Close the door!

(Meghan)

Meghan stepped outside the bathroom and cursed foully.

"Who the hell can't even let me go to the toilet in peace?" she muttered to herself as she grabbed her phone from the bed.

She saw multiple missed calls from Ray.

At first she got annoyed but it was almost immediately replaced with curiosity. Ray never called multiple times. Heck, he only ever called after confirming that she had time to talk. He knew exactly how busy she was during the day; this wasn't like him. Then could it have been an emergency?

Meghan was about to call him back when she suddenly noticed something peculiar. She could hear strange noises coming from outside her bedroom balcony. It sounded like several people were shouting or screaming all at once. She was all the way up on the fifteenth floor and she could still hear it rather audibly.

"What's going on…" she mumbled as she walked towards the balcony to investigate.

She didn't have the best view. Her balcony faced the back of the apartment complex. She couldn't see anything happening downstairs. But she could still hear the noises. They were much louder now. Screams. Loud, bellowing screams.

Meghan shuddered.

Who was screaming so much? What was happening to them? What was going on in Prime?

A barrage of questions stormed her mind as she stood frozen on her balcony. One half of her wanted to try and find out what was happening downstairs while the other half told her to ignore it and resume her work. It was probably something that didn't concern her anyway. She had more important things to do and not enough time to do it.

She shook that thought out of her mind. She suddenly remembered Ray's calls. Maybe he was calling to tell her about this? Yeah, that had to be it. She could just call him back and ask him.

Thinking this, she unlocked her phone and brought up his contact information. Just before she pressed the dial icon, there was a loud thumping on her front door. So loud, in fact, that it made her jump and almost drop her phone.

"Shit!" she said and steadied herself.

Although she had heard the knocking, she didn't move right away. Meghan didn't know whether it was the screaming from outside or the uncertainty of the whole situation but she felt quite rattled and ambivalent. She didn't know who was knocking and she wasn't too sure she wanted to open it to find out. What if there was a serial killer on the loose? That would explain all the screaming. If she opened the door, would she become another one of his victims? It was better that she pretended that nobody was home, she decided.

But that didn't sit right with her. Not only because the serial killer theory was unrealistic but also because it could have been the opposite scenario.

What if it was someone who needed help? She started to wonder. Maybe she should at least check through the peep hole to see who it was. If she was careful, she could sneak up to the front door without making much noise.

She liked that plan.

Having resolved to do so, she opened her bedroom door cautiously and stepped outside her room. She tiptoed her way towards the main entrance and slowed down and she got close. The next few steps seemed harder than the first. Her pace was now as slow as a crawl. As she reached the door, she placed her hands on it and leaned in. She closed one eye and peered through the peep hole.

Meghan didn't understand what she was seeing at first. There definitely was someone in front of her door but they were facing the opposite direction. She could only see the back of the person's head. She also saw something in the middle. It looked like another person. A woman. But something was not right about the woman. She was standing in a very weird angle. She appeared to be holding a long stick. She was slowly walking towards the man in front of her door.

Meghan drew her head back and widened her eyes.

"What—what the fuck…" She whispered.

What in the world was happening? She had just gone to the bathroom for five minutes and suddenly crazy things were going on in Prime. Did she get transported to an alternate reality or something? With what she was currently witnessing, she would not have been surprised if that were the case.

Mustering up her courage again, she peered through the peep hole once more. One reason was because she thought she recognized the man at her door. And another reason was that she wanted to know what was going to happen.

Was the lady the serial killer? Was she going and hunting people down with her deadly stick? Was the man her next target?

If that were the case, shouldn't she help him?

Then she heard it. It was weak, just barely audible. But she heard it for sure.

"Momo…"

Only one person in the world called her that. The man standing outside was Ray.

Meghan immediately recognized that something was very wrong. Not only had he called her multiple times but he had also showed up to her flat. And it looked like he was being chased by the woman. Meghan didn't understand that last part but she didn't have time to think about that.

She quickly pulled back from the peep hole and started unlocking the door. In one quick swoop, she turned the doorknob and swung the door wide open.

The sudden movement of the door must have caught Ray off guard because he fell backwards through the doorway and landed flat on his back.

For a second, he looked dazed. His eyes darted from the ceiling to her.

He finally gathered his bearings.

"The door!" he shouted, "The door! Close the door!"

"Huh?"

Before Meghan could acknowledge what Ray had just said, she heard a horrific growl from the corridor.

She turned towards the woman and finally saw the nightmarish creature with her own eyes. She was nauseating to look at. She was covered with bruises. Her body contorted in inhuman angles. Her yellow dress was covered in thick, red blood. One of her feet seemed dislocated and her mangled black hair hung over her face like a creepy curtain.

Meghan then noticed the stick. She wasn't holding the stick. It was impaled inside her body. She was dragging it along as she inched closer towards them.

"Ohhh…" was all Meghan could manage.

The sheer shock of seeing a harrowing sight such as this had petrified her. Her body erupted in goosebumps and her legs struggled to keep her upright. She leaned against the wall to stop herself from collapsing onto the ground. Meghan couldn't handle the sight of blood. Even seeing a few drops sometimes got her feeling queasy. But seeing this woman completely drenched in the red liquid was too much for her to handle.

The woman wasted no more time. She snarled and started charging at them with her arms outstretched.

Meghan's heart dropped. She had never been more terrified in her life.

"Momo, move!" Ray shouted as he pushed her out of the way and tried to force the door shut.

Unfortunately, he wasn't quick enough to close it. The woman threw herself forward in the nick of time and wedged her shoulder in between the door and the entrance.

"FUCK!" Ray shouted and he struggled to shut the door.

The woman snarled loudly as she stuck in one of her arms and attempted to force her way in. Ray was now pushing the door with his entire weight. His face was red from all the pressure. Soft groans escaped his mouth as he fought a losing battle against the monster.

The woman then stuck her head through and growled at them. Her eyes darted from Ray to Meghan. She bared her teeth at them and started salivating in preparation to tear into their flesh. She snapped at the air several times in their general direction, almost as if foreboding what was to come.

"Momo…" Ray said panting, "Help me."

Hearing Ray's voice seemed to have snapped her out of her trance. Meghan steadied her feet and took a second to wind up. She then threw herself against the door with all her might.

The door slammed into the woman's neck who howled loudly. The sounds were deafening but both Meghan and Ray didn't stop pushing. They used every ounce of their strength to close the door, even if it meant decapitating their unwelcomed guest.

Both their efforts seemed to be paying off as the door started closing gradually. A few loud snaps echoed through the doorway. Meghan didn't know if it was coming from the door or whether it was the sound of breaking bones. But she didn't stop pushing. She had never exerted herself as much as this in her entire life. Her arms felt heavy. Her body was screaming at her to ease up. But she pushed on. She had to. It wasn't just her life on the line.

The woman's head was now getting crushed between the door and doorframe. Her once pretty face was slowly getting squashed beyond recognition. Her voice became muffled as the door crushed her jawbone. Her horrid snarls were reduced to suffocating grunts.

"Momo," Ray called, "On the count of three, let go of the door for a second then push it as hard as you can. Okay?"

Meghan nodded.

"Here we go. One… Two... Three!"

The two of them relieved the pressure on the door for an instant. As the door slowly pushed back towards them, they slammed it with everything they had. The door banged into the woman's head so hard that she recoiled and fell backwards. Before she could even get back up, Meghan shut the door heavily and latched every single lock on it before collapsing onto the ground, exhausted.

"What the fuck…" she panted, "What the fuck was that?"

Ray fell on his ass and looked up at the ceiling. His chest was heaving laboriously. He was barely able to string a few words together, "Don't know… something crazy…. in Prime…. we need…. get out..."

Meghan squinted at him.

"What?" she asked.

Ray scrunched up his face, "Hold on" he said as he tried to catch his breath.

Just then a loud bang came from the front door which made them both jump. A low gargle soon followed. After a second, they heard another loud bang. The woman seemed to be slamming herself into the door in an effort to break it down.

Meghan looked at Ray with concern, "It's gonna hold, right?"

He nodded, albeit a little uncertainly.

"You okay?" she asked after a short pause.

"Yeah, better…"

"What's going on? I'm freaking out right now. Who the hell is that creepy woman? Why is she trying to attack us?"

"Uhh—there's a lot I don't understand but I'll tell you what I do know. Something happened at the main gate a little earlier. I'm pretty sure that was what started it all."

Ray then told her everything he had seen. He tried to not leave out any of the details. He wanted her to fully understand what kind of situation they were in. When he was done, the two of them sat in silence for several seconds.

Meghan didn't know how to react. When she heard the screams from the balcony, she never expected that things were this bad. Bad wasn't even the right word to describe it. This was nothing short of a nightmare. A horrible nightmare that she wished she would wake up from as soon as possible.

The woman slammed into the door again and Meghan's heart dropped.

She jumped to her feet, "Can we not sit here, please? Let's go to my room at least."

Ray grunted in response and got up.

As they walked up to her room, Meghan asked the obvious question, "What do we do now?"

"I'm working on it." He replied.

'That's not very reassuring…' Meghan thought.

"But whatever we do, it'll be together. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

'Okay, that's way too reassuring!' she felt.