Late Night Visitor

Unceremoniously, I threw my hat and coat at the coat rack. A bad toss. They missed it entirely. The hat sailed off into the dark recesses of my apartment, audibly smacking against the far wall, and the coat sullenly landed in the middle of the hallway right in front of me. They could stay there for all I cared. A night on the floor wouldn't do them any harm. It's not like either were in good shape anyway.

I stepped over the discarded coat where it mockingly lay in a puddle of rain-spotted tan and made a beeline for the couch. The exhaustion of the day fell upon me in full force, no longer held back by the quiet undercurrent of fear that cut throw every waking hour. With a sigh, I sat down, took off my holster, pulled out the gun, and set both on the worn coffee table, and quickly got to emptying out my pockets. Stray coins and tokens, my wallet and keys, a lighter and boxes of cigarettes, a pen and crumbled bits of note paper with nearly indiscernible writing to the untrained eye, all of it laid out before me like a crude summary of my existence. They say you can tell a lot about a man by the contents of his pockets, and I wasn't thrilled with the man I saw before me, a poor chain smoker. The kind of man I would avoid associating with if given half the chance, a real step out of the elevator when he gets on despite it not yet being your stop type of guy. But that didn't much matter.

I kicked off my shoes. The scuffed things flipped end over end and landed a clattering thump against the hardwood. My stomach churned with a nauseous hunger. With a shaky exhale, I tried to push the sensation to the back of my mind. Sleep had to take priority. The bed seemed miles away, too far to force myself to endure the hellish single minute it would take me to go to it. 

Stretched out upon the couch, sleep must have taken ahold of me.

The room was nearly pitch black when I awoke. A thin beam of light from the streetlights made its way past poorly shut blinds. Useless against the late night dark, it illuminated only just enough for vague shapes to be made out. A wretched sense of dread crept into me, catching the breath in my lungs, making my heart race in terror. Something was horribly wrong. The Doppelganger stood silently a few feet away, its smear of a face leaking up towards the ceiling in barely distinguishable streaks of molten colours. It pointed to the door in a languid motion. 

My eyes couldn't make anything out. Just the darkness and the visual static caused by a panicking brain trying to interpret nothing into something.

But, I could hear it.

A gentle click followed by the grinding twist of the doorknob. Slowly. Ever so slowly the doorknob turned. The door rattled as it caught up on the other locks. Released, the knob twisted back into place.

Like any reasonable man, I sat up carefully, trying to make as little sound as possible. For all they knew, I was still asleep, oblivious to the event that just transpired. I flipped the safety off my pistol that still lay on the coffee table. My ears strained to hear where the late night visitor went. No footsteps of retreat or further attempts to open the door, only deafening silence greeted me. The soul crushing noise of nothingness streched on until the morning came.