Day 4: in which last night I was frightened

I wrote this last night...

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This is my house: it is on a hill (but what isn’t in Astoria? The land is shaped like a fist, all knuckles, dips and rises); boxes and furniture pushed against every wall (a packaged up Exer-Slide! in all its bright 1980’s leotard joy, dead spiders and dust); a trail of dried flowers pinned to gold netting on the staircase wall; radios in every room, on top of the refrigerator, on top of garage sale coffee tables, and hidden under pillows, at least three of them are turned on and distributing noise at any given time during the day (the one in the kitchen is currently playing blues songs. S. usually forgets to turn it off and when I wander downstairs in the dark, it scares me. I wonder who could possibly be muttering in the next room and if they are going to kill me).

At first it seems messy, hopelessly chaotic, a vomit of cheap, broken things. The more I wander down the stairs and through the living room, into the next room, and then to the kitchen the more I realize it’s really not so bad. Everything has been stacked, piled carefully.

I am sitting in the kitchen. It contains: old, dirty dishes, small plastic figurines, a calendar that hasn’t made it past April yet, and there was a bag of llama wool on the floor yesterday. The kitchen table is right under the north window. On the sill, a dead bee lies underneath the murderous fly swatter. Oh ignoble death. On the table there is an orange paper napkin (unused), three books about native plant life, a pair of glasses, two slowly rotting basil leaves, a pencil, a plastic surgical glove, and a crumpled envelope that once contained a ticket to a concert at the Liberty Theatre.

My room is directly above the kitchen. It contains a desk, a chair, a black trunk, and a three-drawer plastic office storage unit. There is nothing on the walls except a mirror and a few cracks and places where the dull purple-pink wall paper has been ripped away to reveal the wood. Against the north wall, I’ve laid out a bedroll. I sleep with my head to the window and my feet toward the closet. This has awakened all sorts of weird childhood fears.

9:45. Time go around and lock all the doors, check the windows.

To lock doors and shut windows makes this whole process of being alone in a house almost more frightening. I am locking myself in to lock someone else out—“someone” being the rest of the unknown, depraved, psychotic world clamoring for blood and brains and female virtue.

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And that's where I left it. I crawled up to bed, stretched a little, went to sleep, or at least tried to. My landlady said she was going back to her farm so I knew I would be completely on my own. The house was a kind motherly soul and decided to promptly start creaking eerily whenever I thought I might be feeling comfortable and empowered.

I dozed.

At 1 there's a cracking, scuffling noise in the kitchen. I become quite wide awake. It's just the house creaking...? Then I hear steps, slow, measured steps. I don't know if I should move or not. I reach over for my cell phone and dial in 911, just to have it ready when the ax murderer rushes me. Then I sneak very slowly to my door. The steps are walking down the hall to the living room. They pause at the door that opens onto the bottom of the staircase. I have opened my bedroom door and crept out through the small hall to the top of the stairs. Someone is slowly turning the doorknob. Fearfearpanicpanic.

Armed with my cellphone (very stupid. I should have at least grabbed the mirror and been prepared to chuck it down the stairs at whoever was there), I rally myself to call out in what I hope will be a confident, manly, strident voice, "Who's there?"

Yeah so.

Sadly, my voice came out squeaky and scared and feminine. Fortunately, it was my landlady who replied, "Oh hi, Katie. It's just me."

DEAR GOD.

I took myself back to bed.