There is a tap-tap-tap at the window.

You'd been asleep. A quiet and solitary summer night had lulled you away with the sounds of crickets chirping and cool breezes blowing through the slight crack in the window. Your curtains had been gently tossed, fluttering sweetly over your bedside, throwing milky blades of moonlight over you while you slept.

You'd been dreaming peacefully.

And now there is this tap-tap-tap at the window.

Groggily, you open your eyes, blurry and still unaccustomed to being awake. You forget, for a moment, where you are. When you remember, you try to orientate yourself in the room, set your internal compass and discern your bearing.

You look at the digital clock on your nightstand. It's two a.m.

There is a tap-tap-tap at the window.

You hear it, but it takes a moment to register. The sound seems disconnected, floating freely amongst the darkness of your bedroom. You cannot determine its origin. It hangs in the black of the room, cloudy cells of sound drifting like dust in the single shaft of moonlight breaking through the now motionless drapes. The noise echoes through the room, rich and hollow, and it crash lands into your memory. You can't tell if you're imagining it, now, or if it's still real.

And a truer version of it rings through the room again, relieving you of any doubt.

There is a tap-tap-tap at the window.

You are more cogent now, more aware. You can tell where the sound is coming from. You can hear the glass rattle behind your curtains, and it numbs you, suddenly, coating your veins in ice and sheathing all your nerves in frosty anxiety.

There is something outside your bedroom window.

Panic grips you. It reaches up into your insides and squeezes python tight around your intestinal tract. Your innards tie themselves into knots, and anything that can pound or thunder inside of you does so, and in force.

It's the middle of the night and you're alone in your house.

And there's something outside your bedroom window.

You hear that tap-tap-tap again.

You are stark awake, now, wholly awake. Your senses are all tightened to the point of bursting. You feel every pore in your skin prickle with the birth of sweat drops. You feel each hair stand upright, bristling at the possibilities of intrusion and invasion. Your flesh is crawling and you have the sick swell of adrenaline pumping into you. You barely move, but your guts are writhing and spinning, scattering themselves in fear like clockwork jammed up with a tuning fork.

There is a tap-tap-tap at the window. It's more forceful now. Angrier.

You don't know what to do.

Hoping that all of it, the whole internal uproar, is overkill and false alarm, you grab a hold of the curtain and pull it back, trying desperately to convince yourself that there will be nothing, there, behind it.

You are wrong.

A face stares at you from behind the glass.

You're heart leaps up into your throat, swollen and engorged with fright. You resist the urge to vomit. It rockets into your mouth, and you force it back down with will. Your tongue reeks of acid and bile. Your eyes look into the stranger's.

He is disgusting. A scarred remainder of a man, hacked skin and deep hewn wrinkles that make him look like a rotted jack-o-lantern. He is grinning ear to ear, his mouth full of broken nub black and yellow stained teeth. His eyes are wide and white and he doesn't blink as he darts them over you, taking you in, a creepling snapshot for his sick brain. He looks deranged.

There might be dried blood flaking from the corners of his mouth.

And you watch each other. You watch him with shrieking concern, with the terror of a deer blinded by a hunter's floodlight. He watches you with malice, with a swirling mixture of amusement and hatred. He looks at you with cat eyes trained on a crippled mouse.

And you know you are prey.

There is a jangling sound through the crack in the window. You hear him moving, rustling a black overcoat, scuffing his wide brimmed hat against the pane. You hear metal on metal, the jeweled tinkling of chimes sounding off, but tuneless and deadened.

He smiles as he holds up a large ring of keys.

There is a cacophony, then, of the keys crashing into each other. He shakes them as he searches with gloved hands for one in particular. He never takes his eyes off of you.

He finds the key he was looking for, and he holds it gingerly in his hands. His face doesn't change expression at all. He never once blinks or alters the shape of his mouth. He could be a living waxwork, his face is that still.

He brings the key up to the window.

And he scratches it down.

There is squeal of glass scraped away by the key, a stinging sound that jolts through the window's crack and rails against your eardrums. You wince at it, but never remove your gaze as the key leaves an imprint trail, a perfectly straight line of peeled glass down the window's pane.

And then he does it again.

And you're absolutely amped up now, a coiled viper. You are spring-loaded with terror and with preservation instinct. Everything inside of you is ripped apart and flying at the speed of sound. But you can barely move. Your muscles are paralyzed. You're welded in place by panic. You're not even breathing.

And then he does it again.

And now you bolt up, suddenly very aware that your home is vulnerable. You remember an unlocked front door, an indiscretion that didn't seem remotely dangerous a few short hours ago.

Your lungs sputter to life, and you dart off the bed like a monkey, leaping and bounding to the living room and the open door, dying to slam the lock tightly before the intruder can get a foot in. You race down the hall, and it's longer than it's ever been. Each step feels inordinately long and drawn out. You are moving in slow motion, aware of every detail around you. Flecked paint on electrical outlet covers. A missing screw in a light switch plate. A scratched bit of gilding on an tin closet doorknob. Your legs are outstretched and painful. You're not moving in pace with your body. Your feet give out from under you on an area rug and you slip, tumbling over yourself and down, painfully against the hardwood, onto your knees.

You lift yourself up without a thought and continue the rush toward the door.

But you're too late.

The door is flung wide open. And although you can't see him, you know he's there.

Lurking in the shadows of your house, he's there.

Your heart stops beating, just for a second. Your lungs quit, just for a moment. You are motionless, dead and invisible, just for a fleeting minute.

And you try to clear your head.

And you try to determine what to do.

You hear the wood floor creak behind you. It is a slow creak from a slow footfall. He's so close that you can feel his smiling breath on the back of your neck.

And then you turn around.

THE END.

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