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When I came home to find him sitting in the middle of my living room, I wasn’t alarmed.
He was dressed in a grey suit and sitting on the piano stool my grandmother had left to me after her death last year. That didn’t freak me out.
What scared me was that he was wearing latex gloves and had very messy hair. And the suit was too small for him.
The first impression I got from him was that he was a puppet with the strings cut. His head lolled to the side and his eyes stared past my right shoulder. A string of drool attached his lapel to his lower lip.
It was a cheap suit. The kind a person wouldn’t mind burning later.
The door slowly closed behind me. I was rooted to the spot with indecision and fear as time sped by.
At the sound of my door’s latch, the man’s head jerked up like he’d awoke from a bad dream. With a hissing intake of breath between clenched teeth, he surveyed his surroundings. His eyes landed on me.
With a jut forward of his head and a squint of his eyes, he found recognition. Whatever he was doing here came back to him in a flash and he smiled, putting one hand behind his back.
“Jake MacPherson?” he asked politely, almost playfully. A ruse of a smile danced across his lips as he gave me a sidelong glance. A lank of his messy hair fell forward across his left eye. He raised his eyebrows in a prompt for me to confirm or deny the name.
The hand behind his back terrified me.
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused. My name was Peter Llewellyn.
With a sigh and an eye roll towards the ceiling as if pleading for God’s help with my obvious stupidity, he dropped the smile and looked back at me with the intensity of a hunting dog. Jovial Stranger had left. Here was the killer. The hand that wasn’t behind his back opened and closed, opened and closed.
“I asked you if your name was Jake MacPherson. Failing that, do you know who or where he is?” he repeated in clipped syllables.
“My name is Peter Llewellyn.” I said flatly, surprised at my own eloquence under the circumstances. “I, uh, I moved in here last month. I don’t know who Jake is.”
The man in the middle did something then that scared me more than anything he’d done so far.
He sniffed the air.
“Hmm.” He said. “Seems honest. Kick your wallet over. That’ll be the end of it.”
I slowly took my wallet out of my back pocket, placed it on the floor, and kicked it along the hardwood floor in his direction.
He leaned down and picked it up without taking his eyes off of me, opened it one-handed, and lifted it up into his peripheral vision to check the ID.
“Looks like it all checks out, Pete. Sorry to bother you. You understand.” He said with a shrug.
He flipped my wallet over his shoulder, brought out the gun from behind his back, and shot me in the chest. My scream died in my throat as I crumpled against the door.
I woke up with a neck cramp in the dark. It was eight hours later. My leg had gone to sleep underneath me. The yellow tuft on the tranquilizer dart stuck out of the front of my shirt. Slowly, I regained full conciousness, took a shower, and went to bed.
Something told me not to call the police.
I moved to a different apartment.
tags
He was dressed in a grey suit and sitting on the piano stool my grandmother had left to me after her death last year. That didn’t freak me out.
What scared me was that he was wearing latex gloves and had very messy hair. And the suit was too small for him.
The first impression I got from him was that he was a puppet with the strings cut. His head lolled to the side and his eyes stared past my right shoulder. A string of drool attached his lapel to his lower lip.
It was a cheap suit. The kind a person wouldn’t mind burning later.
The door slowly closed behind me. I was rooted to the spot with indecision and fear as time sped by.
At the sound of my door’s latch, the man’s head jerked up like he’d awoke from a bad dream. With a hissing intake of breath between clenched teeth, he surveyed his surroundings. His eyes landed on me.
With a jut forward of his head and a squint of his eyes, he found recognition. Whatever he was doing here came back to him in a flash and he smiled, putting one hand behind his back.
“Jake MacPherson?” he asked politely, almost playfully. A ruse of a smile danced across his lips as he gave me a sidelong glance. A lank of his messy hair fell forward across his left eye. He raised his eyebrows in a prompt for me to confirm or deny the name.
The hand behind his back terrified me.
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused. My name was Peter Llewellyn.
With a sigh and an eye roll towards the ceiling as if pleading for God’s help with my obvious stupidity, he dropped the smile and looked back at me with the intensity of a hunting dog. Jovial Stranger had left. Here was the killer. The hand that wasn’t behind his back opened and closed, opened and closed.
“I asked you if your name was Jake MacPherson. Failing that, do you know who or where he is?” he repeated in clipped syllables.
“My name is Peter Llewellyn.” I said flatly, surprised at my own eloquence under the circumstances. “I, uh, I moved in here last month. I don’t know who Jake is.”
The man in the middle did something then that scared me more than anything he’d done so far.
He sniffed the air.
“Hmm.” He said. “Seems honest. Kick your wallet over. That’ll be the end of it.”
I slowly took my wallet out of my back pocket, placed it on the floor, and kicked it along the hardwood floor in his direction.
He leaned down and picked it up without taking his eyes off of me, opened it one-handed, and lifted it up into his peripheral vision to check the ID.
“Looks like it all checks out, Pete. Sorry to bother you. You understand.” He said with a shrug.
He flipped my wallet over his shoulder, brought out the gun from behind his back, and shot me in the chest. My scream died in my throat as I crumpled against the door.
I woke up with a neck cramp in the dark. It was eight hours later. My leg had gone to sleep underneath me. The yellow tuft on the tranquilizer dart stuck out of the front of my shirt. Slowly, I regained full conciousness, took a shower, and went to bed.
Something told me not to call the police.
I moved to a different apartment.
tags
