Mickey, Please Come Outside

Part 4: The Door

Mickey waited, peeping every so often through the small looking hole in his door to see if anyone was in the hallway. For quite a long time no one showed up, and Mickey thought that Suzie might have been stumbling around mindlessly within the hall, perhaps unable to remember where his room was.  

The infections, and then the reanimations (Mickey thought that was a word he heard reporters use) weren't understood whatsoever.  So It was difficult to speculate whether the dead did or didn't remember their previous lives.  

Maybe they remembered everything, but just had new ... motives, Mickey pondered anxiously.     

The first thing he heard at the door was scratching. The scratching was soft at first, like a cat batting lightly on a door, playfully wanting to be let in. Soon it grew louder, and Mickey heard the unpleasant sound of Suzie's nails screeching against the wood. Mickey looked through the door hole and saw her nails bend backwards and break.  Although blood ran down her fingers, she didn't seem to be in pain.  

"Let me in mouse," Suzie whispered to him.

They remember how to talk.  The voice in his head said to him.   

At first Mickey thought that he was hearing things, because surely there was no way she was attempting to communicate with him. For all purposes of logic, he didn't imagine the dead would talk. He wouldn't have thought they could talk.  

Mickey didn't reply to her, hoping that somehow she would just go away and forget about him.

"I know you're in there Mickey," she said a little bit louder. "I miss you," she added sweetly.

"I'm sorry Suzie. I'm sorry that you're like this," Mickey replied as the tears came again.

"Mickey, please come outside," Suzie implored him.

Mickey stepped away from the door, and returned to the comfort of his familiar chair. It was the same chair that he had read countless novels in.  It was the chair he was sitting in when he first saw Suzie, opening and then later closing her blinds.  Laying his arms on the armrests, he knew this would be the last chair he would ever sit in.

Mickey looked over at a pile of old books that sat on his desk. Pride and Prejudice was one of the titles, and several other classics were present as well. Books were the conduit through which he met Suzie.  They had helped him get into college, and if he had to say with absolute sincerity, books were his best friends. Sadly they hadn't been of use to him for a while.  Shortly after he started dating Suzie, he had given up books.  Of course he could keep his textbooks for his classes, (Suzie wanted a smart guy) but she thought it was strange he read classics for fun.  In her eyes, this had made him a weird guy.  

A few hours had passed, and Mickey had done nothing to better his current predicament. However, he did find the courage to leaf through a few of his old friends one last time. Suzie had beckoned him to come outside to her all the while, but he still had not opened the door. Besides the calling of his dead girlfriend, the campus had fallen deathly still. 

The first sound to catch his attention was a subtle sound.  It was the sound of something sliding under his door. Mickey sprang from the chair, fearing that the sound was Suzie's hands attempting to pry her way into his room. Fortunately, it was only a piece of paper which had slid underneath his door.

Mickey picked up the paper and looked at it. The handwriting was fresh ink, he smeared some of it as he held it in his hand.  

"I love you Mickey," was what was written on the paper. The top right corner of the paper was dotted with blood, and Mickey wasn't sure if it was Suzie's or someone else's.

Crumpling the paper up and throwing it away into the trash, Mickey had the realization that he would not see the light of tomorrow morning. The sun had begun to set, and an orange glow had overtaken the room.

"I love you too Suzie," Mickey said staring at the door. 

He knew that one way or another before the night was over, the door would open.