"Hello?" Sheila winced to hear the crackle of fear in her voice. You're better than this. Than playing the victim. She took her phone from the bedside table. 2:45 a.m. She tapped on the flashlight. Wrinkled blouses danced over chairbacks and bedposts. Hoodies and jeans and underwear scattered across her bedroom carpet. It looked like someone had broken in and shuttled through her dresser; which is how her bedroom always looked. Yet something crawled down Sheila’s spine, a tingle driving into her bones. She shuttled her covers, padded softly across the room.
"Hey asshole, whatever you're doing, know that I'm armed in here. I'm counting to three and then I'm coming in there to blow your fucking head off."
"One…"
She looked around her room, desperate for something, anything, to defend herself. A crowbar. A steak knife. Anything. Christ, if only she'd agreed to play in that over-30 softball league. A fat-barreled aluminum bat would sure as shit cave in Arthur's skull. She swung her phone light all around the room. Excepting a sudden onset of Gambit-like superpowers, she doubted a d20 and some Magic: The Gathering cards would do any good.
"Two…"
Thundering steps outside shook her bedroom in its jamb. Acid burned the back of her throat. Worst comes to worst, she thought, I'll hork all over the motherfucker. There wasn't a single damn weapon thing in her room. Desperate, her fingers cold with fear, Sheila grabbed a pair of safety scissors from her desk set.
"I'm serious, asshole, I get to three and your life ends…"
Every part of her shaking, Sheila shouted "Three!" and kicked open her own bedroom door. She rushed into her basement apartment, scissors cocked back and phone light flashing like a strobe.
The room was empty. The apartment's lone window, a narrow little rectangle high on the wall over her sofa, glimmered. Bits of glass sparkled over Sheila's couch, over her carpet. Her television lay on the floor, wires dangling and its screen a spiderweb of cracks. Her secondhand coffee table lay upside down. A dark shape sprinted away outside the window, heavy feet tramping the frozen earth. A cruel, icy wind whipped through the small room.
Sheila sighed. The tension fell from her shoulders. The threat of an impending, painful death flew from her body and left her feeling cold and small. Vulnerable. Sheila shivered. Standing in the middle of her ransacked living room in just a shirt and underwear, Sheila hugged her arms tightly to herself, and took as deep of breaths as the panic would allow.
Sheila tip-toed around glass and splintered wood. Needing to do something, anything, to restore order, Sheila plucked a throw blanket from the ground, folded it, and returned it to its spot over the sofa back. She carefully worked her way to the coffee table, intending to turn it right side up, but stopped.
Three words were slashed into the underside of the table:
"Watch Your Step."
Sheila stumbled back onto the sofa. Glass nipped her legs. Already clenched tight with panic, when her phone started vibrating, she answered without thinking, if only to get its ringing to stop.
"Having trouble sleeping, are we?"
The dark voice almost brought her a measure of relief. At least her panic now had a shape, a direction on which to focus her rage.
"Fuck you."
"Is that a breeze I'm hearing through your phone? Are you standing outside? In this cold? Miss Talbot, I highly recommend you at least get a robe on over that green tank top and black panties. As thin as you are? You could catch pneumonia and die."
"I'm calling the cops."
"No you're not. We've already discussed this. Just like we discussed how you were to keep that envelope at all costs."
Sheila turned and brought her face to the high window. It provided the same vista as always: a half-full parking lot, a single streetlight, and the blood-red glow of the 24-hour waffle joint up the street. "I refuse to let you play these mind games, Arthur. Leave me alone."
"You agreed not to disclose our arrangements to anyone."
"Even you."
"Especially me."
"You're a fucking psychopath, you know that?"
"You flatter me."
"You can come and spill coffee on me and charm with that fucking handsome smile of yours—"
"Handsome? Now I'm really blushing."
"Then in the next breath you're breaking through my window and threatening me at three in the morning. Get help."
"Oh, Sheila. Don’t you see that you are my help?"
"I have to report this to the cops, you know. My window is busted and my apartment is torn to shit."
"Tell your super that you got drunk. That you did it yourself."
"And why the fuck would I do that."
"As down payment for the absolute gold you will receive in tomorrow's mail."
"Tomorrow's mail? What's in tomorrow's mail?"
The line went dead.
"What's in tomorrow's mail?"
She received only silence in reply. The dense, suffocating silence of a sleeping, uncaring world. She turned off her phone light and chucked on the sofa. Hugging herself tight against the cold, against a chill not from outside but from within, Sheila ducked back into her bedroom, desperate for her robe.
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