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Days and nights passed by, going terribly slow almost purposeful, as if to remind him of the end of days, how there was nothing he could do to stop it, how helpless he was.
Nights were the worst, getting up and out of bed hearing a knock at the door and dreading to look through that peephole, who the hell knows what could be staring back at him.
The homeowner was never one for people or socialising, but the continued reminder that visitors were lurking only made him more hesitant to open up and let people inside.
And yet he did, he’d curse himself for being empathetic for letting people into his home, into his space, in a lot of ways he hated it, these people coming from who knows where ruining his peace and quiet, not that there was much peace anymore.
But strangely, having company was nice, knowing he wasn’t alone while hell was raining loose on the world.
He was still cautious, of course. Every night he’d do the same routine: check the door, question whoever was outside, and decide whether to let them in. It got easier the more he did it, he got used to waking up in the middle of the night, he somewhat got used to talking to people, though he still struggled to be more friendly and welcoming.
Of course he didn’t just let anyone in, he turned some away, a couple, some mad theorist, a creepy man in a tank top, a strange man in a suit that had a strong british accent, the homeowner couldn’t tell if he was just putting it on or not but regardless he didn’t like how the guy spoke and shooed the man off his porch.
— — — — — —
Days passed on and every single one seemed to stretch on from the last, he checked the news each day whenever he woke up staying updated on whatever the hell was going on with the world, learning about more obvious signs, how to tell visitors apart from humans. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let himself get tricked by one of those things and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let one of them kill him.
It was exhausting going room to room each day questioning the guests he had let in, speaking with them, hearing their sob stories, excuses, and insults. Of course, there were people that he regretted letting in, some crazy man ranting about the sun or something of the sort, he wasn’t exactly sure what the man was talking about half the time and he frankly wasn’t interested.
Another being an older woman, a nun, she wasn’t exactly pleased with his house not that he really cared about her opinion. She wasn’t pleasant to be around or to talk with, regardless of his kindness in letting her in she didn’t seem to show him any gratitude. People like that made him hate even opening up in the first place.
Testing them was the worst part, having to ask them to show their teeth, hands, and eyes, he almost thought it was ridiculous and he was sure some of them thought so too, yet he couldn’t help but be cautious.
— — — — — —
Last night, a man came to his door, abnormally tall, thin, pale, so extremely pale, he could see the man's ribs peering through his skin that seemed to stretch like it wasn’t even his to begin with. It made him shiver and tense at just the thought, the image of the man's bright unnaturally wide smile was present in his mind, and the way he spoke to him from beyond the door haunted him as he went back to bed and as he woke up this morning.
Paranoia and stress were quickly creeping in now, the state of the world, the visitors, everything was catching up to him. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking as he grabbed a can of beer from the fridge and cracked it open taking a couple of anxious sips at first.
He tried shutting it out, forgetting and moving on but he couldn’t stop thinking about it, about him. He finished his beer and quickly grabbed another from the fridge, desperately trying to flush out the thoughts within his mind he sat at the small lone table within this cramped little kitchen and stayed there for a while in silence just drinking by himself, he didn’t talk to any of the guests that day.
He was suddenly so very scared to be alone, despite him usually enjoying the peace of his loneliness and isolation the thought of death by that man, no that thing that waited for him out there scared him like no other.
— — — — — —
His hands were shaking, clutching his shotgun tightly, pointing it at some short-haired ginger girl who was hidden away in the corner of the closet, she was shaking begging with him, pleading, that she couldn’t be a visitor, how could she be one of them? She questioned herself more than anything within that moment, her eyes met with his briefly full of fear. The homeowner hesitated only for a moment before reminding himself that she had shown clear obvious signs of being a visitor even if she apparently didn’t realise it herself, she was one of them.
He adjusted the grip on his shotgun, now firm and almost entirely steady though nerves remained, buried down within him, he ignored the endless rambles of begging and pleading, aimed and then fired.
He watched the blood and what was left of her brains splatter onto the walls and floor of the closet as her body dropped to the floor, lifeless and unmoving. He felt sick, disgusted with himself and stepped back, lowering his shotgun and tossing it over his shoulder for a moment as he stared down at the body now in front of him.
He didn’t know what to do for a moment, he felt stupid and humiliated that he had managed to let one slip into his home, he felt anxious, and he felt unsafe just being in the room. He quickly stepped out leaving the corpse on the floor and leaned against the door. He was breathing heavily as he clutched his chest desperately trying to calm himself down, he wasn’t one for tears and usually it was rare for him to cry but within this moment he found himself desperately fighting back tears and frequently wiping his eyes.
He’d get rid of it tomorrow. He told himself. Though in all honesty he never wanted to set foot in there again, he was slowly starting to feel unsafe within his own home.
He eventually forced himself to move away from the closet and walked off to go and speak with the other remaining guests, he knew they’d asked questions about the gunshot that rang out throughout his home, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer them at all. He was just trying to keep himself from falling apart in the moment, desperately trying to make himself seem strong and unbothered by everything that had just happened.
— — — — — —
The same tall, pale, visitor came by his house again, this time he recognised the heavy knocks on his door, he didn’t know why he had remembered them but he knew they were familiar. He was hesitant to even approach but for some ungodly reason, he did. He stood there his heart racing within his chest, which he desperately tried to ignore as the other man spoke to him in the same sickly sweet tone as he did last time, their practically one-sided conversation stretched on for longer this time than the last.
He had brought his shotgun this time, just in case anything were to happen he wouldn’t be defenceless, clutching it tight to his chest, his grip firm as he listened to the man on the other side of the door, only taking in some of what he had said too busy thinking about the endless possibilities of what could happen to him, he slipped away from the peephole not wanting to see his face anymore, now leaning against the door, his back pressed against it as the other continued speaking about something the homeowner didn’t fully understand, he closed his eyes briefly and for a small moment the conversation almost felt normal though it didn’t last long, as the conversation ended with the same question as last time.
His body tensed up and he opened his eyes, stepping back from the door, his eyes glued to it again, he wasn’t alone but the number of guests in his house was dwindling by the day now. He was getting more and more paranoid and was making more and more mistakes, he was sure he had accidentally killed a human the other day, and the guilt was eating him alive yet for some reason he kept going.
It didn’t help that FEMA had came a night or two before and took one of the people who he had let in, a woman that seemed to carry a deck of tarot cards and claimed to be psychic, he never properly understood things like that but watching FEMA take her away he couldn’t help but feel guilty, he suspected that they’d be back again at some point.
— — — — — —
He was losing sleep, the bags under his eyes only seemed to sink deeper and grow darker, he was finding it harder and harder to get up in the morning and keep going, keep fighting for survival. He started turning more and more people away at night and hardly spoke to the remaining two guests he had within his house and spent most of his mornings checking each part of his body for signs anxiously.
He didn’t look at the closet as he passed it, there was a foul smell emitting from inside. He hadn’t stepped back inside since he had killed that girl, he was starting to doubt that she was a visitor to begin with and the thought was eating away at him. He knew he should get rid of the body but he just couldn’t stomach going back in there.
He smoked before the world went to hell but now he was smoking a lot more than he used to, he dreaded the idea that he could be a visitor, that he could become a visitor and did everything to avoid that from coming true. Maybe he was the same as that girl in the closet, maybe he didn’t know he too was a visitor.
— — — — — —
He spoke to a different man that night, some vigilante who was going around and killing people who showed signs of being a visitor. They spoke briefly, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant conversation but the man wasn’t entirely a bad person to speak with compared to some of the others he’d had brief conversations with from behind his door. The idea of him being out there made him feel a little more at ease, though he wasn’t entirely comfortable around him, he had a gun after all.
He watched the other walk off, knowing he’d return perhaps a couple of days from now, he wasn’t entirely sure but he knew he’d be back at some point. He moved away from the door, and wandered back through the halls, checking the blinds briefly as he passed by, he’d been doing that a lot more frequently than before, it’d been a thing he started doing a lot more often after speaking with that visitor for the first time. Though he never saw anything too concerning he thought it was important to check what was happening so close to his house.
He wandered back to his room, making sure to be quiet as he passed the rooms not to disturb the two who were more than likely to be sleeping, he laid down in his bed staring up at the ceiling for what felt like a good couple of hours but was really only roughly ten minutes before he turned on his side and closed his eyes.
— — — — — —
He found himself dressed in a tux, slowly dancing with a blonde-haired woman whose face was blurry but oddly familiar to him, he fond comfort in holding her hands and swaying with her slowly. She was dressed in a beautiful white long gown, and her hair was done up all nice, he wasn’t sure if she had makeup on but he could tell she was beautiful regardless. He held her close moving with her slowly, music was playing somewhere within the room, he couldn’t make out the words or what song it was but it was slow and comforting.
They continued their dance, slow and rhythmic, he brushed a strand of hair from her unidentifiable face that now seemed paler than before, and she seemed taller. The room temperature seemed to be getting colder, he looked away briefly, wanting to let go of her hands but couldn’t, he wanted to move away. The music was changing, getting further and further away, speeding up and distorting into something impossible to make out so much so that it just sounded like noise to him. He could hear bones cracking, feel the body he was dancing with changing, bending, breaking, he glanced back, the comfort that was once there quickly disappeared, the warmth in his chest was gone and replaced with shock and fear.
He was swiftly lifted off his feet as they continued to dance, he stared into the dark eyes of that pale visitor, he was here dancing with him, in a tux similar to his own, he could make out his face though clear as day, smiling wide down at him his eyes narrowed like he was teasing him, mocking him. Their eyes never leaving one another’s. He stared at the other in pure shock and horror, but he couldn’t break away from the other, he couldn’t move at all. He felt himself leaning backwards lowering himself down against his own will, as the other supported him keeping an arm wrapped around him, the visitor seemed to lean in closing the distance their foreheads touching his facial expression unwavering.
The homeowner woke quickly with a jolt sitting up and breathing heavily, he touched his face quickly and glanced at his hands and then up at the clock on the wall before looking back down at himself again recalling that dream in his head, he wasn’t sure what to even make of it but it only increased his anxiety and paranoia. He glanced over at the empty space in his bed for a moment before looking away and placing his head in his hands sighing.
What would she think of him? What would she think about all of this?
— — — — — —
The next night FEMA came again, except they were demanding two people this time insisting that the more people they had they quicker this would all be over, or something like that. The homeowner questioned them about it and what was going on within the city but didn’t get much of a response, it was mostly vague answers which didn’t really help at all. He reluctantly handed over the last two guests in his house, one being a rather tall man who would occasionally take a can of beer from his fridge from time to time, but he was pleasant conversation on the occasion he did speak to him.
The other was his neighbour's daughter, who had come running and crying over to his house due to her father being killed and their house being burnt down. He wasn’t a huge fan of kids but he obviously wouldn’t turn her away, so watching these two go, he felt even more guilt in his chest, he felt uncomfortable and anxious watching them walk off, there was nothing he could do but he felt uneasy as those two were escorted off into the night.
He stayed on the porch a little longer before stepping back inside and closing the door, sighing and running a hand through his slightly outgrown buzzcut, taking a mental note to shave it back down tomorrow, he was going to head back off to bed but he soon heard those three heavy and deliberately slow knocks again. He froze, turning his head back toward the door and simply staring at it this time.
The knocks almost felt too purposeful this time, though a part of him didn’t mind death at this point, even if it was to the hands of this visitor, then so be it. He was tired, so very tired. He didn’t move for a moment, considering his options, glancing over toward the shotgun he’d left nearby in the hallway leaning against a wall, he wanted to reach for it but eventually gave in to what he was already slowly accepting his fate.
He walked up toward the door, this time he didn’t bother looking through the peephole and placed his hand on the doorknob. He looked down and only noticed now that he was shaking, but why? There was nothing left, there was nobody left, there was no point anymore. He eventually turned the doorknob and swung open the door, looking up and staring at the visitor with tired eyes and an almost empty expression.
The visitor seemed to look surprised, eyes wide and his smile seemed to falter if but for a moment, he looked down at the homeowner in silence, the man wasn’t even armed. He grinned again, his usual wide unnatural smile finding its way back on his face, letting out a low chuckle he didn’t even bother asking the other the question he had been pestering him about and forced himself inside his home, having to duck down to get inside.
The homeowner backed up in instinct but didn’t run away, he stood there before the visitor eventually lunged forward, wrapping both of its cold hands around his throat. His grip was gentle, surprisingly so. He looked up at the other again confused, but the other's facial expression didn’t shift, didn’t give anything away.
Eventually, its eyes widened before its grip tightened and the homeowner could no longer breathe, he struggled out of instinct his eyes burned with tears, he gasped trying to breathe, his struggles and protests against the other were pointless, he stayed almost entirely still, only leaning in to almost savour his facial expressions, his struggle his pain.
The homeowner soon gave up and relaxed his body, dropping his arms to the side, his head felt light and his eyes were getting harder to keep open. It didn’t take much longer before he fell entirely limp and silent.
The visitor held him there for a couple of seconds longer before letting go, glancing at the homeowner's now bruised neck, he let out another chuckle before picking the man up in his arms and wandered out of the house and into the night.