Who moves furniture around at 4:00 AM in the morning? More importantly, who is awake at 4:00 AM in the morning? I had one more hour until the alarm rang and one more nerve for the taking - God help the poor bloke next door if that nerve gave out from under me. My fist was itching to pound on their door and tackle whoever was so unlucky to answer it. Every scrape and bang that sounded from behind my bedroom wall made me shudder, made my eye twitch, had me picturing the nice metal sconce on my wardrobe beating them on the head like a kettle drum.
"Go to bed already!" I hollered, sat up and smacked the wall. Throwing the covers up over myself, I piled every pillow within reach on my head. "Change the battery in your hearing aid grandpa, you're louder than Christina Aguilera."
The noise stopped abruptly and I paddled to the surface of my pillow mound. Was it true? Could one hour of a feng shui/interior design meltdown end so suddenly? Still silence, a sweet and heavenly silence. Heaving a great sigh of relief, I collapsed into my nest of blankets and pillows. The clock read 4:26. Enough time for a quick rest. Balancing school with work and demonic extradition gave me little time for leisure, and my favorite leisurely activity was sleeping. It allowed me to forget about the nightmares of reality and lose myself in fiction, in a world where demons didn't walk the earth, a place where I could hang up the crossbow and forget about slaving to send them back to the Duat. In that world, my parents didn't question my sanity or lend me a deaf ear because they were afraid of the truths I had to tell.
Something hit my bedroom wall. The bed jumped and my eyes snapped open.
"Oh, you've done it now, old man!" It had to have been an old person. No other human being would feel like redecorating at that hour. I threw off my covers and wriggled out of the pillow nest. There was no need to change or put on some shoes. When I got done with that old man, he'd forget his own name, let alone what I was or was not wearing at the time of his murder. "Why did I have to rent this dump out of all the other places!" Well, that's easy, because there were no other places. Apartments in Bellam were saturated with college students because of winter courses. This was all that was left and all I could afford that was still a reasonable distance from the campus. Pretending to stock bookshelves(they never empty to begin with) for $10.50 an hour wouldn't buy me a luxury condo.
"I'm coming, old man, just you wait," I grumbled, flipping the deadbolt on my front door and dropping the chain. After dramatically throwing the door aside, I stomped out into the hall and froze. The neighbor's door was ajar and, opposite of it, a guy leaning against the wall of the corridor was wavering side to side, hunched over in what appeared to be agony. That's when I saw the blood, quantities of a dark viscid liquid dripping from his fingers and onto the hallrunner like a leaky faucet. His face, as young as mine, switched from a pained, teeth-grinding expression to a blank canvas. What was I dealing with here? After straightening his posture and aligning his back with the wall, he glanced down the corridor, right in my direction. It didn't register at first. He double-took and there we were, gaping at each other. Though I admit, mine was more of an ogle. His was a little unnerved and all at once I was confused. You're standing there in an apartment hallway, bleeding, and you look at me as if *I'm* intruding. That must have been one interior design meltdown.
My body and mind were still at rest, so I wasn't sure what to say or do. A set of bloody footprints guided my stare down the hall and past my door to the elevator, which was broken, and back to the staircase beside it. Whoever attacked this man wasn't from here, otherwise he would have known the landlord is too cheap to call a repairman. The victim was someone you'd least expect to be a victim, a built and willowy man with that particular style in clothes that said, "Don't mess with me." His rider boots alone could crush my skull, and his weight on top of them was just an unfair addition. A black mop smeared with styling grease had come undone, hair jotting out here and there. Beneath the mess, a pair of cavernous dark eyes.
"I-I." There was nothing I could think to say. But inwardly, I knew I should run inside, lock the door, and call the police. That would be the *normal* thing to do, but I wasn't exactly normal.
"What?" he asked, feigning politeness. I caught whiff of the underlying arrogance.
"Were you attacked?"
"Oh, no." He shook his head. "No, no, no. I was just redecorating . . . at 4:00 in the morning."
My eyes broadened. "I didn't know the walls were that thin."
"They're not." He pushed off the wall and sauntered to his apartment. "Do me a favor and mind your own damn business."
The door slammed.
"What just happened?" I asked myself, backing up into my apartment and quickly closing the door. The walls were thin, but not *that* thin. I didn't ever recall saying anything about redecorating out loud. Those quips I kept to myself because, as grandma used to say before I altogether stopped listening, "a smartmouth must always suppress their witticism and use select amounts at a time." What he said burned. My flesh was goosed, but I felt steamed. Crimson cheeked, balled fists, overwhelmed with embarrassment and anger. Why didn't I say anything back? I have a million-and-one remarks for any living creature that opens their mouth wrong to me. I don't care who just got finished ripping him a new one, I'd hop in line for seconds.
"Punk," I grumbled and a picture of Clint Eastwood came to mind. Then I was laughing. Again, I contemplated calling the police. It isn't exactly normal to have a bloody guy walking around your apartment building. But he didn't look interested in what help I had to offer. In a way, he didn't look to be in pain at all, despite the blood, despite the gashes and cuts. Either he's insane or . . . No! I evaded the thought. No demon in their right mind would move next door to a hunter. Unless he was new to this turf . . . I stopped myself from entertaining the thought.
Shaking my head, I crossed the living room to my bedroom and closed the door. Everything was still and silent. No scraping or thumps from the apparent tussle next door. I gingerly approached the back wall and set my ear on its surface. There was a low growl from the opposite side, unlike any animal known to man. It's a noise that can thrum throughout your body and steal the strength from your knees.
I grinned. "Game time."
