He clenched his wrist, his head lolling back onto his shoulders. He breathed in, smiled, closed his eyes, and waited for the darkness.
The rats scurried beneath the subway tracks, their fur bristled, heads looking in every direction.
The old woman sat on her couch, took her red pills, blue pills, green pills, yellow pills, but not the white pills.
And Emily tried to sleep, tried to let her mind relax, but she couldn’t help but think… think about everything: how she had to go in to work on a Saturday, how she was sure her boss was planning to fire her, how she wouldn’t be in that job if she had finished college, how she would have finished college if she hadn’t fallen into a bad crowd, how she wouldn’t have fallen in with that crowd if she didn’t want to have friends so badly, how she wouldn’t have wanted friends so badly if she had made any in high school, how she would have made friends in high school if…
And if, and if, and if…
She tried counting sheep, but she remembered she had to pick up 20 gift bags for her niece’s birthday party. She tried listening to music, but she remembered having sex for the first time to “Proud Mary”, and forced herself not to think about her exes. She would have read, but she left her glasses at her most recent exes’ apartment and was so glad to be done with him she didn’t care what she left there and what happened to them.
She turned over again to look at the clock, hoping that either almost no time at all had passed, or a lot of time had passed. If practically no time had passed, then there was still plenty of time to try and sleep. If a lot of time had passed then she was that much closer to having to get up and go to work.
Her alarm clock was blank. Dead.
Emily grumbled as she pressed random buttons on the clock, looking at the thing, and sighing.
She got up, followed the cord, and pushed it into the socket hard, making sure it was in there.
From her crouched position on the wood floor, she pulled for the clock. Still nothing.
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark already, from staring at her ceiling in the dark, so she stood up, walked to the doorway, and flicked the lightswitch on and off a few times without stubbing her toe.
Nothing again.
Emily didn’t pretend to be annoyed. This was a fantastic excuse to not go to work in the morning: blackout, she over slept, was it really worth going in for only 2 hours?
She grabbed the flashilight she kept in her side table drawer, feeling proud she had actually been prepared for a blackout; her dad would be proud.
“Of course the batteries are dead…” she said as she tossed the flashlight on the bed beside her.
It was silent. She realized it was silent, and felt a small knot of panic in her stomach.
She left her room, holding the walls, and called
“Solomon? Solomon!”
Nothing, no tiny feet padding around the small apartment, no pouncing at invisible prey, no purrs or mews, and no fresh litter scent.
Emily could have sworn she locked the door. She knew she closed it, but was absolutely positive she locked it, so how could it be open at whatever hour after 2am it was?
She turned her head sharply. The entire apartment was black, and silent, except for the noises Emily now perceived that she wasn’t entirely sure were there. Was that someone moving in the bathroom? Was that whispering? Did a hand just try to grab her? She grabbed the umbrella she kept by the door.
“Hello?”
Her voice stuck in her throat.
The room was getting darker, or else she was starting to fall asleep. She blinked. Blinked again. Rubbed he eyes, but it was still getting darker, and darker still, and she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the shadows on shadows were creeping across the floor like insects.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she got goosebumps trying to look around her small apartment. Emily felt as if someone was watching her, but not just someone, hundreds of someones, all of them looking at her, through her, in her, and her stomach lurched, and sank the way it does when someone tries to contemplate eternity and death.
Emily felt her arm being tugged at, as the shadows marched forward. She could feel the hand, feel the force, but could not see anything beyond her door.
Emily’s arm was being pulled so forcefully that it was either follow the force, or lose her arm. She followed, umbrella in hand, and tried to keep pace with someone who was running for their life. She lost her footing from time to time, but was able to quickly regain it. She tried to see who was pulling her, but the lights in the hallway were also out.
The hallway was a dead end, except for that one window no one could ever open.
Emily heard the crash after she was falling from five floors up.