Boop

Part I

The knock at the door wasn't unusual - just four knocks - knock-knock-knock-knock.

Usual.

The thunderous barking of Ryan Seacrest, my Scottish Terrier wasn't unusual. Pound-for-pound, Scottish Terriers have the loudest bark in the canine kingdom.

Loud, but usual.

I pushed myself up out of my recliner. My knees cracked. I compressed my diaphragm and a low belch rumbled out of me. My knees are worn and the belching has been a thing for a few years now.

All usual.

What was not usual was what preceded the knock-knock-knock-knock.

Nothing preceded it.

I had a security system that always alerted me - and Ryan Seacrest, whenever anyone or anything approached the front porch. Whenever that happened, the security app on my phone sounded a single boop.

The absent boop gave me pause as I walked toward the door. I took out my phone and opened the security app and checked the camera of my front porch that I cleverly named "Front Porch."

The "Live View" showed nothing on the porch and the history showed no recent activity. I turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door. It let out a familiar guttural creaking.

"WD-40." whined the tickertape. I shook my head.

Ryan Seacrest and I walked out onto the porch.

Boop.

Ryan Seacrest, doing Pavlov proud, let out a deep "Woof!" I looked at the "Front Porch" camera's live feed and there we were, Ryan Seacrest and me. I noticed the battery icon showed full for the "Front Porch" camera. I had changed the battery two days before.

I turned to walk back inside. "Come on boy."

But Ryan Seacrest didn't move. He was looking down the yard to the closed front gate.

"What is it?" I asked, and looked down at the gate. In the dying dusk, I couldn't see much. The closed gate was flanked on both sides by a six foot high cherry laurel hedge. There was some light from the streetlight, but that was outside the hedge. I frowned. The camera had booped for us, but not for whoever knocked... and someone had definitely knocked.

Red, digital letters scrolled across the black background of a tickertape in my mind.

"W-E-I-R-D".

"Come on, Ryan Seacrest." I growled and we walked back into the house, taking a last Parthian look outside as I started to close the door.

Ryan Seacrest trotted back toward his dog-bed. But I stopped, reopening the door and staring intently toward the gate and hedge again.

"Was that movement behind the cherry laurels?" The tickertape scrolled again, the red letters moving more quickly across the black board. I stared, straining to catch that dark flash of movement I thought I had just seen.

It was the last minutes of dying dusk, lit sparsely by the orange line of sunlight grasping the bottom of the purple-black horizon. Sometimes, it's harder to see at this time of day than when it's night and your eyes know not to expect too much.

"Is someone there?" I called.

I heard the muted blare of a car horn in the distance. Nothing more.

I scanned the gate and the bushes, then the entire yard. No movement. I turned and started to close the door again. The orange line on the horizon lost its grip and was now painted over entirely by the thick ink of darkness.

I turned quickly and scanned the yard again, intending to surprise whatever was moving by my clever double-take.

"That...never... works" scrolled slowly across the tickertape. I laughed and closed the door, rejoining Ryan Seacrest, who had settled in for his early evening nap and was already snoring softly.

Part II

A little over an hour passed. The blue glow of the television lit Ryan Seacrest and me as we watched Jason Bateman in yet another very dark and dangerous situation that was somehow amusing. I did not take my eyes off the television as I reached my hand into the bag of cheese curls and bit one in half, handing the remains to Ryan Seacrest, who ate his half with significantly greater gusto than me.

I noticed this peripherally and chuckled, handing him another cheese curl in appreciation of his animal appetite. I stroked his head and his ears drooped happily. I stroked his head again, then lifted my hand to repeat the movement.

"Knock-knock-knock-knock."

My hand froze above Ryan Seacrest's head.

It startled both of us. Ryan Seacrest sprang up, woofing and boofing. I pressed the button to lower the leg-rest on my recliner, which declined at an absurdly slow pace, contrasting the urgency I felt in my chest.

"What in the HELL is going on?" The tickertape scrolled angrily. I started toward the door, but paused as I grabbed the doorknob. I checked the security camera.

"Nothing." The tickertape scrolled morosely.

I was angry. "God da.." I started to roar as I yanked the door. In the black ink of darkness, I failed to realize that my face was inside the arc of the swinging door.

The edge of the door crashed into my left eyebrow.

My eyes squinted shut and I felt my brain start to spin. My hand shot to my damaged eyebrow. My head was already hurting...pounding. I felt warm liquid.

"Bleeding. Great." I thought. But I wasn't gushing blood, just oozing blood and I blinked hard, regaining some focus.

Ryan Seacrest was already on the porch and I walked out beside him; two sentinels scanning the perimeter of our fortress.

Boop

"You're not funny!" I called out toward the closed gate. "It's ten o'clock at night!"

No sound. Not even a muted car horn.

Ryan Seacrest offered a conciliatory half-woof. We both realized we couldn't see anything from the porch. Ryan Seacrest looked up at me expectantly.

I took a step toward the yard, then felt a single drop of blood ease down my cheek. Perhaps my "oozing" diagnosis should be upgraded to "trickling?"

I muttered. Ryan Seacrest huffed in disappointment. I turned to walk back to....

was I thinking "the safety" of the house?

I wiped the blood with the back of my fist and we did retreat back to the safety of the house.

As I stepped back inside and closed the door, it took about four seconds before I realized that the concept of "the safety of the house" was profoundly inaccurate.

I stepped toward the living room and caught my foot on the edge of the carpet, falling forward and crashing the right side of my head into the wall. My neck wrenched and I could feel cracks ripple down my spine.

The spinning returned immediately and this time, it was determined. I struggled to get to one knee. The spinning did not stop. In my line of vision, I saw my hand moving in slow motion toward the wall so I could steady myself. But my hand faded behind the thick ink of my mind's darkness and dropped before it reached the wall.

I slumped forward into the wall again, unconscious.

Part III

I don't know how long I was out. But I was awakened by Ryan Seacrest's thick tongue. He was licking my bloody eyebrow.

"Stop it!" I blurted out, putting my hand between his tongue and my injured face.

The blue TV glow from the other room brought Ryan Seacrest's hairy, silhouetted form into focus and I petted him, realizing he was only trying to care for me. Care for me like only dogs care.

"You're a good boy."

I got back to one knee and put my hand on the floor, pushing myself up. The spinning had slowed, and was now joined by an highly unpleasant and intense aching and throbbing in my temple. I reached up to my eyebrow which had developed a knot during my unscheduled nappy time. The knot was caked in thick scales of hardened blood.

I ran my finger over a gash in the knot and winced.

"Seek medical attention immediately." scrolled across the tickertape.

I rose and shuffled my feet toward the bathroom. The spinning accelerated again, so I stopped and put my hand against the wall, balancing myself.

"Turn the light on, idiot." Whirred the tickertape.

I groped along the wall and flicked the switch, illuminating the living room. I squinted in the light and made my way slowly to the bathroom.

I turned on the light, leaning over the bathroom sink. I slowly lifted my head and looked into the mirror.

The face looking back from the mirror confused me and for some reason, humored me; a swollen eyebrow with a jagged, dark red line running through it. A dried up line of blood on the cheek.

But the right side of the face looking back was worse - a small contusion on the receding hairline on the forehead rested atop a mound the size of a tennis ball.

I did not immediately recognize the lumpy, lopsided face mournfully looking back at me.

"Yo, Adrian." Scrolled along the tickertape. I laughed at my appearance. It hurt my head and neck to laugh.

I looked down. My shirt had a patch of blood on it. I reached for the tissues on the bathroom sink and the spinning started up again like a carnival ride, this time accompanied by a buzzing in my head.

I turned on the cold water. I wet the tissue and started to make tentative dabs and swipes on my eyebrow and face. Soon the tissue was bloody and I squeezed it into the sink. My watered blood streamed down the drain in an absurdly pretty vortex.

I ran water over the now pink tissue and squeezed it again, returning it to my eyebrow and face. I could see I was making progress, but I suspected the worst was yet to come. I noticed the white of my left eyeball was now completely red, giving me a manic, piratical look.

I leaned in to look closer, but my examination was cut short.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

Four more knocks, and the boop, my alert, was again missing-in-action. This time, the knocks were louder and faster.

Ryan Seacrest lost his canine mind, charging to the door and then jumping up against it, barking. These were not mere boofs and woofs, these were fighting barks.

"That's a determined knock." flowed across the tickertape.

What does that even mean? I thought. "Determined" to do what, exactly?

I found my own determination and made my way slowly, but steadily toward the door, ignoring my wooziness and catching a periperhal glimpse of the wall clock showing that it was almost two in the morning.

My addled brain stumbled through the elementary math steps needed to figure out how long I had been unconcious. It failed, angering me. I could not determine how long I had been unconscious.

"Second-grade math." ran the tickertape.

This time I did not check the "Front Porch" camera. I turned the doorknob and opened the door, my face this time safely outside the arc, and, once again, found nothing.

Ryan Seacrest's canine pride sang out as he charged out the door, (boop)off the porch, down to the gate, barking madly as he ran. The cacophony of animal aggression in the face of fear.

"Fear for its life." scrolled ominously across the tickertape.

"Ridiculous" my mind objected, trying to override the tickertape's paranoia.

"You're afraid too." whirred the tickertape, ignoring my override attempt.

"The hell I am." My brain grunted. My head swam as I turned back into the house and moved to the closet near the door. I opened the closet door, moving boxes and shoes aside. I heard Ryan Seacrest barking in the yard. I'm sure the entire neighborhood - the entire county heard Ryan Seacrest barking in the yard.

I groped around and found the handle of the aluminum bat that was happily gathering dust in the back of the closet. The aluminum bat from a failed half season of softball, cut short by a torn ligament in my left calf some eight or nine years ago.

As I pulled the bat from its resting place, I felt the ghost pain of that ligament tear in my calf, but shook my head and marched toward the open door.

"Now who's determined?" I asked the tickertape.

I walked out onto the porch, (boop) leaving the door open, and walked down the steps into the silent night.

"...hooooly night...All is calm...All is..." Sometimes I detest my idiot brain and its ridiculous tickertape. But the tickertape was right. It was a...

"Silent Night".

They hymn was an alert; a warning; a different kind of boop.

The night was, indeed, silent.

No barking.

"Ryan Seacrest!" I called out with the urgency that often accompanies dread. "Come here good boy!"

Silence. No barking, no boops, no muted horns. All I could hear in my mind was the last "determined" KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. I limped toward the gate and the cherry laurels, my feet unsteady on the slick, wet path.

It was drizzling. But rather than focus on my balance, my mind noticed the grass.

"It needs to be cut." whirred across the tickertape. I blinked hard, the best I could do to silence the nagging. When I opened my eyes, I felt my heart fall and my feet freeze.

The gate was open.

This was becoming dire. My heart thumped quickly and heavily in my chest.

My world tilted.

My mind was still muddled, but adrenaline took over, increasing my awareness and my heart rate.

I wrapped both hands around the handle of the bat and raised it up, ready to step into the batter's box and deliver my own aluminum knock-knock-knock-knock to whoever, or whatever I might encounter.

I moved deliberately to the open gate, peering to the right, down the row of cherry laurels.

Nothing.

"Ryan Seacrest?" I called again.

I whistled for him.

Nothing.

The wind picked up and I felt the satin rain on my face.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

It sounded like the knocking was just to my left and I swiveled my hips, swinging the aluminum bat with the anger and aggression that manifested from my own animal fear.

The streetlight reflected off the metal bat as I swung and a sharp spear of light blinded me. The bat crashed hard into the post of the metal gate and pain sheared through my hands, up my forearms, piercing my throbbing head.

My mind noted the similarity of the sharp spear of light coming off the bat and the sharp spear of pain screaming through my hands, arms, and head.

"Things are coming together." whirred the tickertape.

My hands instinctively dropped the bat. It pinged on the concrete. My eyes ran along the cherry laurels on the left side of my yard for the source of the dreaded KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

Nothing.

I was shaking. Jolts of pain were streaking through my hands and forearms. My head felt that it could split itself open at any second. Ryan Seacrest was nowhere to be seen or heard. I felt blood coming down my swollen eye onto my face again. The flow was heavier than before.

There was nothing here. I drew in a deep, misted breath, and called out for Ryan Seacrest again.

Nothing.

"Maybe he circled back to the house." I thought.

"Ryan Seacrest is gone. Your world is tilted." ran the tickertape.

"Ryan Seeeeacrest!" I called, with forced friendliness that did nothing to hide my mounting dread. The unnatural, higher pitch of my voice tinged with desperation.

Nothing.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

My head looked up quickly, too quickly at the porch.

The front door was now closed.

My heart immediately started pounding fast and hard. Each thump brought more uncertainty and instability. My ghost pain manifested into a very real tearing feeling in my calf.

My path to the door was wobbled and agonizing. I clumped toward the closed door. I was squinting at the door through mist, sweat and (were those tears?) and felt my heart expand inside my chest, stretched like a balloon with too much air.

I was remembering the dusty smell of a stretched rubber balloon when I felt my soul expand, over-stretching my body in the same, creaking, rubbery way as the balloon. My mouth opened to cry out, but my breath failed - a silent scream. It felt like a truck crashed into my chest.

I fell forward.

PART IV

My head thumped into the first porch step as I fell. This was the worst blow to my head of the night. I landed on my side with my bleeding head on the step, facing the street.

"Your head is the least of your concerns." Ran the tickertape.

I was straining to call out, to move, to breathe. The misty rain gathered on my face. The mist, the sweat, and, yes, they were surely tears now, blurred my vision.

In my line of sight as I lay there, I saw the streetlamp. A small, white dot in the middle of a pulsing halo. The pressure on my chest, the throbbing in my head, did not stop the tickertape.

"How angelic" in white letters now, scrolled softly

My breathing slowed. My eyes fought to close. My mind fought to keep them open. My heart was thumping still, but it was slowing, straining to get to the next beat.

I blinked, hoping the world would tilt back to normal. Ryan Seacrest would appear, licking my wounds. Jason Bateman would be in yet another extremely dark and dangerous, yet somehow amusing situation.

Nothing. My world was now no longer tilted. It was fully detached and neither Ryan Seacrest nor Jason Bateman could change that.

I searched my mind for the tickertape and the one time when I wanted to see its idiot digital letters, it abandoned me.

My heartbeat was faint and fading and the image of the blurred, haloed streetlight disappeared into the thick black ink behind my eyelids.

Then I heard the door creaking open.

Boop

THE END