She yawned. It was 1am. With finals around the corner, sleep
was for the weak. She looked around the living room. It was pretty much bare,
with the exception of eight pairs of legs sprawled in every direction; brooding
over notes or a textbook. Two had fallen asleep. Lisa adjusted her seat. She
had been glued to the floor for almost three hours. She stretched out and
supported her chin with a pillow. The edge of the curtain tickled her feet. It
was too short to cover the entire sliding door, and hung about half a foot from
the floor. She looked out the tinted glass and started chanting her lessons.
The grill outside started to blur from her vision, and then her friends’ voices
started drifting further and further away.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Lisa woke up abruptly. Her notes at the edge of her fingers
had slithered out of their folder. She opened her eyes, allowed her vision to
focus. Her housemates were all sound asleep, she thought. There was no sound
save for the calming whirr of the ceiling fan and the tick tocks of the clock.
Her eyes adjusted to the grill, beyond the curtain. Then she froze.
You know that moment when your soul momentarily leaves your
body and you can sort of “see” yourself down below? Well, that’s how Lisa felt.
Outside, right outside the sliding door, there was another
pair of eyes staring at her. Staring at her through the crack under the
curtains. Eyes that had been watching her sleep.
She screamed.
Immediately, her housemates awoke and a commotion started.
Then they heard someone jump the fence. They had locked it earlier. Whoever it
was, had jumped the fence and lain outside their house watching them. Only God
knows for how long he’d been there. Watching them.
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