MicroHorror

Shit has a way of happening at the worst possible moments.

I’m on the crapper, satisfying the obvious need. The door is closed though I live alone. Call it a throwback to when I had to share the house with my parents, five siblings, three cats and a dog. Privacy was at a premium those halcyon days. Now I live alone, partially by choice.

A noise snaps my head up just as the vulnerable moment gets well underway.

Mogg-Wogg. Thump. Mogg-Wogg.

Something is clomping down the hall towards me. Someone is in my apartment.

With the noise comes an oily stench, swamp gas mingling with something ichthyian. Despite my situation I go into fight or flight mode. Trousers dropping to my ankles, I shoot to my feet off the porcelain throne. The enigmatic sound broaches closer and closer. My intruder has certainly picked a fine time.

Mogg-Wogg. Thump. Mogg-Wogg.

There is nowhere to go. No windows to slink out of, nothing but a short hallway of which I’m in the dead end. My mind shouts the obvious–Trapped!

Heart hammering away in my chest I search about for the nearest weapon. The plunger is all I can find. I take what little solace I can from that; my hunting rifle is tucked away beneath the bed, a 9mm revolver resting comfortably in my nightstand.

Maybe it’s nothing, just the product of an overactive imagination and too much alcohol. I don’t remember my whimsical dreams being this vivid, and the awful smell. Perhaps a hallucination? Scratch that, I don’t take drugs.

Still it comes. The scent and the sound, they fill the sinuses. Each sense becomes acute in an adrenaline flood. Sensory overload clouds the mind and taunts my vulnerability. Knuckles turn a snowy shade of alabaster around the wooden haft of my weapon. Judging by the racket, whoever, whatever lies beyond is enormous.

Just as I decide it’s better to be fully clothed than not, the fetid odor and the thumping clatter reach my door. I’m silent as a stone; a half-covered David prepared to do battle with a wad of rubber attached to a stick against the unknown.

Mogg-Wogg. Thump. Mogg-Wogg.

I hold my breath. Dare not move an inch. Let it be just some petty thief, take my wallet and go.

Something dense and heavy thuds against the doorframe. Once. Twice. A nerve-shattering third time.

I remain motionless, soundless. My heartbeat slams against my chest, blood rushing through my chilled veins and I fear whatever lies beyond that door can hear. I no longer believe this a simple robbery. But then what could this be?

The thudding resumes. Three times and a pause. Knocking?

Hopefully it will all just go away. Whatever it is, just quit my door and not return. Please? Just leave. Nobody here.

The smell is nearly overpowering now. It takes all my fraying willpower not to retch and heave. I thank the reflex born of years of paranoid conditioning that caused me to turn the bolt and lock myself in.

Another series of thumping, more insistent, almost desperate. It reeks in my confined prison of tile and porcelain. I wonder how long I can hold my breath.