Attack!

A woman comes home and has to fend off the threats to her safety. However, those threats were less serious than she thought.

After a long, tiring day at work, Ali parked her old car in the driveway, grabbed her keyring from the drink holder, and shuffled to the front door under the faint lunar light. She was free from the hours of typing and droning noise at her cramped, disorderly office. No more tedium. Now, she yearned to rest at her quiet, cozy home. She slid the key into the front door and turned the knob. The key didn’t budge. No matter how hard she turned the key, begging to get inside, the doorknob remained locked. Is this the right key? She wondered. Inspecting the key under the moonlight revealed that, no, it was not. 

She riffled through the other keys. This one’s too pointy. This one’s too flat. She had burned the pattern of her house key into her brain, yet not one of the keys matched the pattern she conjured in her head. 

What if I lost it on my way to work? Or what if I dropped it under my bed. I’m gonna be stuck outside forever!

Out of defeat, and in a debilitating anxiety, she put the key ring back into her left pocket and raced to think of ways to get into her house. 

Then, she felt another metallic object in her pocket. She took the foreign object out and inspected it under the moonlight. It was her house key. The real one, correct ridges and all.

With a huge sigh of relief, she unlocked the door and entered her house. She took a huge swig of water, brushed her teeth, and changed into her pajamas. She felt safe. However, as she was organizing necessities for tomorrow, a faint hissing noise flew through her ear. It hissed like a snake, exactly like her stove. I must have left the stove on! Now that she was aware of her folly, her nose picked up the invasive smell of poisonous gas. She rushed to the kitchen to turn off the stove.

It was on for so long. I might be poisoned! The windows are closed. It probably was on for longer, and I didn’t even notice! How much did it damage me?

Her lungs almost collapsed from the poison, and her stomach wanted to spew out its contents in an attempt to fight the gas. She grabbed all the knobs on the stovetop, turning each and every one back off, even the ones which were already off. Except, she soon discovered that every knob was off, yet the hissing remained. After a few seconds, she noticed the hissing was coming behind her, not from the stove, but the sink. The valve was slightly opened, and the little stream of water produced the hissing sound she likened to gas. With an even bigger sigh of relief, she shut the sink and resumed her preparation for the next day.

After she laid her phone to rest, she looked at something in her bedroom. There was a shadow on the wall. A large shadow with the head of a man and a thin frame. Who is that? Who is in my house? Her muscles froze in a vain attempt to disappear from the intruder. However, she soon snapped out from the paralysis and grabbed a knife from her kitchen. Then, she silently crept toward the intruder in her bedroom. The moonlight illuminated the man’s figure. One step. She saw a skinny figure standing as still as a statue. One step closer. She saw the entire figure. His frame was weirdly rectangular, and head perfectly circular. Almost like…

She turned on the lights, revealing that the intruder was her chair.

She sighed her final sigh of relief and laughed at how silly she was. After confirming that all her doors and windows were locked, she charged her phone, turned the lights off, and went to bed in peace.

However, before she drifted off to sleep, she felt an urge to use her phone, so she took a few minutes to scroll through the news. 

“Guerrilla Warfare Brewing in Africa. Millions of Innocents Slaughtered.”

“Suicide bomber kills numerous patients and doctors.”

“School shooting at Palmer school. Suspect engaged with police and shot on sight.”

Imagining all of the buildings destroyed, families broken apart, children killed…

That’s terrible, she thought.

She closed her phone and slept soundly now that all threats, to her well-being, were simple fantasies.