Unexpected Guests

Someone had been knocking on Warrick’s door for a longer time then most people knock on unanswered doors when they know someone’s inside. At first he had decided not to answer it, but as the knocking ensued he began to regret not initially opening it, as confrontation wasn’t one of his better attributes. The eeriness about the situation was the person knocking on his door had not uttered a single word. Warrick had thought about calling the police as the hours passed by, but he personally hated dealing with the police.
He decided to turn his TV’s volume to the maximum to try to drown out the knocking, but as the volume of the TV went up, the harder the knocking became. Warrick wondered why his neighbors hadn’t complained yet about the noise. He recalled the poem The Raven by Poe. The man went mad at the end of that poem, didn’t he? As Warrick lowered the volume of his TV the knocking did as well. He brooded for a moment as to the best cause of action, then crawled to the door and looked beneath the crack.
There was no one there. No pair of legs, no feet. He got up and tiptoed to the fridge, snagging a Hoegaarden. Angel’s piss, as he referred to it. He decided he’d hit the door with a wooden baseball bat. Scampering into his bedroom and reaching out for it under the bed, he rushed back to the door, winding up and hitting an impression into it. The knocking stopped temporarily, then resumed.
He relocked the door and bolted the chain. The knocking was becoming vexing; there was no particular pattern to it. Knock after knock after knock after—Warrick screamed at the door, for the harasser to shut up, to shut the fucking hell up. The knocking persisted. He sprinted back to the fridge and grabbed eighteen beers, lining them up on the coffee table like dominos.
The knocking eventually dilated into pounding; the door began to rattle, its sclera bloodshot. Warrick, busy pounding down beers, ignored this. He turned the TV back on, not bothering to retain anything. He thought about calling the doormen to come up and check to see if anyone was actually knocking on his door or he was just…imaging it? He called them. In ten minutes a doorman came up and opened the door; there was no one there. He ordered the doorman to stand outside of the door while it was shut and Warrick was inside his apartment. The doorman looked at Warrick suspiciously, shaking his head. And yet the knocking pursued.
Three hours passed by. Warrick lived alone, had no close friends, and both of his parents were deceased, one having shot themselves. He was a pensive, apprehensive, impassive man, twenty-four, fettered by denial. In large crowds he would be conspicuously aloof, anxious yet deep in thought. Alcohol quelled social anxiety, as well as other anxieties, though he always drank alone, a flask at hand when needed for on-the-go
As the hours passed by, Warrick became less aware of the knocking. He knew he wasn’t having hallucinations…or was he? He was the only one who heard the knocking, and there was apparently no one knocking, unless they were levitating. It was long after midnight now, and Warrick was completely shitfaced. After a couple more beers, he passed out on the couch.
The battery against his door woke him up. Someone or something was literally hurling boulders at his door, as it was on the verge of breaking down. He had no weapons in the house, as he rarely left the house or engaged in anyone else’s matters, nor was he paranoid. He fixated on the door intently, having pushed his couch in front of it. He was partly terrified, but more so inquisitive. Just as he thought whatever was assaulting his door was going to break through, the battery became a gentle tapping, so soft that it was barely audible.
Remaining in his position momentarily to make sure the tapping wasn’t going to revert back to full-blown onslaught, he crept to the door and once again, having removed the couch, looked beneath the crack. As he’d expected, there was nothing there.
For the rest of the day he contemplated whether or not he should open the door. He wasn’t particularly afraid to die—more so in what manner. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human. He sipped from his flask; vodka. He refused to drink any other kind of liquor. While doing so he mused over the situation. He had several options. One was, to his displeasure, to contact the police. The second was to open the door. The the last option he could think of was to wait and see what ensued. He chose the latter.
By nightfall the tapping had once again escalated into actual knocking. Warrick had become inured to the ordeal and expected that it would repeat itself. Suddenly he heard a voice; a child’s voice.
“Can you help me?” the voice asked. It was a little boy. “Please?”
Warrick immediately figured it was a trap. But as the boy continued to plead, he noticed that the knocking had ceased. The child’s whimpering sounded quite sincere, but Warrick wasn’t convinced yet.
“No.” The child didn’t respond. Warrick waited. Finally the child, crying, sobbed.
“If you don’t help me, it’ll get me.”
“What’ll get you,” Warrick replied, intrigued. The child didn’t respond. “What’ll get you,” Warrick repeated. Again, he waited. No response. He swore beneath his breath and ran his hands through his hair, pacing back into the living-room.
Swigging his entire flask in one shot he began to rage, clenching his fists and reaching for his bat again. Whatever it was, did it get the child? Or was this all just a ruse? The knocking hadn’t resumed. Something was off. Warrick approached the door until he was standing directly next to it and peered through the peephole.
On the wall adjacent to Warrick’s door there were bloody handprints pawed in a tremulous pattern; that of a horizontal line with the handprints facing in different directions. Before he could inspect the handprints any further blood splattered onto the peephole, followed by the sounds of a little boy inhumanly screaming and being lacerated ruthlessly. The sound of chunks of human flesh tapering the hallway walls—
Warrick opened the door. There was nothing there. No bloody handprint modern art, no limbless child, no ghastly creature from the derelict alleys of nightmares.
As soon as Warrick stepped back into his apartment the knocking commenced. He swung open the fridge and gathered as many beers as he could into his arms, lugging them back to the living-room. As he began to chug them he decided to barricade his door with various furniture, but beforehand he stomped towards the door and started knocking relentlessly. He kept on knocking even when his knuckles began to bleed.
As Warrick was knocking on the door into sweaty exhaustion, someone on the other side asked for his name. Taken aback, he opened the door, and a police officer immediately tackled him onto the ground and handcuffed him. Warrick banged his head against the carpet. He waited for the officer to read him his rights…and waited. Finally he rolled onto his back and saw that no one was there.
He began to scream, hoping his neighbors would hear him. He screamed, and screamed, but no one opened their doors, and no one came. He struggled onto his feet, cuffed, and wobbled into his bedroom, deranged with enervation and the inability to comprehend his experiences as anything other than delusions. Before lying down in his bed he grabbed the phone and dialed 911.
The phone was dead.

When he awoke he was no longer handcuffed. The sun attempted to shine through the closed blinds. Must’ve been a dream, he shrugged. He swaggered to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, then walked into the living room. On the carpet of his living room there was a mutilated and dismembered child. Warrick reactively vomited on the child’s body, apologizing, then realizing that what was left of the boy was no longer alive.
A man is like a plant. If he ingratiates himself into society and with others he will flourish and bloom. If he keeps to himself, alone, he wilts and contorts, acquiring eccentricities that are viewed as bizarre by those who remain with incessant company. Warrick labeled himself as a misanthrope but craved company, yet his eccentricities had already birthed, ostracizing him from society. He was an erudite, precocious child, but dropped out of college due to forlorn-induced alcoholism. He currently didn’t hold a steady job but that was temporary; he needed time to self-pity his inability to initiate anything productive.
The knocking, once again, commenced. Warrick’s first notion was to butcher the body into pieces, bag it, and toss it in the Hudson river.
“Don’t do that,” a child’s voice begged. “That river is so polluted, isn’t it? At least that’s what my mom tells me. She tells me a lot of things.” Warrick glances down at the decapitated head, analyzes its lips move, the sound emitting from it. “Oh, before I forget. Could you put me back together?”
Warrick walks around the child’s body and grabs a bottle of Skyy vodka, chasing a gulp of it down with four Valium. When he turns around, apathetic, the child’s body is no longer on his carpet.
“What more do you want from me?” Warrick shouts. “You like to play games? You want to play games? I can play too!” He grabs his bat and smashes in his TV; blood gushes out. “That’s cute, real funny. But you stole that from The Shining you fuck.”
The knocking develops a beat, a tempo. It’s as if there’s someone African drumming on his door.
“Fuck this,” Warrick protests, standing up from his couch, bat in hand, snatching The Zombie Survival Guide on his way out. He opens his door; looks both ways: nothing. He begins to swing his bat against his neighbor’s door. After swinging for five minutes or so it’s apparent there’s no one home. He keeps bashing the door until he breaks the lock and creaks it open
It’s his own apartment. An hour later, he’s authenticated that every single apartment on his floor is his own. He sits on the couch, chugging beers, leaving his door open to prevent the pestering and irksomeness of the knocking. Skeptical, he assumes the elevators all lead to the same floor as well. Warrick is bestial with despair. He considers suicide via alcohol poisoning, or bleach, or down the road. He always liked the sound of running bathwater. It calmed his mind.
“Hey,” the little boy stands on his tiptoes. “I’m scared.”
Warrick bade him in out of hopelessness, nudging to make space for the boy to sit down. He’s a cute kid, Warrick thinks. Nearly platinum hair. He passes the flask to the boy; he laps it thankfully, not even showing so much as a cringe.
“Before, you told me something about ‘It. It will get you. What exactly is it?’”
“What, you mean…you don’t know,” the boy stammers, shocked.
“Not a clue.”
The boy giggles, then vanishes.
Warrick hears the door creak, then slam shut. He anticipates the knocking to resume, but…he approaches the door, reaching to open it…