It's half past eleven. The neighborhood's dead, right down to the strays, and you're in a bell jar.
Each sound is trapped in the room: the refrigerator's hum, the TV's drone, your own manual breathing. A great beast shifts, its ancient ligaments creaking in the wind. A shadow passes beneath the blinds.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The cadence is lazy, the sound flat against the wood. Silence invades and the TV's picture breaks into static. You move to answer, bare feet padding on the cold floor. Through the hall, approaching the front door, jaundiced light filters through the peephole. You look through.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
A girl stands distorted by the fish eye lens. Her hair is a dark shag draping a pale, symmetrical face. She wears a cropped band shirt under a loose black hoodie. A golden ankh hangs from her neck.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Hey," she begins, vocal fry gritting the word. "I saw your lamp on. It's sooo..." she stretches the syllable as she looks up from her feet to the door, "dark out here." The sockets are black, as if gouged out, but nothing shows inside. "The hour nears midnight; I pray you now, please let me come inside and rest a while."
"Swear I'm not some loser freak," she adds, seeming to catch herself. A pressure at the threshold breeds naked, instinctual fear. She flicks a wrist back toward the empty street and proclaims, stepping close to the door: "The way is long and hard to climb, and I am tired."
