February 07, 2006
*SKREEEEE*
There’s nothing like being woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a bloodcurdling screech.
She and I both opened our eyes, shot straight up in bed, and turned to face each other.
“What…what’s that noise?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.”
We both cracked the blinds enough to peer out onto the street. Of course, we couldn’t see a thing. And then the noise started again…another loud, inhuman squeal. My first thoughts were: ‘Oh shit, someone’s raping/abducting a kid.’ quickly followed by: ‘Oh fuck, someone dumped a newborn baby out of their car.’ She jumped out of bed and I immediately barked, “No, you’re not going down there.”
“Well, hurry!”
I growled a quick “I’M TRYING” as I yanked a pair of pants on and jumped into a pair of shoes. I snatched a flashlight off of one of the desks, and she handed me her set of housekeys. And another scream. Fuck.
I clicked on the flashlight and started downstairs, my pulse pounding through my veins like rapid gunfire. A nearby streetlight flickered once, and then plunged the area beneath it into darkness. Looking down at my sadly bare hands that only grasped a flashlight, I thought, ‘Great, I’m going to be victim #1 in a horror movie.’ I imagined turning the corner and seeing a bloodied homeless man or a wild-eyed crackhead on the concrete, staggering towards me and making that creepy-ass screeching noise. Why does my brain always have to do this to me?
I sucked in a deep breath and ran around the corner, flashlight and clenched fist at the ready. Nothing but bare sidewalk. Sweeping the walkway and the gutter with my flashlight as I rounded the corner, I stopped for a second, and then dashed around the side of the building to the sidestreet that the noise was coming from. I’d bet you a crisp twenty-dollar bill that my eyes looked like dinner plates. Expecting the worst, I strained my eyes to see anything that I could. I shone the light behind the hedges. Nothing. I took a quick peek in the first parking garage. Nothing. I continued along the sidewalk, shining the light into the hedges there and down onto the street beside me, under cars and into the gutter. Nothing. Finally making my way to the second parking garage, I peered in.
Not a fucking thing.
My heart continued to pound out a jazz drum solo as I cautiously turned and headed back to the apartment. What in the fuck WAS it? There was nothing on the ground, nothing backed into a corner, nothing under any cars, nothing on the other side of the street….nothing. Then almost on cue, I heard a loud hacking noise, like a man trying to clear his throat of phlegm. My mind immediately conjured up memories of the film “28 Days Later”, and I was suddenly flooded with the desire to tear my traitorous gray matter from my head and angrily spike it on the concrete like a football. I spun back around with the flashlight, doing my damnedest to shine it everywhere at once. Nothing.
Brain came back with a news flash: Which is worse, expecting the worst of a situation and finding it, or expecting the worst and instead finding nothing?
As much as I’d have loved to ponder the point, I figured that it’d be much safer to do so in the locked apartment. Making my way back to the staircase, I slowed intermittently to look behind me and assure myself that nothing was going to come scuttling from the darkness to scare the absolute shit out of me. The faltering streetlight flickered, and I had to stave away the urge to scream like a girl. After mounting the staircase, I paused, turned, and waited for about a minute. Nothing followed. Good.
I unlocked the door and headed back inside, breathing a sigh of relief. My pulse finally started to slow, and I wiped the cold sweat from my brow as my girlfriend looked on.
“What was it?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t find anything.”
“Well, what do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. It’s definitely not a person. Maybe a possum, a rabid squirrel…I don’t know. I wish I knew, but I don’t.”
“Could it be a bird?”
“I’ve never heard a bird that sounded like that before.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never heard anything that sounded like that before.”
“We had our fair share of odd shit in the country, but when you hear something like that in the country you either get a gun or run away.”
We both laughed.
“Well, I-“
The screech ripped across the silence again.
She looked at me and said, “Jake…”
“I didn’t see ANYTHING down there. I’ll go back down and take another look, but you’re staying here.”
“No, I’m coming with you.”
“If whatever this is attacks something, I don’t want it to be you.”
“I’m coming with you. Where’s that thing?”
“The thing outside?”
“No.”
I thought of weaponry.
“The shovel?”
“No, that wooden club-thing I had by the door.”
Ah. Smart woman. My dumb ass had meandered out there with nothing but a flashlight and curse words on my tongue, assuming that the unnamed whatever would promptly piss itself and get the hell outta Dodge when it heard big, bad me coming. After rummaging behind the scratching post for a moment, I withdrew a thick, oaken table leg that tapered down into what made for a great handgrip. Looking back at her, I took a deep breath and said something to the effect of, “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
We closed the door and crept downstairs. She took the lead, and I barked at her to get back behind me, which she did. We both turned the corner and immediately shone our flashlights around us.
She whispered, “Where in the fuck is it? Do you see anything?”
“No, there’s nothing in the street, nothing under the cars, nothing across the street…”
“Yeah, I know. These flashlights suck, too. Maybe it-“
Her words were stopped short by that godawful hacking noise and some loud rustling above us.
The trees. I didn’t look up in the fucking trees.
Immediately turning our attention upwards, we frantically swept our lights back and forth from tree to tree.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
“No. But that palm tree’s so thick you can’t see shit from shinola.”
“Well, which tree do you think it’s in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it-“
A loud screech emanated from the top of the tree nearest to us, and she took off like a shot with me in tow. Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner couldn’t have touched us.
I just prayed that the occasional passing driver didn’t see a big ugly guy with a makeshift club in his hand chasing a blonde, get the wrong idea, and decide to play knight in shining armor. Then I thought, ‘Hey, maybe the thing in the tree will eat the guy and then I’ll get to adopt it as a guard…thing.’ I could see it now. “Oh no, a home invasion! You got my back, bro?” “REEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!” Then we’d form a loose partnership and play ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ while shooting off numerous one-liners, such as my constant re-iterations of “I’m getting too old for this shit” as Thing looks on, twists his gnarled face into a grin, and gives me a thumbs-up with a fishbelly-white, nearly skeletal claw.
Fucking brain.
We clamored our way to the top of the staircase in record time, slammed the access gate, and dashed inside to the apartment, whereupon we ran here and there spastically locking all the doors and shutting all the windows. Bravery only lasts for so long before you wish you had either a gun or a drink, and I left my guns in Texas. We both just sort of stood there for a moment, catching our breath before bursting into laughter. As we got undressed, we cracked numerous jokes about the situation and climbed back into bed. I reminded her to call Animal Control if she heard the noise at any point during the day, covered my head with a pillow, and slept uneasily.
This morning, I woke to a half-assed screech from the tree outside our window, and that’s why I’ve been up since 4 a.m. writing this thing.
Shit, I need to stop saying “thing”.
Posted by Jake at February 7, 2006 06:34 AM
|
