I have absolutely no clue how I made it home. After three blocks, all the adrenaline and caffeine was gone without a trace like a UFO.

I got out of the car, stopped a moment to remember which gear was park, forgot to take my keys out twice, it took me three tries to lock the damn door, then I left it open for five minutes trying to remember why the door wouldn’t open, locked it, unlocked the front door (both using the wrong keys first) and almost fell asleep on it without ever opening it.

This was bad. I’m too tired to defend myself and I’ve hit my friends in my sleep at every sleepover I’d ever been to.

I opened the door and slammed it, hoping the noise would wake me up. It didn’t, it just gave me a headache. I locked the door. I locked the back door. I locked the windows. I took a while staring at the stove until I realized those were heat dials, and not padlocks.

I shoved a thing with a drawer in it and a lamp on it in front of the front door. I leaned a chair on the kitchen door. It’s not a kitchen chair, it’s one of those chairs trying to be a couch, but it was light enough for me to pick it up. I went back to the car and got my gun form the car, managing to lock it and I even remembered my keys.

It was loaded with the safety on already, so I put it in drawer in front of the front door. The thing has a hidden compartment so anyone who doesn’t know it’s there just sees and feels a drawer with paper and chewed-on, empty pens. It’s neat when you don’t shop at IKEA sometimes. I left my cellphone in the drawer, but not the compartment

I already had an aluminum baseball bat in my bedroom and there was a lock on the door so big a blind person couldn’t forget about it.

What else do I do if I don’t even know if I’m a target? What if… Why… When… Damn, there were so many questions going through my head and I’m so tired I can’t think comprehensibly! I can’t tell what I’m even worrying about!

I went to my bedroom, but when I had my hand on the doorknob, I realized I was too tired to sleep. Great, college all over, but now there’s a chance I’ll die.

I grabbed a nightshirt and went to the bathroom and took a shower that was longer than I intended, because I kept nodding off every time I tried to sort out my thoughts.

I got out of the shower once it turned icy. I’m stressed, not aroused, this was not what I wanted.

My hair is short, just under my shoulders, but it’s fluffy with big huge waves that by the time I was done drying it with the towel, I really didn’t need to dry any other part of me. Being the Housekeeper of the Year that I am, I tossed the towel behind me on the floor and in the tub.

I threw on the nightshirt and a pair of undies.

I saw something, or I thought I saw something. I was awake enough to notice a slight movement, but too tired to know where it came from.

I stood there like an idiot, in my own bathroom, in the my undies , in my own lock house for something to move. It was so late at night that my self-preservation instincts kicked in but my common sense was nowhere to be found.

I turned back, forcing myself out the door, when I saw it again. I had definitely seen something in the mirror, and it definitely wasn’t me. I wasn’t sure what it was, or how I knew it wasn’t me, but I didn’t care, I just knew what it wasn’t, and that’s always close enough for science.

It was so late at night, and I was so worried as well as bored, that I looked closely a the mirror. I had to figure out what in the heck was going on. Maybe it had developed a ripple, or a dent, or something.

I put my hand over the mirror. It was perfectly flat, the way it was meant to be. I slowly traced my hand over the mirror, looking and feeling for any imperfection. I may not be able to find my keys in the bedcovers in under an hour, but I can feel a quarter under an inch in the sand in the dark. Then again, no one ever killed anyone in my bed and left my car keys there, but the quarter was a clue. Throw in a murderer and you’ll be amazed at what skills you’ll apply to your own house, even if the killer is probably an exhaustion-induced illusion.

Then I saw. I saw it for real this time. I saw something moving just beyond my reflection, vague at first, but growing more and more solid and defined, as if sneaking up on me from a deeper part of the mirror. It was some huge black human shape and the mirror began to move like a river with a fierce wind over it, but I couldn’t feel anything under my fingers, just a cold, stinging shiver of fear. With my other hand I reached behind me and found nothing there, nothing, no one.

Then the mirror shattered. I shielded my face with my arm, but the glass fell down, not out. I lowered my arm and when it was down just enough to see someone else there, the black, true black, person I’d seen in the mirror, standing up dizzily in front of me I reacted without thinking.

I kicked him in the crotch and turned and ran. I heard his head hit the toilet seat. I ran down the hallway. I was short, only on pace while running, but one pace too long. I grabbed the drawer, tore out the gun and the phone and frantically dialed my gaze flicking from the bathroom door to the numbers I pushed. Anyone else who’s ever been in an emergency knows that 9-1-1 is way too long a number when using a phone and pressed for time.

"Hello! Joseph? Anyone! Someone’s in my house and I think they’re out to kill me! I got a gun and I’m turning the safety off, get down here before—Hello? Hello? Why in the fuck is my phone dead? My cellphone!"

There was a dead tone in the phone.

"Don’t worry, it’s not broken," someone said, jut inches behind me, taking the cellphone out of my hand.

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