Page 28 - WTP VOl. XI #1

Mitch wasn’t sure how long the tapping had been going on before he realized someone was at the door.
It was almost midnight. Becca had gone to bed an hour earlier. But first she had reminded him, need- lessly, that they both had to get up early for work the next day, not to mention getting Emily off to school. He had stayed up anyway, distracted by some online rabbit hole. Then just as he was finally about to go to bed, he noticed the tapping sound.
It was strange that whoever it was hadn’t used the doorbell, stranger that anyone would stop by at this hour. True, in Mitch’s first couple of years of college, over fifteen years ago now, friends had routinely dropped by at all hours. A little midnight conversa- tion and music, enhanced by a few beers or joints or both. Or occasionally by something stronger. Hell, by the end of his sophomore year he no longer waited for nighttime to turn on. But then he met Becca and eventually straightened out to please her. For years after, whenever he saw some derelict on the street he thought, “There but for Becca...” But that was years ago. Here and now, drop-ins were rare, and after about eight o’clock, nonexistent. Until tonight.
Mitch could feel his heart pounding as he approached the door. At the same time, he had the bemused sense that he had stepped into a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, one of the few perks of his English degree being his habit of mentally enriching his daily experience with literary allusions.
“Who’s there?” he whispered. Immediately he felt that he was not in a poem by Poe after all, but instead
had become the straight man in a knock-knock joke.
“Open up and see,” replied a voice from the other side, raspy but seeming to quiver with glee.
Mitch switched on the porch light, opened the inner door slightly, and leaned over to peer through the crack. His hand remained on the doorknob, ready
to slam the door shut if necessary. He reminded himself that the screen door was still locked, there was still a barrier.
The man on the porch seemed like a fugitive from another decade. He was probably thirty-something but looked older with his weather-beaten face, tattered Pink Floyd T-shirt, misshapen Stetson, unfashionably ripped jeans, and sneakers. His
light brown hair, flecked with grey, was wild and uncombed, and he didn’t appear to have shaved
in about a week. Even though the door was open only a crack, Mitch could smell a mixture of stale marijuana smoke and staler body odor clinging to the man’s clothes, along with a reek from some- thing, possibly gin, on his breath. The man gripped a small cage, thrusting it slightly forward toward Mitch, who momentarily wondered if there really was a raven at his chamber door.
“Here I am!” the man said. “And I brought Marcus the Hamster!”
Mitch looked down at the cage. A small rodent peered up at him with what appeared to be resignation.
The man put down the cage and spread his arms as if seeking to embrace Mitch through the screen door. Mitch took a step backward.
“Ain’t too late, am I?” the man asked, his smile reveal- ing a wealth of dental problems.
“Who the hell are you?” Mitch replied.
“Aw Mitch, don’t you reckanize me?” the man said. “C’mon, bro, don’t you know who I am?”
Even though Mitch knew that the Internet had made privacy almost obsolete, he felt a twinge as he real- ized that the man knew his name. Yet something in the man’s voice, and even in his words, seemed oddly familiar, an echo from Mitch’s English-major days.
Mitch heard the crickets chirping and realized his
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The Stranger Inside
brian sutton