe if I didn’t move, if I didn’t breathe, the man from the other side of the door would leave—CRACK! But Nathanael’s anxiety was only validated as The man’s breathing shifted, turning guttural and animalistic—CRUNCH! Wet, like something folding in on itself—SNAP! THUD! Then silence. Nathanael pressed his ear to the door. He could barely breathe, listening for any sign of movement; nothing.
His hand trembling, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” As he unlocked the deadbolt, the bourbon killed all sense of reason, and the door cracked open just enough to peek into the hallway. Nathanael’s eyes pried, the man was now hunched over the door, but that wasn’t what caused Nathanael’s eyes to react with distress and hypervigilance.
Black moss sprouted and spread as his hair was thin and fragmented, overcome by the moss; thin, prickly ebony branches grew from the exposed skull around the crown on the man’s head, the black moss rapidly spread uncontrollably towards the man’s face, stagnating at the end, desperately trying to expand its mass but dying off the further it tried to spread. Then it all collapses, pulling the mass inward past the skull caving in the man’s head from the crown to his forehead, the brain matter leaking out like slush. Nathanael gasps in shock; the hunched man looks up in response, locking his eyes at Nathanael.
His right eye had no iris or pupil, simply splatters of gold obscured his sclera; moving independently like oil in a pot of water merging and splitting altogether, his left eye a pit of darkness, within them, white little twinkles reflecting like stars from a distance sink deeper and deeper, the little white twinkles collide and erode with the darkness into a never-ending galaxy pit. All Sunken, hollow—locked onto Nathanael’s eyes.
Nathanael saw enough; he knew he needed to slam the door shut, but the hunched man’s hand shot out first—fingers riveted with black moss-covered branches—grabbing the door’s handle from the hallway’s side—CLICK! The door closed. But Nathanael didn’t have long to process what he just saw—SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE, his heart hammered against his ribs. Nathanael crawled to the floor on all fours, peeking through the narrow gap beneath the door to see if the man had moved; the hallway was clear—THUD! until the man placed his left dress shoe on the carpet—THUD!—then his right dress shoe perfectly aligned neatly pressed together—TAP…TAP. ’Oh, so you were down here.”
Nathanael’s thoughts went silent as the taps on the door acknowledged exactly where he was. So slowly, he pushed himself upright, careful not to make a sound—TAP…TAP He froze again; Nathanael had only pushed himself halfway up, exactly where the taps were coming from.
Nathanael decided to push forward, the tapping following him as he rose, starting low and climbing higher, matching his every move. TAP… TAP… TAP. The taps grew faster, louder, TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP—until they stopped abruptly at the peephole directly in Nathanael’s line of sight. Then came the voice again. “Naa…thaan…aelll…” Nathanael’s stomach dropped. “Please, let…me…in.”
