Flicker Flight Part 05
By: Arden Falls
Tags: The Junction, Short Story, Serial Fiction, Memories, Family

The drive home is uneventful, but my mind swirls with a million thoughts, overlapping and stacking over each other until they threaten to crash around me like a flimsy shack in a hurricane. Why is this throwing me for such a loop? I dread any other attachment to my past, yet I seem to care so much about this. How can those feelings exist in me at the same time? As hard as I try, I cannot convince myself that those pictures are just pictures; they sit heavy in my mind. I check to make sure I’m on the right side of sane by holding my hand out as steady as I can make it. Even accounting for the car’s motion, my fingers shake violently.

When I finally get to my apartment I hurry up the stairs, attempting to keep my balance. At my landing, I fumble with the keys until the door opens. This day is long past its welcome, so I tear off my shirt and shoes before I get to my bedroom. I know I shouldn’t but I take a detour by the freezer, gulping whiskey straight from the bottle and using it to wash two sleeping aid pills down. I’m just glad I make it to the bed, legs dangling off the side, forearms already sweaty, before I stumble into a fitful sleep.

I haven’t moved at all when I wake; the only evidence of my sleep is the sweat clinging to my forehead and a drool spot on the pillow as I pull myself upright. Something about the light in the room doesn’t feel right, and a look at the clock confirms my suspicions: It’s not even 2:30. The pills normally keep me out until at least 5:00. What woke me? I don’t hear anything, so I sit back on the bed and attempt to slow my heartbeat. My breaths are ragged and quick, but I manage to control them after a minute or two. I never just wake up like this; something must have happened. Fighting a nagging feeling and losing, I stand and step toward the door. My hand catches against the wall before I exit the room and I pull myself back. I keep an old fishing knife in my nightstand; it’s sifted to the bottom of a drawer that I haven’t gone through yet this month. I can’t keep my hands from shaking, so I hold the knife and breathe for a few seconds. The knife creaks as I open it; honestly, I’m not sure why I’ve kept it. Something about its simplicity, maybe? I wouldn’t even know how to use the other blade… a scaler, I think.

I shake my head and return to myself. I’ve almost convinced myself it was nothing by the time I’m in the hallway, but, to my growing dread, I’m proven wrong. Did I expect a noise? I don’t hear anything, even as I inch closer, but shadows cast by the exterior landing light move back and forth through the crack beneath the door, an unsettling combination of methodical and spastic movement whose source I can’t begin to decipher.

“Hello?” Not sure what I expected, though I can at least hear something now. The sound is hard to place, similar in texture to slowly running water, but choppy, like gentle splashing. Nothing changes, so I move to the door and raise myself to my full height, peering through the door’s small window. It takes me a minute to get my head around what I’m looking at. A fox, its head bent, picks at something underneath both its paws. I stumble backward. That image was so far outside the realm of what I expected that I feel dizzy for a second; I catch myself before I stumble into the door. It’s only after another few seconds that I notice the sound has stopped. Shaken but unable to resist, I stand straight again and peer back through the window. The fox seems to have gotten comfortable. It has curled itself into a surprisingly small circle and stops licking its paws to meet my gaze with unblinking eyes. Part of me registers that there is an inordinate amount of red covering my welcome mat and landing, but I cannot seem to wrench my eyes away from this creature.

Without a doubt, I feel like the intruder now, no right to be angry, and how dare I expect the fox to keep my possessions clean. This feeling of being in the way repulses me, and I fall to the flats of my feet, deflated. Boiling in me, rising to meet my revulsion, insistence comes from every cell in my body, telling me that I must open the door, must confront this grisly scene. Contrary to its normal, creaky nature, the door opens silently. A grim display splays out before me. The remains of what looks to be a mouse, though honestly, in this condition, it more closely resembles pulped wood or some other organic byproduct. Leading down the steps and into the black night, a trail of blood directs my attention to two points of light. Like fish scales shimmering in water, the fox’s eyes glint and reflect a dozen different colors back at me, growing smaller as it backs away from me. It doesn’t seem protective or territorial, it makes no attempt to confront me as I approach, though what I would do if it did, I don’t know. My steps toward it are feeble, and for a second I feel how painfully awkward this scene — how it must look if anyone else were to watch. I often feel out of place, adrift with no compass or anchor, or even a board to paddle with, but rarely has that feeling been so justified.

I just stand there impotently while the fox’s eyes get smaller and smaller until they disappear. I shake myself from my stupor and turn toward the body, racking my brain for how to deal with this. Part of me wants to give the mouse some kind of respect — the thought to bury it springs to mind — but I find myself folding the welcome mat around its body and throwing it in the nearest dumpster. I feebly splash a few glassfuls of hot water on the concrete before the adrenaline wears off with a thud and I can barely keep myself vertical. I resolve to find a better solution in the morning, though the thought that I probably shouldn’t let blood sit overnight drifts into my head just as I lay down in my bed and fade out of consciousness.