"I Came From My Attic" by R. M. Bundridge

I Came From My Attic

by R. M. Bundridge

Friday had been reserved for the following: a blunt, some good food, and a movie; unfortunately, a breaking news cast took over that last one. Sufficiently stoned and on the way to some good eating, I pulled the comforter up to my waist and took the first bite of my elevated night. Seconds later, the stark red of the news banner gave way to a grueling blue, four eyes, and two smiles between such thin lips the teeth looked like pearls on an oyster’s tongue.

I grabbed my remote to open some streaming services, but the looks of these men made me pause. To put it simply, they were attractive.

The man on the right spoke first, and he did so with authority. A calm kind of assuredness, an adult offering his hand to a child: “We interrupt your holiday viewing with news regarding ‘look-alikes’ that are attacking—maiming—er, no—,” he touched his ear piece here, brows furrowing, “taking the lives of the ones who...were here first.” By the end of his proclamation, the authority had turned to confusion.

“Oh, come on!” I groaned. “A Halloween prank like this’ll get the whole station shut down.” I took another bite of my food, the tangy orange chicken coating my cotton mouth. “I do admire their dedication, though.”

The man on the left, hair up in a bun and reflecting the spotlights above, looked through his notecards with widening eyes and slowly parting lips.

Poor guy looks scared. He probably hasn’t been cued in; I took another bite of orange chicken.

A knock came from beyond my room, sharp and only once. A piece of orange chicken fell onto the blanket, smearing it with a long smile down to the floor. Static pricked up and down my body. I froze at a joint-locking ninety degrees. The house stood silent, and after a few minutes, I leaned to look out my door and into the hall: nothing.

“Not funny!” I hollered at my roommates who said they wouldn’t be here. Did they see this phony broadcast and come back, knowing I scare easily?

Scared Man sat next to Confused Man, and neither of them said a word. In their milliseconds of silence, Confused Man touched his earpiece and shook his head. Scared Man touched his earpiece, and I watched his sky fall. The tether to his sanity snapped with his widening sea-glass eyes, and he screamed a strangled sound; “Lock your doors!” In a fit of consuming pearly teeth, he clutched the notecards. “They are—we are—coming for us! They look like us, and they are killing themselves—us. No. Them. We—you need to defend yourself!”

The knock came again, quieter than the first, but this knock kept going. The sound fell down the stairs until it wasn’t a knock, but a heavy slapping that seemed further than the second floor. An image conjured itself in my mind of loosening meat; of a body slamming itself over and over again, downward, until the skin began to separate from familiar arms. A splintered noise broke the image like a skull on concrete, and a heavy crash followed.

I shot from my bed, squishing orange chicken beneath my feet.

The sound of wood being rummaged through echoed onto the first floor. Splinters whispered down the stairs.

That fall. Somebody came from my attic.

On my TV—the afore presumed prank—the men’s smiles were still there, only now without lips, only now accompanied by a scalping I had missed entirely. Blood leaked down from exposed skulls. A spattering of red resided on the glass of the camera.

Steps were taken above me, ones with long gaps.

Heat flared up my neck, making it itch. Blood rushed around in my ears as I stepped toward my door.

The steps gained confidence. Heavy footfalls started above—and behind—me, until they reached the top of the stairs and exposed skin caught the light on its way down. A naked body stared from the end of the hall. Pieces of ladder remained wrapped around its neck. Its hand gripped the railing.

My face looked at me, expressionless. In the dim light, I saw the mole at the base of the body’s neck. A part of me knew there would be a chip in one of its front bottom teeth.  

My twine to sanity, a few threads anyhow, unspooled. Doubt attempted to rationalize a Halloween prank as a pale ghost watched me from the end of the hallway. I had been placed in front of a mirror. Only my reflection breathed out of rhythm. Blood dripped coolly from where wood had cut it: along my collarbone, my biceps.

The body—my body—started running. Exposed flesh faded in the dark only to become real again in an almost imagined blink of an eye.

I made it to the door in the same second I did.

Equal weight crashed into either side, and as it barreled into the door with a grunt, I heard the wood around its neck snap and fall to the ground. The clatter sounded like change on marble. With another grunt, the door pressed into my toes and broke every one as if they were measly branches.

I screamed and fell to the floor; I screamed and shoved the door open.

My vision filled with spots. Up became down, and the world started to spin around me, breathing in and out. I wondered if any attempt had been a waste of strength. Who worse to fight than yourself? The harbinger of all your secrets.

Through the spots, my reflection smiled; in that mouth, there stood a chipped tooth.

Before I plunged the bit of ladder into my eye, the pupil became iris so quickly; the white became tinted with black before the brown of the wood turned all red in the end, and blood leaked down my skin into my ear, pooling there.