animals.attack
Tabitha looks up at her empty home and sighs happily. She had driven straight over from the realtor's office, and was proud to finally own her very own house. She opens the trunk of her car and is struggling with boxes when she feels a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she turns around suddenly and the box in her hand drops to the driveway, plates shattering. The tap on her shoulder introduces himself as her new neighbor, Benedict, towering and mysterious. He does not offer to help her and invites her to dinner at his house that night. She is scared of him without knowing why and tries to refuse, but he will not listen. “You will be tired from unpacking and I know you have no food with you to make dinner. Let me take care of that tonight. I like to know who is living around me.” His accented English leaves her no room for debate, and she grudgingly accepts.
Later, she arrives at his house and it is dark inside, all the curtains drawn. He asks her to take a seat in the piano room, but she unknowingly goes into the living room. She starts to sit in a chair without realizing a man is already there, and she jumps and screams when she sees him. The man looks tired, decrepit and feeble. Benedict gets angry, yells at the man in a foreign language, and sends him upstairs. He chooses not to explain, and Tabitha questions, “Is that your father? He looks so much older than you.” Benedict shakes his head, “He has a skin disease. We do not like talking about it.”
During dinner, Benedict is boorish and egotistical. He doesn’t care for anything, and laughs at everything Tabitha shows interest in. She doesn't like his attitude, but wants to talk to someone about her neighbors. He gives her some gossip, snickering about the cheating husband across the street or the mother on the corner who works nights as a stripper. He tells her there is a great path right behind his house, in the woods. He shows her through the back window, and she says she will be sure to use it. When they are close, staring out into the dark, he tries to kiss her and she backs away. His menacing look frightens her, and she runs out the front door back to her house. She breathes heavily as she makes her way inside, shuddering at her strange night.
The next day she decides to go for a run on the path, putting on her shorts and pocketing her iPod. His house looms, dark and silent, and she tiptoes past it to the path. She runs through the woods, and it is enjoyably peaceful. She thinks how nice it will be to do this everyday, how close such a beautiful place is to her house. As she is running, she sees a dark shape up ahead on the path. She slows as she approaches it, realizing it is a raccoon. She peers at it closer, thinking it is dead, when it lunges at her. Its teeth sink into her leg and she howls at the pain, shaking her leg trying to remove it. The raccoon refuses to let go, and she thrashes her foot down wildly. With her other foot, she finally pries it off her leg and then stomps on it, over and over, crushing its skull until the body lays lifeless, blood everywhere. She is lost, feeling weak and scared, and begins to limp back from where she came.
Benedict appears out of nowhere from the woods and comes to her. Before she can protest, he picks her up and carries her to his house. There, he bandages her wound amidst gushing blood. Tabitha requests to go to the hospital, but Benedict says it is not necessary. He offers her pain medication and then forces her to take it, making her sleepy. When she wakes up, the pain is gone in her leg but she has a major headache. She feels faint and walks back to her house.
She sits down on the couch and immediately falls asleep again, waking up to her phone ringing. It is Benedict, and she uneasily realizes she never gave him her number. “Come over for dinner tonight” he insists and since he helped her, she feels obligated to say yes. She suggests they go out, frightened to return to his tomb of a home. He says brusquely that it is impossible for him to leave the house for that long, that he needs to care for his father. She comes over that night and his father is nowhere to be seen, so she asks about him. He waves his hand and says “He is laying down, don’t worry about him.” They have dinner in the living room and retire to his piano room with wine.
She starts discussing how strange and scary the attack was, how she thought the raccoon had been dead. He smiles for the first time since she has met him.
“Are you happy I was there? That animal should not have bit you; I have taken care of it.” She looks at him, confused. “Taken care of it? Did you find and kill it? I don’t understand.”
He stares into her eyes coldly. “Animals attack, they are beasts. I am here to protect you.”
Tabitha bites her lip. “Thank you for helping me like you did, but I can protect myself. I’ve always been able to take care of myself.”
Benedict shakes his head, “Not true.” Tabitha is offended and narrows her eyes.
“Yes, true. I think that it is time for me to go.” Benedict shoots his arm out and grabs her wrist firmly, digging his fingers into her skin. “No,” his thick accent makes it sound like “Go,” but his face viciously says otherwise.
“Get OFF me!!” screams Tabitha, ripping away from him. She runs out the door and across the lawn to her house.
She locks the door and sits on the floor, shaking and shivering. A psycho! A crazy man right next door and I’ve led him on. There is a knock on her door and she looks through the peephole to see the father, looking up at her sadly. His eyes are so striking compared to his withering body. She opens the door slightly, and he whispers, “Don’t.” She leans in closer, unafraid of the old man. “What did you say?” she asks softly and he whispers again, just as quietly, “Don’t, you must stay away.”
“What’s wrong?” Tabitha whispers back. The pain already in her head suddenly explodes and she sees the red insides of her eyelids for only a moment before blackness takes over.
She wakes up in the piano room to Benedict sucking on the scar on her leg, making her whole body feel warm and faint. She shakes violently, trying to get him off. She kicks him in the face and he hisses, falling backwards. She runs toward the front door but it is locked, so she runs upstairs, down the hallway and into a random room. She shuts the door quietly, locking it and turns around to see his dying father in bed. “Oh!” she cries and runs to him. She looks over him with sorrow, and he tells her that he is a dying host. She frantically asks what that means and he repeats that he is a dying host, and she must escape or she will suffer the same fate. “He is a virussss,” he whispers, drawing out the ‘s’, and dies. She looks around the room, but the only window is deadlocked, so she opens the door to run. She slowly walks into the hallway. She does not know where Benedict is, and peers down the stairs. He is nowhere to be seen, so she flies down the stairs, running for a way out. As she jumps off the last step, she is tackled, consequently knocking her out.
When she comes to, she is lying in the same room she had just left, where his father had just died, and she writhes around, thinking how she is laying in the remains. Benedict stands over her, and smiles a disgusting, putrid, animal smile. He leans down and grabs her leg with the scar. “I’m feeling weak,” he slithers, “Do you mind if I get my strength back?” and wraps his jaw around her ankle.