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Carrie sprang into action, grabbing a knife from the kitchen and then lunging toward the front door and checking the lock. It was intact, and when she looked through the peephole, she didn’t see a thing. She swallowed hard and pulled lightly at the chain, making sure it was properly engaged. No one would be coming through that door unless she opened it.
Carrie made a conscious effort to breathe, realizing she had been holding it to try and listen. There wasn’t a sound out there. No one else was around. She was on her own. Wasn’t she?
She lifted up a shaking hand to the door and set her eye to the peephole again, straining to make anything out in the dark corridor. The light that should have been opposite her door had blown a bulb weeks ago, and the landlord had made no move to replace it. Carrie swallowed again on her dry throat, pressing close against the door as she strained to see.
Through the pressure of the wood against her fingertips, she could feel her own heartbeat, rapid and wild.
Carrie turned, putting her back against the door for a moment. There wasn’t any other way in, was there…?
The windows?
She rushed through the apartment, checking them one by one. Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. All of them were locked, and the blinds and curtains were closed. She didn’t want to open them and look out, in case of what she might see.
Carrie hesitated, glancing around her small space. Despite the fact that she had checked everything, she still felt unsure. The call had sent shivers down her spine, and the longer she thought about it, the more they increased. How had he known her name? If it was just a prank call, she might have accepted that he knew her surname, even her first name. But her middle name? He didn’t get that from the phone book.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t even in the phone book. Did people still use phone books these days?
Carrie put her cell phone down on the bed for a moment, reaching up to double-check the bedroom window frame, pushing at the handle to reassure herself that it wouldn’t give easily. It stayed solid, and she stepped back with a little relief. No one was getting in here.
She returned to the kitchen with a determined stride, trying to feel more confident than she really did. Her dinner was still sitting on the counter. She needed to eat, to shower, to get ready for bed. All of this nonsense about the prank call—it was just nonsense. Just a prank. She couldn’t let it derail her whole evening.
She almost managed to convince herself that she believed it. Carrie set down the knife and picked up her mac and cheese, moving it to the other side of the table where she preferred to eat. But her hands shook so badly as she set it down, she nearly spilled some of the creamy cheese sauce over the edge of the tray.
A soft sound outside had her on alert again, her body going stiff. It was only a second later that she heard the smash of broken glass, a symphony of tinkling as it fell to the ground in the bedroom.
In the bedroom. Where she’d left her cell phone.
A strangled cry caught in Carrie’s throat as she lunged for the landline, still sitting on the counter where she had put it down. She dialed with fingers that were thick with fear and shaking, her own breath coming out in sobs as she hit the wrong digit and had to clear the number to start again. He was inside the house. Then she pressed the phone to her ear, breathing raggedly.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“There’s—there’s someone in my house!” Carrie wailed, all too aware that saying those words would alert him to where she was. “Please—you have to send—”
“Ma’am, are you able to get out of the house? Ma’am?”
The operator was talking to herself. Carrie was staring forward, frozen, the phone clutched in her hand still but falling away from her ear. He was there, right in front of her, tall and menacing. She had no idea who he was. But he was looking at her in that way, dark eyes boring into her from under a sweep of dark hair, and she knew, just knew, he wasn’t there for anything good.
He wasn’t even wearing a mask. Wasn’t he worried about her identifying him to the police, if he wasn’t wearing a mask?
Carrie’s heart stuttered in her chest as she realized he didn’t intend for her to be alive to tell them.
“Ma’am, please stay on the line. We’ll be sending someone out to you as soon as possible. Are you there, ma’am? Can you tell me any more details?”
The voice faded out as Carrie lowered the phone, her whole body shaking and her breath coming out in whimpers as she stared at him. He was moving slowly toward her, inch by inch. Her body felt frozen. She managed to back up just a couple of steps, but then her spine hit the fridge, and she was trapped.
She didn’t say anything and neither did he. They faced each other silently, him ever advancing, her frozen and shaking and unable to do a thing. Her mind was almost blank with fear and she couldn’t force herself to move. It was as if she was a butterfly trapped to a piece of card with a pin.
She thought he would continue moving slowly forward forever, but then he lunged, clearing the space between them so quickly she barely had a moment to react. She screamed, just once, but she couldn’t move fast enough to stop him. He wrenched the phone from her grip, and she thought he would hang it up. But even as she flailed to get it back, he made a quick move of his arm, flicking the cord around her neck. The ice in her veins turned to acid as she felt the wire against her skin, lying over her windpipe.
She made to dash forward, to go past him through the tiny space between his arm and the counter, a futile but desperate attempt. He stepped aside and she dashed free, just for a moment—before the cord caught her and pulled her back, coughing already, a tight line branded into her neck where the cable lay.
Carrie’s hands flew up and scrabbled at the cord, but somehow, now, it was too tight to move. She couldn’t get her fingers underneath it. Something was behind her, supporting her—a body—his warm body, pressing against her back and using her body weight against her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get a single gasp of air. Sh
e fought against the cord madly, her fingers scoring lines in her own flesh, glancing off the cord every time and never budging it a millimeter. She kicked the floor, feeling him pull her away from it, the weight on her neck only increasing as she was lifted up into the air.
Carrie thought she heard something, someone asking her an urgent question. She couldn’t process it. She tried to scream, but the air wouldn’t come into her lungs. All she could do was make a desperate gurgle, kicking out with her legs and trying to catch onto the cabinets. She only hurt her shins and knees. In front of her she could see the kitchen, the tiny space with its rickety table and the lone tray of mac and cheese, still waiting for her. She was so tired. There were blank dots dancing in her vision, more of them every moment.
Her fingers fell slack on the cord, then down at her sides. Carrie tried to breathe in one last time, but failed to find any air. The black dots multiplied, covering everything, and the last thing she knew before her final spasm left her body was black.
