A Knock at My Door

Published to Reddit December 2020

I was used to "odd things" at night. You don't live with hallucinations and voices your entire life without expecting something at every moment. You don't live alone and isolated from the world for 15 years and not expect your brain to play tricks. So pounds and shrieks at the door barely registered in the early morning hours that day. My mind adrift with the sleep medication I took to keep such noises out.

But through my dreamy haze, my medical induced slumber something whispered Wake up, Ana. And it wasn't the voices that had haunted me since I could think and remember. It was a voice deep inside me. What my Gramps would call my "Ol lizard brain".

My eyes shot open and the pounding fully registered. I thought for a moment. Am I scared? Threatened? Find something you can see. My eyes whipped around and focused on the lavender lace curtains that let in the vague moonlight and I traced the pattern, watching the wind shift. The pounding and shrieks grew louder. Something you can smell. I repeated the mantra again and I smelled the sandalwood perfume that I used every morning, still lingering from the day before. The pounding continued but was more rhythmic, more hurried. Something you can taste. I said and licked the dull taste of old toothpaste on the roof of my dry mouth. The pounding grew and seemed the thump with the increased beating of my heart. My eyes shot back to the lace curtain, the smell of sandalwood, and the taste of old toothpaste. I focused so clearly on those things that I follow up with my list Something I can feel. My hands shot down like arrows into the bed and dug into the soft cotton sheets. The pounding almost faded for a moment but picked up. I finally hit the last on my list Something I can hear. But all I could hear was the strange cries and thumps on my door. Something screaming for help. If this was a delusion, it was a bad one or a very, very good one.

I shook and winced with each thud and cry as I took myself out of my queen-sized bed, sweeping my bare legs over it and reaching out for my robe with a shaky hand. I pulled it on, a sense of haste taking over me as I moved to tie it with a definitive knot. I was not imagining this and something needed something from me. Something was calling to me from the other side of the door. And my mantras had done nothing but confirm what my heart knew as my eyes snapped open minutes before.

I walked along the cold floor, my steps matching the sudden pace of the pounding. The hallway seemed so narrow, enclosing me in as though I couldn't turn around, only move forward toward the door and the thuds that called and scared me to my core.

I felt like I walked forever like my steps were never-ending. I often think I'm still in that hallway, still narrowed in and moving toward the source of my fear but knowing it will be my salvation, however terrible, at the other end.

I reached the doorknob and danced my fingers along with it and as though whatever was on the other side knew, the knob wiggled and a cry came out again. I chose then to open the door, with a flourish and without fear. A wide sweeping motion that would change my life... and that of many others.

My heart stopped, a ringing sounded in my ears like the whistle of a claymore. Before me was a withered, white-pasted husk of what must have once been a human, or had wanted to be and failed terribly. He trembled in rags and teeth that pointed like sharks hung just over his lower lip. His hair was mangled, tossed, and covered in blood and dirt. He had the beard of a Viking. that hung in the same dark halo under his chin. The beard and hair created a perfect ring of matted fur around his pale skin. He stared with bloodshot eyes and the fear in my own reflected back on his almost purple hues. His hands had fallen to his sides when I had swung open the door so dramatically but I saw the long 2 inch claws that had been raking at my door. He wore a weathered and patched duster coat and under that no more than a pair of pants, bare, clawed feet in the snow. The coat opened to reveal a row of ribs under what must have been an impressive chest at one point but was now withered and white skin hung loosely around where muscles had formed and died. His stomach concaved until I thought I could see his spine.

"Ol Lizard brain" started screaming somewhere deep inside me Run! Run you fool! Slam the door and run! But I remained stock-still. The look in his eyes was too much. The pain eeked out of his hues like a river running toward the ocean of my deep-seated empathy.

After a moment his raspy voice spoke, the broken voice of something that had been torn and ripped in ways I couldn't even fathom. "Please, please let me in. They're hunting me." He sounded defeated and looked from side to side. I peeked out to see neighbors watching us with wary eyes and bedclothes. My house was not the first.

I stared ahead of him and bit my pale lower lip, running my tongue across the underside of my teeth before I made the snap choice. I reached out and gripped his bony wrist and tugged him "Come in" I hissed as I did and his slight frame stumbled inside and went face-first into my little recliner. He let out a huff of surprise and laid there for a moment, stunned.

I turned to watch him as he dislodged and detangled himself. He didn't bother to stand up. He just stared at me with wide eyes, but no breath. His lips cracked and parted as he said slowly "Why...?" He really couldn't believe I'd done that. "Don't you... know what I am?"

I stared back, my heart rate back to where it was. Calm and easy thanks to the stream of meds. I stared at him with softer eyes. He was so delicate, like the wildflowers I collected outback. Though I doubted he was being hunted for something as pretty and sentimental as a Vase display. No his fear, the absolute gratefulness and shock in his eyes at my choice to invite him in, they told me he was speaking the truth. He was being hunted.

I must have stared too long because he cleared his rough and ragged throat. I started and answered his question "Yeah, it's impossible not to know. Just look at you. I do read." I rolled my eyes and walked over to him, picking up a penknife that sat on a table by the door. I sliced my wrist, where criss-cross scars from a past I tried to forget laid. I didn't feel anything there anymore anyway. I watched as his voice caught in his throat and saliva stewed in the corners of his lips. Still shocked by the time I crossed the small boundary between us and pressed my wrist to his mouth.

He stared and slowly his violet-like hues rolled into the back of his head as the red nectar of my life force, forced through his lips and onto his hungry tongue. He didn't bite, long tongue lapping at the wound in slow circles. Slowly color came to his face and his body swelled. All the parts that had sunken, coming to full fruition before my eyes. The divet in his stomach inflated and barely his ribs could be seen over soft pale beige skin. He was still ratted but as the color rose and shrunkeness of his cheeks swelled he took on a boyish face.

I let out a soft little breath that hitched when he encased his now full and plump lips around my wrist and large hands with more bulk than before reached up and gripped me to him. I pulled away, but he was stronger and in his blood lust tried to latch on tighter by wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me closer. A musky smell of heated hunger came off him.

My body to his, I pressed my hand to his chest and whispered "Stop."

And he did.

He broke away at those words as though I had struck him and panting breaths he did not need as he stood in the corner of my hall with my own blood leaking from his lips. He spoke softer, the crimson life force he'd imbibed enough to soothe his near rotted throat.

"You taste so good... I am so sorry." He said with a hang of his head.

"It's fine." I said as I held my nightgown to my wrist "I know how y'all can be. My gram used to get so in the blood frenzy she'd tear through the countryside as a girl and my Gramps had to chase her down with a lasso." I smiled and laughed to break the tension, looking him over. "You haven't eaten in a while. I never saw Gram so pale and sunken. But Gramps told me stories. She died of blood sickness when I was 6." I shrugged and went to the bathroom. He followed me like a shocked and disciplined puppy.

He stared at me wide-eyed as I led him to the bathroom. Licking his lips clean impulsively of the blood mined from my veins. His voice was quiet "So you know whose hunting me?"

I laughed and walked into my pale, blue-tiled bathroom as I started to run a warm bath and set out a loofa and soup for skin, hair, and body. "No. I don't know much about your world really. I just know if you're going to hide here, you're not going to starve and you will not be tracking dirt everywhere. Now get in. The sun rises in..." I checked my watch "An hour and 48 minutes. I can have the basement set up for you by then. Can you get clean by then?"

He nodded, still stunned but accepting the charity with equal parts grace, shame, and pure confusion.

I nodded back and stood, making my way past him. "Good. They can't come in unless invited so you should be safe. We'll have to address it sooner or later though." I said with a shrug and sigh as I passed.

He reached out to touch my shoulder, a powerful touch, that spoke a warmth that his skin could not and his eyes grew deeper with vivid violet questions "We'll?" He repeated, as though he didn't hear me right.

I laughed and patted his hand "Well... I took you in, I fed you, I'm protecting you in my home. If I ain't in it before, I am now." I shrugged and left him there to wash up, stunned, but safe. For now.