The Predator

The Predator

Day Five.


         I’m not safe anymore.

         Not even in my own house, my own room. Especially not in my own room.

         It knows where I live. It knows my habits, my routines. It knows exactly where to find me at any time on any given day. And it’s going to find me soon.

         I can’t go to anyone for help, not the police, not my neighbors, not my family, not my friends. Because I know it well, and it won’t attack, it won’t bother me if there’s anyone in the house with me.

         There’s no way to guard myself from its watchful gaze.

         Thank God I don’t have central air or heating, because it would watch me from behind the grates covering the vents. It can go anywhere.

         It watches me from every closet, every corner, every open floor, every doorway, every hallway. Everything I do, it sees.

         I could hide, I suppose, but it will find me.

         There is no hope.

         My only consolation is that it won’t strike when I’m sleeping. Or perhaps it could. Perhaps it could actually first devour my scalp and then the rest of my body. Thankfully, it hasn’t yet, and I think I can sleep safely.

         But not soundly, oh no. It’s in my dreams, and I can hear its predatory roar and shrieks of delight when it bears down upon me as I run, run through the hallways and rooms of my home toward the front door which opens upon safety.



Day Seven.

         It’s been a week since I first realized it was watching me. It still hasn’t struck, but I’ve been too afraid to do anything in my home other than sleep. The bookshelves are getting dusty, the rugs dirty, the air stale. My fridge is empty—I haven’t bought groceries in a week. My sink is filled with unwashed dishes. My trash reeks.

         I have to do something about the mess, I have to start living in my house again. After all, it hasn’t hurt me yet.

         Yet.

         I’m trying to stay positive, but somehow, I think the tension is getting to me.


         I make my way slowly to the closet where I keep the duster and the vacuum. Nothing happens as I dust the bookshelves, move on to the television, and then dust the rest of the house.

         I start to relax, and then have an idea. I haven’t listened to the radio in days… Maybe… maybe that will be safe.

         I put the duster down on the kitchen table and then turn the radio on.

         The hairs raise on the back of my neck as strains of Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor begin to fill the room.

         Shit. It sees me.

         I take my hand from the radio and turn around slowly, very slowly. There’s nothing behind me.

         There’s nothing in the room with me. There’s no one in the room with me. I am alone, except for the radio I am now holding in front of me. If need be, I will use the radio as a weapon and I will stop it.

         As long as I see it coming.


         I wait for what must be fifteen minutes, but nothing happens, and I start to breathe more normally and put the radio down. I decide to finish what I had started—I dusted, now I just need to vacuum. Hopefully, the noise of the vacuum won’t aggravate it.

         I take the vacuum up to my bedroom, because it’s where I feel safest and the green walls usually help calm me down. And… if it comes for me, I can just jump in my bed.

         I plug the vacuum in and begin cleaning my floor. Just in time, I realize that my cell-phone charger’s cord is about to be devoured by the green machine I’m pushing.

         I could have sworn I picked everything up already, but I guess I somehow managed to miss the charger cord.


         Funny how Green Machine rhymes, isn’t it?


         I stand the vacuum cleaner up, its engine still churning, and then I walk in front of it to bend down and pick up the charger cord.


         And then I hear it. The roaring shriek that has haunted my dreams for the past week.

         SHIT!

         I slowly turn toward the vacuum cleaner—or more accurately, to where it was.

         Too late, I realize that my walls are almost the same shade of green as the vacuum cleaner. It’s already camouflaged, perfectly hidden.

         I freeze, and take in my surroundings. The bed, the desk, the dresser are all out of reach. For the first time, I curse having such a large bedroom. I don’t think I can even make it out the door safely.

         I see the outlet and the beginning of the power cord to the vacuum—it’s stretched taught, but somehow, I can’t see where it leads away from the outlet.

         This isn’t fair.

         Well, I have one chance.

         One chance to escape this monstrous green vacuuming machine that has been hunting me for the past week.

         I leap toward the door, to the hallway, to freedom.


         Only to find myself suddenly faced with a charging vacuum cleaner. It’s screaming from the joy of a hunt, THE hunt, MY hunt.

         No! How can this be happening?

         I turn around as it bears down upon me, its roars of triumphant hunger growing ever louder. I dig my heels into the ground and sprint the ten feet to my bed, leaping upon it like a child who reaches “base” in a game of tag just in time.

         The green vacuum prowls around the perimeter of my bed, eyeing me as if it knows something I don’t.

          I laugh at it. I taunt it. “You can’t get me now, and you know it!” I cry victoriously. It continues roaring and shrieking, though increasingly more subdued. “I’m safe on this bed. You can’t touch me.”


         I watch it for a while, for hours, until it’s dawn the next morning and I’m too weary to keep my eyes open.

         “You lose,” I manage to say sleepily as I lay my head down on the pillow. “I’m going to take a nap, and you’d better be gone when I wake up.”

         I feel myself drifting off, relaxing. Is it me, or is it growing quieter? It’s not roaring anymore, and the shrieks and screams have subsided entirely…

         Maybe it’ll still be there when I wake up, maybe it won’t….

         Maybe this is all just a dream…

         I can feel my heart slowing down, my breathing evening out….



         And I’m dreaming about the vacuum again, it’s roaring, it’s screaming and shrieking, and I’m trapped beneath the covers and I can’t get out and run away and it’s at my head and it’s eating my hair and there’s so much pain oh please make it stop and I start to scream as I feel the skin ripping away and oh God just make it stop and I’m still screaming and—

The End.

© Copyright 2009 Monica Ronovitch (UN: mronovitch at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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