Recently I bought a new house, it’s not much but it’s livable. The only real problem I have to face is the side of town it’s on. It’s run down and crawling with criminals. There is always cops patrolling this part of town to try to get the crime rate to go down but it never helps, as many as they arrest twice more seem to come back.
Other than my cat, Scarlet, I live alone in my new house. I lost all contact with my family ages ago, and now I’m mostly alone except for a couple of friends and my cat.
The new house seemed mostly okay, I had to replace a few doors because there were claw marks on them. It didn’t seem like animal claw marks either. I tried to look past it, and it worked for the most part.
Some of the windows had to be replaced as well, and the carpet needs to be replaced too but that’ll have to wait until I get more money.
Scarlet didn’t like it, she hissed at random things and scratched my new doors.
It’s been a week since I’ve moved in, I haven’t bought hardly any furniture yet, other than a bed and a dresser it’s completely bare.
Scarlet refuses to sleep on the bed with me, choosing to instead sleep under it. I find that strange as she’s never had a problem sleeping with me before, but I chalked it up to her being unfamiliar with the new house and stressed out.
This morning I woke up to my alarm clock going off 30 minutes before it was meant to, i was pissed off it had never done that before.
‘I swear I’ve been unlucky ever since I’ve moved in this damn house’
There was no use in going back to sleep so I decided to turn on the tv, nothing much, just the news channel.
“Breaking news, a man known for murdering 17 people has broken out of jail. He broke out yesterday morning, the last signs of him-”
I listened to the news for a bit longer, and then I turned it off. It was warning the people living on my side of town to be cautious as that’s where he was last seen.
I wasn’t too worried, I had locks on my doors and windows.
I went to work 30 minutes later I ended up stay for a few hours longer than I was meant to, for overtime. I got home around 9 at night, it was hot so I opened all my windows including the one in the bathroom.
I drunk a couple of beers, or y’know, maybe more than a couple and headed up to bed.
‘Wait the windows’ I remembered that I had opened the windows and went back to close and lock them.
About a hour later I was just laying in bed my head was foggy from all the beer ‘Did I lock the bathroom window?’ I couldn’t remember I think I did so I didn’t get up to check
‘and besides what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later around 4:00am, I rolled over in bed just in time to see a ball roll out from under it. Scarlet.
“Wanna play ball Scarlet?” I asked as I rolled the ball back under the bed.
This went on for a minute or two.
I rolled the ball back under the bed, “Meow?” I heard. From across the room. By the door. Far away from the bed. I looked across in confusion, scarlet was there walking past the door.
Goosebumps appeared on my arm immediately, the only thing I felt in that moment was pure fear.
As the ball rolled back from under the bed I wondered if I had really locked the bathroom window after all.