The Knock

Bzzt Bzzt. Bzzt Bzzt.

I rolled over.

Bzzt Bzzt. Bzzt Bzzt.

Groaning, I shifted the dead weight of my body into a sitting position. 

Bzzt Bzzt. 

What time was it? 

Five am read the illuminated alarm clock on my bedside table. 

Bzzt Bzzt. My phone vibrated next to my alarm clock, demanding and insatiably persistent. Who on earth was calling me at this ungodly hour? Annoyed, I grabbed my phone, and saw it was Laura. Wait, Laura? I answered. Heavy breathing. A sniff. 'Hailey? Oh, thank God'. Her voice had a tiny break at the end which I had never heard before, exhausted, tired.

'Hey. What's up?'

'I n-need you to c-come over. Please.'

Her voice trembled like reeds in the wind.

'Please.'

My gut twisted and a cold shiver slithered its dead hands down my back for a reason that I could not fathom.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

' 'Kay, I'll be over in ten,' I whispered.

Baffled and bleary, I yanked on a pair of trousers, along with shirt and hoodie, and stuffed on some socks (which for once happened to match), nearly falling over as I did so. The hoodie had three dinosaurs on it : Darbi, Dolla and Peet. A corner of my mouth twitched upwards as I remembered Laura had got me it last year as a birthday gift. After scribbling a note, I slipped out of the apartment, and cycled through the cold dawn down to Laura's.

Wheeling my bike to outside Laura's house, I then knocked on the door. A short pause. The scraping sound of a lock being cautiously undone.  A minute crack opened in the door, and two bright eyes peered through the gloom.  They scoured the surroundings: soda cans swirling noisily in the dust, a regular street, regular overflowing trash cans, regular grimy blocks of flats, all illuminated by the growing yellowish light of the dawn. Seeming to have come to a conclusion, a skinny arm grabbed my hoodie, dragging me inside and hauling me through the door. 

Once inside Laura's flat, the tremulous voice from the other side of the phone took shape. I'd never seen her so nervous. She shook and clutched her sleeves, though it wasn't cold inside. Her face was pale, her eyes red and raw, darting everywhere in the room, looking everywhere it seemed, but me. 

' Thank God you're here ' she breathed. I was just about to open my mouth and say rather untactfully why I was in her place, especially after she'd decided to blank me, her best friend, for two weeks, but an authoritative knock on the door interrupted my question. Laura squeaked and bundled me into the next room.

A shout came from outside. 

'N.Y.P.D! Open up!'.

 No one answered the door. 

'Look, I know you're in there. Open up!'. 

I glanced confusedly at Laura. Aren't you going to open the door? Her eyes were wide and frightened. She shook her head frantically.

'N.Y.P.D! We have a warrant to search your house!'

Again, the familiar twist in the gut. What on earth had Laura or her family done? Her father had left years ago, yet she and her mother Charlotte were people positively aglow with kindness-there was no way they had done anything for the police to conduct a search. That's right, the police just had the wrong house. Way to make their mission covert, I thought. But then, why did I still have that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach?

Steeling myself to get up and open the door, I rose, shaking off the feeling- who knows, maybe I had just eaten something weird and got an upset stomach. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Laura's mum, Charlotte, quietly tiptoe down the stairs. As she saw me her eyes widened with shock, looking horrified. Frantically, she waved at me to go and hide. Laura beckoned me into the nearby living room to hide under the sofa and watch.

Laura's mum opened the door. From our hiding spot, we could just see up to the neck of a police officer, his badge flashing gold. He tucked the badge away into a breast pocket. We saw Charlotte's eyes flicking to the officer's hands, her expression quickly turning from confusion to inexplicable dread.

'Where's your- ' But Charlotte never finished her sentence. In a single heartbeat, a large hand was clamped over her mouth. In a single heartbeat a click sounded, as something cold, black and hard was slid out from under his jacket. In a single heartbeat the gun's muzzle was pressed firmly into the side of her head.

The voice that once belonged to a police officer now resounded into a smug sneer, a deadly smile that housed hundreds of sharp teeth. 'Now mam,' said the voice, 'I must ask you not to make any commotion...or scream.' The voice morphed again, a gravely serious note cutting into the words like knives. 'Where are they?' hissed the voice, devoid of all feelings but a thrashing menace.

'Where are they?'

It was 5:15 am, and my once ordinary life, shattered.

By PandanPandaroll