A drunken student fumbles with his keys, his belt still unbuckled, his hair still damp from rain.
And takes another swig from the bottle.
He gets into his room, the door is still open behind him.
He collapses to the bed, drops the drink, and thinks of the night’s conquest.
“Dale.
Don’t touch me.
Get away.
What’s gotten into you?”
Why didn’t she want him?
He was being so charming.
Across the courtyard, one door down,
curled up in his closet is Michael, holding his gun.
He sweats and itches, the tab remains on his tongue.
The hall stretches in front of him.
Each creak and bump and crack of thunder is God coming to punish him.
He hears a bump – and waves his gun screaming.
He takes another bump from his fingertip.
Quick snort.
Another wave of ecstasy before God returns.
Before he’s returned to that place where the walls are chalky and black.
Lost in the five and a half minute hallway.
Two floors up, down the hall, in the room by the fire escape, is Angela.
Hair ratty, she towers over a desk trying to get the pieces to line up.
Piles of papers – marked in red.
Shaking, she takes another sip of her coffee.
It doesn’t taste like anything anymore, but she know her breath reeks of it.
Her bed calls like a siren on the rocks but her mind won’t rest.
Another late night doesn’t mean much to her.
Her thesis, her magnum opus, her life’s work – more valuable than her life.
They wouldn’t take it from her.
In this whole building, in all these rooms, only these three are awake,
We see, with our omnipresent eyes above it all.
A streak of lightning takes aim, seeking a target.
It fires itself towards a transformer and sends sparks flying.
The power goes out.
Dale gets out of bed and leans out the window to the courtyard.
Michael bursts from the closet – ready to kill the creature terrorizing him.
They’re coming for Angela.
She gathers her papers and hurries to the fire escape. They won’t have her work.
Dale slurs his speech and shouts into the storm a series of profanities.
Michael waves the gun out the window at the monster.
He fires at the fleshy tentacles reaching out from a window across the courtyard.
A bullet hits Dale in the head.
Blood splatters on the windowframe.
His body goes limp.
It falls from the window.
Angela hears the shot from the courtyard.
She slips on the wet iron and tumbles over the edge.
She screams before her body hits the pavement and she goes silent.
More tentacles sprout from windows and lunge for Michael.
He squeezes the trigger until the only sound is a click… click… click.
The tentacles reach him.
His heart seizes and he collapses.
Now we see.
Neighbors rush into the courtyard and surround Dale’s body.
A car pulls off to the side of the road, by Angela’s shattered and mangled corpse among a sea of papers.
The tentacles retreat from Michael’s body and he lies alone, dead on the stained wood floor in his apartment.
Someone calls 911.
The storm drowns out the sirens.