I stood before the door to my apartment again, just staring at it. It had been months since I’d even considered looking through the little peephole, let alone opening the door and taking a walk outside. It wasn’t like I needed to leave after all; the world could come to me. Groceries could be delivered. If I didn’t feel like cooking a meal, I could order it. I worked from home doing consulting work, so money was hardly an issue, and to top it off, my apartment had its own trash chute. As long as I took care of myself, paid my bills on time, and made sure the room didn’t smell, I might not have ever needed to leave my apartment at all.
I had never been the best at dealing with people in person; over the phone, over text, hell, even on a video call, I was able to speak with authority. My issue was mostly about being unsure what to do with my body. My eyes had a hard time staying locked onto the other person, my hands waved around, my voice would stutter and stall, and my whole body would jitter and fidget with nervous energy. Beyond that, I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. Unless it was for work or something I was personally interested in, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not that I didn’t try; I had listened to enough of my classmates’ and co-workers’ sob stories to at least make an effort, but I’d never really considered anyone to be my friend.
Still, there were moments when I was tempted to leave the comfort of my own home, my 400-square-foot studio universe, and give it one more try just to see if I could feel something. It was at one of those moments that I heard someone knocking.
I hated people coming to my door, so I included “no knocking” on my no-contact delivery orders. The sound was a sign to me that I didn’t know the person on the other side and likely wouldn’t care about who or what they wanted. I looked through the peephole to see a young woman dressed ostentatiously, ripped right out of a modeling magazine, her hair a bright bubblegum pink and her skin stark white.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. So I made the mistake of talking to her through the door. “What is it?” I croaked out. It had been a while since I’d had to raise my voice for anything, so it groaned with the effort of making it louder.
The woman smirked at that, a closed smile, keeping her teeth to herself and showing off a deep red lipstick that surely had an unpronounceable name. She was motionless, her arms held rigidly at her sides and her eyes locked into the door number. I watched her as she spoke. “I just broke up with my boyfriend, and I need a place to stay.” Her voice was clear and unstifled, even through the door. “I don’t know anyone since I just moved here. Can I come in? I can’t spend another night with him.”
Her plea might have tugged at most people’s heartstrings, but for me it just seemed like a hassle. “Maybe call your p-p-parents? Or so-some sort of abuse hotline? I don’t think you should be couch surfing so ca-casually.” Remarkably, despite my nerves, I made it through the sentence.
The only thing between her and me was that fancy wooden door. “My parents are dead, and I don’t have a phone.” Her monotone voice shifted, filled with something like fear as she spoke. “Please let me in, I am so scared!” But her toothless smirk seemed to get bigger, her crimson painted lips still hiding any sign of white
“Then wh-wh-why are you sm-smiling?” I spat back with a bit of annoyance. It was getting to be quite late, and I wanted her gone before I ordered my evening meal.
She looked up into the peephole at last. Her eyes were sunken in, lifeless, her irises faint rings of hazel around pupils far too open to be living. Her face replaced itself with an expression of panic. She banged on the door, staring into my eye.
“Please! You have to let me in!” she shrieked, loud enough for the entire hall to hear.
“No,” I said calmly, or rather, with the guise of being calm. My heart was beating out of my chest. “Leave me alone.”
“Fine! If you won’t, someone else will!”
Her shouting was interrupted by the neighbor across the hall opening his door. He was a quiet and well-meaning sort, baked me cookies when I first moved in. She smiled again, a wide toothy grin this time, revealing teeth far too numerous and sharp to be human. Her tongue, with a life of its own, flicked between multiple rows of jagged edges before turning to him.
They were too quiet to hear much after that, but I saw her disappear into his room before he started screaming.
Then I heard sadistic laughter—a woman’s.
I backed away from the peephole and rubbed my eyes. I must have been hearing things. Surely, being so long without some form of socializing must have done something to my brain. I tried to ignore the scene outside my apartment, but there was more knocking at my door—louder, angrier, like someone trying to break it down.
I looked out again, to see a man slamming his knuckles into the door frame, rattling the hinges. His eyes met mine; they had the same dead, sunken look as the woman’s. At one edge of the peephole’s fish-eyed lens, I could see that pointed teeth filled every angle of his mouth. “I KNOW she’s in there! I heard her earlier!” he shouted, banging his open palms against the door repeatedly.
“Sh-sh-she’s not here!” I screamed, every word a frightened and hasty breath forced into its proper shape. “She’s across the ha-ha-hall!”
“Prove it!” he shouted back. “Show me inside!”
With the strength he poured into his assault, curling his hands into tight fists to hammer harder, I fully expected the door to splinter and crack wherever he happened to strike.
The woman’s voice, now smooth and commanding, broke through the noise. I watched a blood-spattered hand snake around his shoulder.
“Honey, don’t bother trying. He seems to know.”
His rage evaporated almost instantly. “Oh, really? Damn. I guess not everyone in this building is a sucker.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he backed away from the door.
“I don’t blame you for trying, beloved. I know you like to taste a bit of fear in your prey,” she cooed, planting a kiss on his cheek.
My neighbor’s blood, still quite wet, dripped onto his face. A horrible needle-like tongue emerged from between his lips to lick at it.
“We’ll come back later. Most people think we’re just a dream.” She took hold of her beloved’s arm and pulled him down the hallway. “Next time we can bring friends, or maybe even a few of his neighbors, should we get to know them.”
Every day is a similar story. Sometimes one of them will come to my door dressed differently, wearing a fake nose or tinted contact lenses, in some ridiculous attempt to fool me. Sometimes, it’s new people—older, younger, kinder, meaner—but each has those dead eyes and rows of sharp teeth, and they all beg to be invited in.
Sometimes, I swear, the “new” face is someone else from the building.
They’ve made a game of it, sometimes draining their victims where I can see it and sometimes doing it just out of my view. They like to hide in the hallway and wait for my food to be delivered, then pounce the moment I dare to crack open my door and reach for my meal. Whenever they can, which is most of the time, they take my food away before I can get to it.
It’s been a few days since I’ve eaten anything.
They must enjoy tormenting me, maybe more so than the actual feeding. My only hope now is that they get bored of me, that they find some other meal to satisfy their hunger for excitement instead of blood.
I find myself trying to trace back where this all went wrong. Was it answering the door? Was it buying this apartment that would soon be my tomb? Was it living like this at all? My mind races, trying to find something, anything at all, to hold onto as I stand before the door.
I wish I could go outside.
