by T. Rudacille
***
The problem with living in a neighborhood where houses are practically built right on top of each other is that the smallest disturbance, the smallest suggestion of something being out of the ordinary, alerts everyone. I don't think that Alice's neighbors would have seen the creature even if they stared right at the house while it was outside. I know they didn't hear the loud, screeching noises that she made every night. But they did hear the blast of the shotgun. As I held Alice, trying to calm her down, I heard a knock on the door upstairs.
“Oh my God… oh my God…” Alice was crying.
“Babe, there’s someone at the door.” I told her softly, and she pulled away from me, looking even more distressed.
“Do you think...” She hiccupped as new sobs took hold of her. “Do you think it’s my dad? Do you think he’s one of those things, too?”
“I don’t know. Just stay here.” I instructed her urgently, “I’ll be right back.”
“No! Don’t leave me!” She exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing my hand, “Don’t leave me with her!”
“Alice, you have to stay here. Just for a minute. I have to get this person to go away. Just stay here. I’ll be five minutes. I promise.”
She nodded but sat by the door, her back to the body.
I sprinted upstairs, ready to fight another one of those horrible things. Alice’s words hung in my head like a bad song I couldn’t shake; what if her dad was one of them, too?
“Open up! Police!” A thunderous voice boomed from behind the front door.
Just as I was thanking God for the sudden arrival of the police, I suddenly remembered the obliterated body downstairs on the floor who just happened to be the estranged mother of my girlfriend. Surely, two teenagers at home alone with the body of the woman who had so protested their relationship left little room to speculate on motive. I watched enough CSI and Criminal Minds to know that.
Curse words flew through my head as a cold sweat broke over me. How was I going to get rid of a cop? What if he wanted to search the house? Even if I didn't know how exactly, I had to make him leave. I just had to tell him everything was fine, and he’d go.
I threw open the door before I could wonder what I was going to say any longer. If I needed to appear surprised at something, I couldn’t afford to stand and think about all the answers I was going to give to the cop’s questions. I watched enough Dexter to know how to play it cool and collected.
“Hi, Officer.”
I had to stop myself from grimacing; no kid greets a cop like that! “I didn’t do anything!” would have probably been a more realistic greeting. Of course, it also would have raised more suspicion than it would have remedied.
“Hello.” He replied formally, “Sorry to bother you, but neighbors reported hearing a weapon discharged here. Is this your house?”
“No. This is my girlfriend’s house.”
“Are her parents home?”
I prayed the sweat that was pouring from me wasn’t noticeable. Nothing was more telling than someone who appeared nervous.
“No.” I replied, shaking my head slightly and crossing my arms over my chest. I even leaned on the door-frame, trying to appear completely relaxed. “They’re on vacation in Bermuda.”
“Where is your girlfriend?”
“Sleeping.” I answered automatically, “And no weapons discharged. Maybe it was a car backfiring or something.”
Too much, I thought to myself and shut up.
“They said it sounded like a shotgun.”
“Oh.”
“I think I should come in and have a look around.”
“Why?” I asked, panicking only internally. On the surface, I was still composed, thankfully. “We’re just chilling. We didn’t do anything. Alice is asleep, and I was, too, before you knocked.”
“Would you wake her up and tell her to come down, just so I can make sure she’s okay?”
“No. She’s been…” I was scrambling for an excuse, anything to keep him from coming into the house. Alice was a wreck; she had been crying for half an hour and more than likely had blood splattered on her. There was no way we’d be getting out of the situation if he saw her. “She’s been really stressed out today because she’s not used to her parents being gone and she just went to sleep.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“I guess so.”
“Because her parents aren’t here?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t like to be alone.”
“Plus, I’m sure you’re both just thrilled to have the house to yourselves, right?”
My eyebrows almost met in the middle in a comical expression of disbelief at what he said. I won't lie and say that I didn't take it the wrong way. The half-smile at the corner of his mouth didn't help to dispel my belief that he had just suggested something with an obscene undertone.
Still, I was calm.
“I guess so.”
“Well, just so I can feel I did my job, I’m going to need you to call your girlfriend downstairs.”
More curse words exploded in my mind and came quite close to pouring out of my mouth. I knew he was only doing his job, but given the circumstances, I just couldn’t afford to play nice with him. I couldn’t let him come into the house. So as my anger and frustration mounted, and my need to get Alice and me safely out of the bizarre mess we were in became as real and as crucial as thirst and hunger, I snapped.
“Leave!” I barked at the cop, and my eyes widened in horror. I couldn’t believe that I had actually said it. We were so screwed now, everything was lost, we were going to jail for killing Alice’s mom...
“But we didn’t know it was Alice’s mom, Officer. We thought it was a ghastly female demon creature!” Yeah, that would work…
But the cop, as though I had in one word absolved his need to do his job to high standards, turned and walked away, muttering a quick, “Have a good night,” over his shoulder.
There was something hypnotized in his eyes and lighter in his step as he walked away.
“I just controlled his mind.” I muttered to myself before turning around and running back downstairs into the basement, calling Alice’s name as I went.
“I can’t believe I killed her… oh my God…” She was whispering to herself and sitting with her legs pulled into her chest and her face pressed into her knees.
“Alice, you will never believe what just happened.”
“Where do you think my dad is? Do you think he’s one of them, too? Do you think he got turned into whatever they are, Quinn?” She asked, looking up at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.
I knelt down in front of her, all trace of my thrill from a second earlier gone.
“I don’t know.” I told her, grasping her hands, “But I can tell you that something weird is happening here. I had this dream. It was so real. I can’t even describe to you how real it was. I know that it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen soon.”
“What is?” She asked me as she swiped at her eyes.
“The world is going to end.”
I expected her to protest and to tell me that I had lost it, but she didn’t. Her face remained impassive as she stared past me into the room where her mother’s body still laid.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that I know that. And I do know it, Alice.”
“Do you know when?” She asked me quietly, still not looking at me, “Is it soon?”
“Yes. I do know that it’s going to be soon. And that was a cop at the door, by the way. I controlled his mind.”
“How?”
“I have no idea.” I replied, “But that doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s gone, and we’re going to be okay.”
“We’re going to be okay even though the world is ending soon?” She asked, her large brown eyes meeting mine finally.
“Yes. I know that I had that dream for a reason. I know that it means that I’m supposed to do something about it.”
“You seem to k
now a lot of things, Quinn. I don’t know anything anymore.” She put her face in her hands and started to cry again. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I had never seen her cry before and now, when I finally did, there was nothing I could say. I think I would have been able to console her if the situation that caused her to feel such sadness had revolved around normal adolescent angst. But the issue we were facing was something else entirely.
I embraced her and told her again that everything was going to be alright. I told her we would survive the hell we were going through somehow. I told her we would survive the impending end of the world and figure out a way to live after all life had ended.
The things I said I knew, I did know. But those promises I made to her were empty and halfhearted; I had not even a semblance of the clarity I had about the other things when I tried to picture ways that we would outlive the end of the world. I was offering her the only reassurances that I could, knowing that not one of them truly mattered. I knew very little else besides the few details of that one, terrifying event that was coming quickly into clear view.
When I tell this story to survivors, I always say that the uncertainty and mental dimness that followed my prophetic moment were worse than the actual moment.
To put it poetically, it was like I was tumbling from a brightly lit, spacious room where all was laid out before me in perfect clearness, into a dark, claustrophobic space, where I could see nothing. All I could do was grasp around helplessly for the light that had just thrown me away.
