A single knock landed upon my door much in a way that a bookcase might fall down a set of stairs.
The heavy handed slap of deadweight echoed through each corner of my small apartment, seemingly to make sure that every groutline, every granule of dust, knew that the door had just been resoundingly knocked. But what manner of battering ram had bludgeoned this door so thoroughly, beaten it as if to demolish both frame and wall around it, what manner of bus had missed its turn with enough enthusiasm so as to have leapt up and careened into the front landing of this sixth floor apartment.
The curious building code of the flats I called home did all the more to confuse this solemn thunk and disperse the potential of some comet strike that descended from the clouds to collect a donation for charity. An amalgamation of brutalist simplicity and paint fumed hallucination had caused the architect to provide a single spiral staircase that wound its way up the exterior wall of the apartment block; now unbound by logic the architect’s madness was then doubled-so by the installation of gas powered, outward hinged, front doors, each holding the potential of upending your ascent should a neighbor be leaving at the same time you walked past their landing.
While having to yell “stand back” through a closed door did famously in deterring door-to-door salesmen, I found it to be somewhat threatening when bellowed at a loved one, and this was probably the reason I hadn’t invited anyone around for some time.
There it was again, a bell-toll of wooden clarity.
Were my door a xylophone it would have been struck in such a way as to leave the conductor defenestrated–and then somewhat displace the entire string section, their chairs and catgut now just remnant detritus scattered across an evacuated stage-hall.
Just one single knock, not an enrhythmed shave and a haircut, nor a polite one, two, three in staccato. It was the knock of a bill collector, the knock of a thuggish man with hands of granite angle, a neck that disappeared into his shoulders and a voice drowned in the subtlety of a fog horn. This knock was somehow deeper than the last, implied in such a way as if the person was unsure if the first had been attentive enough to be heard at the right decibel, it was performed with a greater amount of ‘gusto’ so as to not obscure any singular intent and leave no stone unconfused.
It was the underline of urgency that worried me the most about this knock, the feeling it applied of you need to hear this.
In trepidation I stood, holding a small mug of coffee as a faint barrier of protection. Shuffling toward my front door I waited for a moment, wishing I wasn’t still in my pyjamas.
‘Ahh, who is it?’ I called, holding just a fragment too much melody in my voice and dreading the possibility of a reply.
‘Better,’ came a reply of knife edge simplicity, a serrated blade lined by ridges and perilous falls, but a simple one all the same.
‘Better? I’m sorry, what is better?’
‘You better,’ the knife voice shouted through the wooden door as if it were cloth-paper, ‘you better open this door in half a second or you won’t be anymore.’
Confused, I took another step toward the door handle.
‘I won’t be better anymore?’ I asked, torn by my desire to help this voice find the words to paint my own brutalisation.
‘Exactly,’ followed his reply, its weight somehow falling heavier than his introductory knocks. The testing of the door handle on his side punctuating his impatience.
…
A spiral staircase, narrow steps and an outward hinged door could be a terrible combination when paired with an unfocused mind, and as I watched the bully-thug rolling down the metallic staircase in spiraling descent I gave a quick thanks to the architect for not including a handrail.
The frost of the morning hadn’t made the steel steps any softer and the reverberating twang of the large man’s tumble downward sounded as painful as it probably was.
‘I wonder what he wanted,’ I asked myself as I walked back inside and sat down to attempt a crossword. ‘If it was important he’ll try again I suppose.’
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 