'paranoia' - short prompted free-write

trying to get into the habit of actually doing a bit of creative writing again, now that i have some time; this is me dipping a toe into the water, I guess.


Prompt: A loud knock on the door
Wordcount: 312
Written Today


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You always jump, when you hear a loud knock on the door. Always the moment of muscles tensed, pulse suddenly shot up - the expectation of disaster, surely present, surely waiting for you behind a single slab of wood and a half-rusted doorknob.

Always you wait with dread for the thumping of boots up the stairs, the particular sound of a certain type of tire and engine pulling up to the curb. Cause and effect: you hear the knock at the door and you gasp. Your hands shake when you go to undo the locks. You fumble it, stretch out the time before the door must, inevitably, open up.

When it does you sigh. It's the post man, with a package and a clipboard for you to sign. Or the neighbor from down the hall, housedress a mess, asking to borrow a cup or two of salt. Or a newspaper salesmen, looking to talk you into a subscription. Or a Jehovah's Witness, with literature for you to read. And so on.

You answer them quickly, eyes darting behind them, down the hall, relieved and yet unwilling to believe your luck, quite. Yes, no, please, okay I will look, go now, you have to go. Sometimes they give you strange looks, when you shut the door so quickly, do up the lucks again. But you must - do up the locks and then sink down on the floor, back against that old door, knowing you can finally breath.

Then you wait again, anxiously, for the next knock on the door, the loud start of a car in the night, the sound of footsteps in the distance. Disaster lurks everywhere, waiting to grab you, to swallow you up the way it did your father when you were four, in a country that no longer exists, decades ago. You wait for it and watch, trembling.