V.
You are walking around a park, taking the scenic route on your way to complete Wednesday’s final errand. The weather is crisp you can see leaves are starting to die and fall. Suddenly, your stomach drops. You think you left the curling iron on. You could have sworn you checked it before you left this morning, but were distracted by your mom calling to remind you to be at your Aunt’s for Thanksgiving. During this particular phone call, she forgot you hate turkey for the fourth year but she remembers the important stuff so you don’t harbor animosity about it. If the cats touch the curling iron, your clothing could set the entire apartment on fire. It could have happened a half hour after you left this morning, for all you know. Your kitten does love burning candles. Who knows how far she’ll go this time?
Two months ago your smoke alarm ran out of batteries, and you did nothing about it. In a way, you’d be responsible for your cats death. They will suffocate, meowing and mewing, pleading, but no one will hear them because you didn’t change that goddamn fire alarm. You have an immediate urgency to go home and clear your mind because you can’t just walk around like nothing’s happening this could be really serious.
You never like to run to places, and although you are wearing expensive loafers for no particular reason, you feel your natural rhythm increase until you are sprinting across the park. You hope no one sees you running on the park’s lawn, which you are always very self conscious about because you just don’t know the protocol. You run across a busy road, which isn’t as exciting as you’d hoped because road work slowed traffic. You see your complex and no fire trucks. Subtle relief strikes you, but a further assessment will really clear your mind. You debate between running up the stairs, or taking the elevator, but your lungs burn and you figure it is only a few seconds slower. Maybe it would even be the same amount of time. So you take the elevator up but you feel bad about it the whole ride.
You walk into your building, smelling a faint charcoal, tasting a certain smoke. Under your door, there is no visible fumes and just to be sure you touched the doorknob, but there was no residual heat. You burst into you apartment. On the floor, your curling iron is plugged in, singeing your beige carpet hairs. There are several small dots of browned, cooked beige and you thank God everyone is okay even though you’re Agnostic on a good day. Thank You, God you say out loud. There is a creaking on the floor coming from your bedroom. Intoxicated with relief, you casually stroll into the naturally lit room. You don’t even know what’s in there yet.
I’ll tell you what’s in there, if you want. There’s a man who crawled in through your window waiting for you with the intents to rape and bludgeon you to death. He’s a really sick guy, he doesn’t even know if you’re a man or a woman yet. He will probably use something from inside the house. He ends up trying to use your cutting board, but it simply won’t do the job, so the man is going to bash your skull into the bathroom sink until you die. The man’s going to take a shower, and then leave your apartment. A police officer will confront him about an unrelated incident, they won’t find your body until the smell distracts your bitch neighbor, Donna. When the man realizes the questions are regarding another crime and he will go home free, he thanks God. And he really means it. Thank you, God he says out loud.
