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It’s all over the news that a dangerous convict has escaped from the state prison. Television and radios alike warm the residents to stay indoors until authorities can locate and apprehend the criminal roaming the local neighborhoods. It just so happens to fall on a terrible evening to be stuck anywhere - the weather has taken a turn for the worse and thanks to a wayward falling branch, the power has gone out. Scratching and creaking around your doors and windows keeps you on high alert…could the nefarious individual be trying to get inside your residence?
Erich had only barely heard about it on the radio, but apparently one of the local convicts had escaped the state prison and was very dangerous. Murderer dangerous. and that people were to be on the lookout for him. Unfortunately, the picture that they had provided for him, that Erich had looked up had showed the man as being totally unshaven and with a wild look as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. Which meant that the first thing the convict did, if he hadn’t already committed a crime before, was to get a shave and a haircut. Probably a shower too. Though Erich didn’t know how the convict would have been able to get either of those unless he broke into a house somewhere that still had running water. He doubted the criminal would go and kill a family when it would just mean a longer sentence. But what did he know, he wasn’t a crazy killer.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Erich was out of luck when it came to his apartment that evening as the power had gone out in the neighborhood due to a freak, though less freak because of global warming, storm that had come through.
And he had been trying to recover from the stupid pumpkin monster-in-the-store-basement thing, and had slept through most of it, but at the first crack of thunder, he had been woken up and he felt as though he hadn’t had any sleep at all. And of course, he couldn’t cook anything because the power was out, and anything in the fridge was slowly starting to go bad the longer the power was out… He could only hope that they would fix it soon, but in weather like this the most they would probably do was get the branch off and turn off the wires.
Lucky him.
And while the wind had been howling and he had been using up the last of his tablet’s battery to get through the night, he did hear some strange creaking at the door and windows. At first, he had had only thought they were the wind, but the fact that the door was creaking too… that wasn’t right, especially since he had indoor hallways. It would be one thing if he had an outdoor apartment, but that was indoor! The door shouldn’t be making that type of noise unless the building had been blasted through by a tornado or something!
He had ignored it at first, but it just kept going on and eventually he had to make his way and look at both the door and the windows, including the patio door. And there was nothing! But whenever he went back to bed, the creaking and scratching would start again! He thought for a moment that it might be the convict, but Erich was on the second floor. No way was that guy going to get up there during a storm… right?
It stayed in the back of his mind though, as much as he tried to shoo it away, and he found himself looking at all of the possible entrances every ten minutes or so. Well, there goes another night with barely any sleep.
