The winter this year has turned out to be extraordinarily snowless and frosty, the wind gusts going through even the sturdiest winter clothes. The smartest thing you can do in such a weather is not to leave the house and I have done just that. With a bottle of cognac and a bar of dark chocolate I nestled myself in front of the PC.
They say that drinking alone is the first sign of impending alcoholism. Let me assure you, it’s a lie. You can’t stay sober all the time, unless you are a masochist. Sometimes you have to soften your consciousness to calmly recall the past and think about the future. Loud crowds aren’t suitable for this, nobody will leave you alone with your thoughts there. Memories and thoughts require three things: cognac, loneliness and melancholy.
The speakerphone rudely interrupted my enjoyment of those. My steps already wobbly from several glasses of cognac I staggered into my hallway. The nightly visitor couldn’t have picked a worse time to come around.
Pressing the button on the speaker I barked: “What do you need?”
“Please, sweetheart, let me in to get warm”- a gentle voice of an elderly man responded. There was something warm in that voice, something that tender and familiar that for a moment I thought I am talking to my own grandfather.
“Are you visiting someone?” - I asked, trying to appear more polite.
“Sweetheart, let me in to get warm”- replied the same gentle voice of an old man.
I turned on my ring camera. In front of the door stood an elder man, wearing a dirty scarf and an old jacket. The scarf used to be white once but now was blotched with dirt stuck to it. His cap was a few sizes too small, the kind teenagers wear. He looked so helpless, cold and certain to freeze to death if I wouldn’t let him into the hallway. My imagination gladly painted a picture of our groundskeeper finding his frozen body next day, bystanders gathering around him and me, leaving the house, looking at the corpse of an unlucky elderly man, forgotten by all, a man I could have saved if I only would have let him into the hallway.
“Please sweetheart, let me in to get warm” the tender, familiar voice spoke once again.
Without hesitation I pressed the button to open the door.
My desire for drink was gone entirely. After looking around the kitchen for 20 minutes I finally found my coffee jar. It was sitting right in front of me. Of course. Where else would the item be that you search for? Turning on the gas stove to maximum I was about to pour water into the kettle when my doorbell rang.
“I am so popular tonight” I sighed to myself.
Looking through the spy I saw the elder man I let into the house.
“Please sweetheart, let me in to get warm” he spoke in a most tender, sweet and familiar voice. The voice of the person closest to me, in the entire world. My imagination already was producing pictures of me finding his stiff body as I was leaving for the store tomorrow,the poor old man, frozen to death right before my door. A man I could have saved if I wasn’t such a bitch and just would have let him into the flat. A wave of regret washed over me, tears spilled from my eyes.
Turning the door knob I was sure I was opening the door for my grandfather whose body I would undoubtedly find before my door if I wouldn’t let him in right NOW.
And yet my hand froze midway and a vague bad feeling rose in my soul, a feeling my alcohol - addled mind needed time to comprehend. Something was absolutely wrong. Locking the door again I stumbled backwards, away from it. Reality came back to me. I remembered my grandfather dying when I was 11. I was about to let a strange man into my apartment.
“Let me in to get warm, sweetheart” the tender and familiar voice repeated. But now I felt nothing but rising concern.
Still unsure whether to open the door or get away from it , I stood there for 15 minutes. Meanwhile the pleas to be let in just kept repeating. The voice stayed tender which scared me even more. No human can stand in front of the door for 15 minutes and ask to be let in without changing their tone or showing irritation. That just doesn’t happen.
Being 100% sure I would never open the door to the old man I decided to peek through the spy. Worn boots, an old jacket and a scarf with dirt stuck to it. Only now, there was an elongated snout above the scarf, much like a fox with red eyes and a row of sharp teeth.
“Please sweetheart, let me in to get warm” I heard in my mind again. The jaws of the snout didn’t move but just showed the row of teeth. As if it knew I am looking at it.
“Fuck off!” I screamed, unable to tear myself away from the spy. The thing growled and started hitting my door with it’s big paws.
Despite the loud growling and the blows to my door I heard the croaking of an ancient elevator coming to our floor. Three people live on my floor: myself, Steph and a young lean brunette man who just recently moved to town. How to describe him? He was beautiful. Of course there were thousands and thousands of pretty young men around but he was special. The world seemed brighter and warmer with him around.
The elevator stopped. I heard the doors opening.
“Holy fuck! What the hell is this shit?!” I heard a hoarse voice.
I am sure that even lean men swear and might even have hoarse voices but I couldn’t fail to recognise Steph’s distinct manners.
Steph was 62, she was small and had a pleasant character. Everyone seemed to like her. In all the 7 years I lived here I have never seen her fully sober. Oh, she wasn’t your average alcoholic. She always looked neat, did the odd jobs here and there and no one had ever seen her lying shitfaced in a ditch. But she drank, drank every day, starting in the morning, as if she was following some to me unknown commandments of an alcohol god. I once asked her why she drinks. She told me that she has been drinking a little but every day for 11 years, starting with the death of her husband. I was touched and was about to express all the sympathy I could to the woman. But Steph quickly added: “ you know, I think the man is the first and last creation of Satan. He will eat your heart, drink your blood and suck your brain out through a straw. Who knows how long you will be drinking, trying to get rid of memories of him?” While I stared at her, baffled and trying to think of a response she quickly opened the door to the apartment and went in.
The beast slowly turned towards Steph, savouring our fear. Steph, why the hell did you have to come home now? I think if the lean young man would have stepped out, 70% of the women would try and save him , ending up in the belly of the beast. I don’t know if it’s good or bad or plain idiocy but that is how we were raised by books and movies. But who will risk their life for an alcoholic, even a friendly one? Certainly not me. The beast was poised to jump, standing before my door.
Somewhere I heard that decisions you make in the heat of the moment, without thinking, turn out to be the best. That is utter bullshit. I don’t know what came over me but I quickly unlocked my metallic door and slammed it against the beast, making it drop to it’s knees.
“Steph, run!” I screamed.
Steph didn’t need to be asked twice. Released from her stupor she leaped towards her door and immediately unlocked it, disappearing behind it in the next moment. That was insane to watch. I never thought she could be that fast. Usually it took her 10 minutes to find the right key and unlock the door.
While I was watching Steph the beast got up and lounged towards me. Jumping back into my apartment I wasn’t able to lock the door again. I ran for the kitchen , locking the door behind me. The beast was after me. It only took it two hits to demolish my kitchen door. Baring it’s teeth, the beast stepped into my kitchen. There was nowhere to run.
I grabbed a knife and hid myself in the corner across the stove while the beast kept approaching. It stared mockingly into the knife in my hand. It knew it wouldn’t help me.
A swipe of it’s paw sent the knife scattering over the floor, me now clutching my bleeding fingers. It’s breath stank like an open grave as it came near my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember something sweet and dear to me, something you are supposed to think of before death.
A shot. My ears started ringing. Slowly I opened my eyes. The beast was standing before me, with a hole in it’s belly. And Steph with a gun in the kitchen entrance.
Another shot sent the beast onto the burning stove, it’s cheap jacket and scarf immediately catching fire. With loud screeches it started running around my kitchen. Steph broke the window glass with the butt of her gun and with two point blank shots she sent the abomination into free fall from the 11th floor.
“You warm yet?” I asked, absolutely shocked, watching the beast fall down.
2 hours later, finishing the open cognac bottle at Steph’s place I slowly started coming to myself.
“Look , ehr..sorry for the window” Steph mumbled.
“Steph, are you for real? If not for you I wouldn’t be here! You’re like, some kind of Van Helsing!”.
” Oh, what do you know. When I was in the village with my dead hub..he had such ghouls amongst his friends, you wouldn’t believe it. Even now my blood runs cold thinking of it”.
I downed my glass in two gulps”And uh, you weren’t even a little bit scared?”
” What am I supposed to be scared of? I was married to Satan’s step - brother for 30 years”.