I wake up with my book over my face haphazardly, where it’s obviously fallen when I drifted off, jumping in alarm at god knows what and blinking in the darkness of my room as I open my eyes to pitch black. My heart’s pounding crazily and the sweats hit me fast as I come to, in disorientation. Groggy from the effects of the meds I took hours ago as I slide it off and try to get my bearings.
I am unsure why I woke, as I was not even dreaming, and I feel completely odd in a sort of disconnected almost drunk way; which I presume is cough med related rather than sickness. Pushing it on to my bedside table as I feel around with shaking hands. I roll to my side to try and drift back off, but a little noise in the next room pricks up my attention. Like a tiny warning bell sending me into immediate high alert, it brings me to my senses in a breath pausing way.
I pause, holding painfully still and listen, not moving. Heartbeat rising as I try to focus on what I thought I just heard and strain so very hard to listen over the sound of my shallow breathing and erratic pounding rhythm as fear takes a low grip of my insides.
I hear something. Closing my eyes to cut off my attempts to focus on sights I cannot see and just listen very hard. So much so I can hear the blood rushing inside my head as adrenaline courses through my body. I know I am not imagining things; I am sensitive to things like this, ever since I came out to live alone again. I catch it again, so very faint, almost surreal but definitely in my apartment.
A scrape, as though something is being shifted or moved around on my threadbare floor through the door, and I sit up to strain towards it as stealthily as I can muster. My bedroom door is closed, which it makes it hard to hear anything at all but it’s unmistakable as it comes a little clearer and closer. I push my bedclothes back and sit very still, poised in a sitting position; completely petrified with a million things racing through my mind that I try to silence and just pull myself together.
Footsteps!
They sound as though they are trying to be light on their feet, but every time they venture nearer my room, the floorboards make a dull aching thud underfoot, where they are loose and I know for sure;
There are people inside my space!
No one knows who I am here!
I slide out of bed as quickly and silently as I can as trembles take hold in the cold air. Holding my breath, nerves on an all-time high as I vibrate inside, I try to hold my shit in while simultaneously waking myself fully.
Someone is in my apartment and I have no clue if this is a random robbery or something worse completely. The woman on the third floor was raped by an intruder last month, he took nothing of value and the attack seemed to be purely sexual. I am not about to go down without a fight if that is what this is. I am not some mere girl who will take being raped again so easily.
I may not be a stranger to it, but it’s still something I never want to experience again.
I keep a baseball bat under my bed and I reach for it quietly, crouching down as low as I can to slide it out slowly without making a single sound. My entire body is internally shaking yet my hands seem still as I grasp it tightly; knowing full well that I am my only saviour in this.
There’s a creak outside my door and I pause, heart hammering through my chest, body turning cold with tingles and clammy with fear. I have been in situations like this before and I know I need to keep my wits about me until I get out the other side. Women are murdered every day in this city, and I am no one special that will ever be missed.
I have no hero to intervene this time and for the first time, I wish Alexi was here, a pining so strong it almost rips my chest in two. I push him out of my head, hating that in moments of weakness I still need him, and grit my teeth in an effort to focus.
I move towards it and flatten my back against the wall beside the scraped wooden surface, as much as I can without disturbance or noise, ready to fight should they come in here, and praying they don’t. I’m ready to take someone’s head off, to get through this.
I close my eyes tight and open them fast to make them adjust to the dark faster, twice more until I can see shapes of furniture and outlines and can navigate a little more effectively. A trick I discovered as a child when I was trying to make the shadows turn into what they really were and not the monsters I imagined. Things begin to take shape as my night vision kicks in excruciatingly slowly and I can make out my room.
I start visibly shaking with the passing time, even though it’s only been seconds, terrified but poised, and waiting for the worst.
There’s a thud and a scrape, and I can hear mumbling as though there’s more than one voice just on the other side of our separator, and I know it’s only a matter of time. They will come in here if they are looking for things to steal, as there is not much out there to take. What they will find is me, and I don’t know what that outcome will entail.
I strain to listen again but jump when my door is clicked open slowly. Whoever turns the handle does so with such slight and careful movement it tells me they know someone is in here and it’s no deterrent.
Shit, shit, shit!
A huge figure in dark, looming taller and wider than me, slides inside the room quickly, looking towards my bed apprehensively and softly edges in with the grace of a cat. It’s clear they are unable to see if someone is in the bed in the darkness in here.
I see my chance.
It’s male for sure and the all black outfit, rubber gloves and Halloween mask tell me that this is no warm and friendly night-time visit. This is a planned break-in.
Aiming hard and high, putting all I have in me behind my very practised swing, I smack that fucker right in the face with a bone breaking crunch and knock him out cold to the world with a lucky whack. The reverberation as my bat collides and vibrates through the wood and then me, is followed by a satisfied crumpling and thudding of a human body collapsing on impact. I probably broke his face severely and his lack of reaction is a sure sign I did a great job of disabling him and I literally exhale in relief.
Internally my heart is pounding with a mix of fear and adrenaline, rushing of blood as I take a huge deep breath and gather my wits and what I need to do. There may be a second one out there who surely had to have heard this. I need to get to him first or by him before he sees me.
Jumping over my silent victim on the floor in a flash, panic-stricken in my pyjamas still, I high tail it towards the front door, which is sitting wide open, eyes on my escape.
I don’t see it coming at all, stupidly focused on safety and not my dark surroundings. The elbow to the face that gets me square in the middle of my nose, until my head bangs the floor viciously and it’s the last thing I remember.