28 Ymiden, 724
.
A beat. Two. Both dissimilar to what he knew was the normal pacing of his heart. It manifested in the form of several knocks at his front door, but Kotton wasn’t expecting anyone. Not during this trial and certainly not at this time. It was time for bed, for fuck’s sake. Who would be pounding on his door at this hour? Still, he timidly made his way to the front of his house before first working up the courage necessary to peek through the hole he had made in order to view whatever guest dared to traipse the steps of his porch before standing at the very pedestal of where icky meant comfort.
“Yes?” Kotton said hesitantly. He kicked himself. He shouldn’t have said anything at all what with how low the moon was hanging. He could have been asleep by now!
To his demise, there was no response. Equally, there was no one to be seen through the little peep hole he had constructed. His initial reaction was to brush off the whole thing. Perhaps it had been someone playing a prank; knocking on his door before immediately leaving so as to force him to opening his door only to address no one in particular.
Very funny.
But no.
Kotton was tired and he was achingly in need of a good sleep. He had already brandished his pajamas, brushed his teeth, and made sure to meet the needs of his pets, food, attention and all. He didn’t have much energy left to play games with adolescent hooligans. He didn’t even have any energy to read three sentences of the book he had borrowed from the public library. His ultimate goal was to sweep his legs under the soft blanket of his bed and close his eyes until he found himself making ground in the dreamworld- lucid or not.
But there was still this unforgivable knocking sound- loud enough to peeve someone who had long since decided he couldn’t hear very well.
Throwing the covers off his body and depositing his legs onto the carpeted floor, Kotton made aggressive strides toward the front door. He peeked through the peephole again before applying pressure to the door’s handle. And still, there was no one there.
Apparently being deaf still didn’t grant you peace, not when you had a fucking hoodlum wracking their knuckles against the expensive wood annointing the front of your door. If there were to ever be a sound alarm created to notify you of a guest, Kotton would waste no time dismantling it. Fuck his inability to recognise and ultimately catch onto sounds as quickly as most. There would be no noise, at all, in his household so long as he was alive and breathing.
Silence was something to be cherished. A virtue, have you. And he would be lost without it.
Nevertheless, there was yet again, another heart-pounding, infuriating, aggressive and loud pounding on his front door. Kotton wasn’t furious. He wasn’t even aggravated or filled with rage at the overbearing volume of said sound. No, he felt frightened instead.
He had gone to his front door, looked into his peephole and had found no one there not just once but two times at least and that was more times than he wanted. Paranormal, cunning, uncanny or not, he was not having any of it. In fact, he chose to shove his sleep-deprivation as far as he possibly could in the other direction so that he was more confident that his immediate attention toward this nuisance was less crazy than he thought it to be. Because, yes, he was going crazy. It was now, this very situation, that Kotton wished his impaired hearing was less dysfunctional. Actually, he hadn’t put it past him the various ‘odd cases’ of sounds he might experience by being mostly deaf. He hadn’t taken the time to think about the ‘auditory hallucinations’ that may come from being hearing inept. But since he was thinking about it now, maybe what he had heard was nothing at all. Maybe he was as sleep deprived as he felt. This was encouragement enough for him to sensically wander back to his bedroom. His bed was calling him once again, inviting him to lay his body across the mattress and close his eyes. And no, this wasn’t an auditory hallucination, at least not this time.
But that fucking knocking sound.
It came again!
Kotton knew right away that this was no sensory mirage. There was someone or something at his door and they were knocking on it.
He flew the blankets he had just covered himself with to practically fly past the kitchen, past the living room, to address whoever or whatever seemed to be requesting his attention behind the front door.
But still there was no one there.
Now was the time to give in to any and all forms of paranoia. Kotton placed upon his skull an imaginary soldier’s cap and readied himself for war. If he was going to be played with, then he might as well play.
The first thing he did was strategically place every chair and couch cushion he owned against the front door. He moved chairs, tables, other random pieces of furniture so that he had made himself a rudimentary barricade. Providing protection first was the most pertinent thing any warrior did.
Once he had scavenged the entity of his home for things that would make great barriers against whoever or whatever was trying to invade his home, Kotton deployed his next trick. He needed to plan out rosters for his team. There was Imogen. He had placed her as backup, in case the criminal trying to infiltrate his home made it past all the barriers he had just positioned against the point of entry. With her claws, she could swipe at ankles and with her teeth, she could chew at limbs, rendering enemies incapable of advancing further onto his property. Next on the docket was Spirit. He had her positioned at the front, since she would be the one to alert of any unusual activity. She would be the whistleblower, giving advance notice of any impending attacks onto his person. Lastly, there was Twig. Well… there was Twig. Kotton decided to strike out his name since he couldn’t come up with any duty he could perform that was beneficial to the situation.
With that out of the way, Kotton focused his attention on the study of the infrastructure, the quality that made up his front door. It was the only passage inside his outside, not including the many windows occupying various parts of his house. Wait- had he made sure those were shut and locked tight?
Five minutes max- that was how long it took him to vault across the coffee table, pivot himself around the corner that met hallway from living room, and jump the hurdle that was Imogen’s favourite cat toy. In his haste he had found that the bathroom window had in fact been left open. It took him mere seconds until he managed to bring the pane down and latch it so it rested harmoniously against the rest of the window sill. He still needed to return to the living room though, and that required additional speed and endurance. He softened a breath of stale air and held it as he once again jumped the hurdle that was Imogen’s favourite cat toy, manoeuvred his body to refrain from hitting his side against the corner that separated hallway from living room, and once again leapt himself over the span of the coffee table.
Since every entry point into his place of comfort had been closed, locked and blockaded from any external attempts at access, a faint sense of relief enveloped Kotton’s shoulders. He had done his due diligence in making sure his fortress was impenetrable.
After he had found solace in feeling comfortable with the methods he used to make his house more secure, there came another knock.
A beat. Two. Both dissimilar to what he knew was the normal pacing of his heart. It manifested in the form of several knocks at his front door, and Kotton still wasn’t expecting anyone. Whoever this indignant and ill considerate person was, they would boil his peace of mind until there was nothing left but tiny pieces of salt, floating nebulously in the heated waters. Although, apart from feeling how he felt, he wouldn’t act. He retained his being and what was left of his composure as if frozen by a winery breeze far below temperature of anyone’s ability to survive.
One. Two. Three. The knocks were so loud. So loud.
That was all he needed to continue his logistical measures. He wrote out his plan, organising schedules that included his family. He insisted that Imogen would watch the front until the sun gave its last shine before falling into the horizon. Then, Spirit would relieve her and observe the first most place where any attack would likely commence. She would stand guard until the lunar sphere shifted in the sky and gave way to day break, where Twig… Kotton scratched out his name one again before writing his own in the same section. Kotton would debrief Spirit once the sun glimmered against the morning sky. These scheduled shifts would undoubtedly ensure no stranger worm their way into his palace.
He listened.
And listened.
And he placed his better ear against the wooden panelling of the front door. And listened. He listened for several minutes and those minutes grew into hours before Kotton felt confident that there would be no additional knocking this very night. Still he stayed, lying just before the front door for an additional two hours or more before solidifying his belief that there would be no additional knocking.
Finally did the calling of his bed make sense. Finally did the comfort of his mattress, blankets and pillow coerce him to fall into restful slumber.
“Yes?” Kotton said hesitantly. He kicked himself. He shouldn’t have said anything at all what with how low the moon was hanging. He could have been asleep by now!
To his demise, there was no response. Equally, there was no one to be seen through the little peep hole he had constructed. His initial reaction was to brush off the whole thing. Perhaps it had been someone playing a prank; knocking on his door before immediately leaving so as to force him to opening his door only to address no one in particular.
Very funny.
But no.
Kotton was tired and he was achingly in need of a good sleep. He had already brandished his pajamas, brushed his teeth, and made sure to meet the needs of his pets, food, attention and all. He didn’t have much energy left to play games with adolescent hooligans. He didn’t even have any energy to read three sentences of the book he had borrowed from the public library. His ultimate goal was to sweep his legs under the soft blanket of his bed and close his eyes until he found himself making ground in the dreamworld- lucid or not.
But there was still this unforgivable knocking sound- loud enough to peeve someone who had long since decided he couldn’t hear very well.
Throwing the covers off his body and depositing his legs onto the carpeted floor, Kotton made aggressive strides toward the front door. He peeked through the peephole again before applying pressure to the door’s handle. And still, there was no one there.
Apparently being deaf still didn’t grant you peace, not when you had a fucking hoodlum wracking their knuckles against the expensive wood annointing the front of your door. If there were to ever be a sound alarm created to notify you of a guest, Kotton would waste no time dismantling it. Fuck his inability to recognise and ultimately catch onto sounds as quickly as most. There would be no noise, at all, in his household so long as he was alive and breathing.
Silence was something to be cherished. A virtue, have you. And he would be lost without it.
Nevertheless, there was yet again, another heart-pounding, infuriating, aggressive and loud pounding on his front door. Kotton wasn’t furious. He wasn’t even aggravated or filled with rage at the overbearing volume of said sound. No, he felt frightened instead.
He had gone to his front door, looked into his peephole and had found no one there not just once but two times at least and that was more times than he wanted. Paranormal, cunning, uncanny or not, he was not having any of it. In fact, he chose to shove his sleep-deprivation as far as he possibly could in the other direction so that he was more confident that his immediate attention toward this nuisance was less crazy than he thought it to be. Because, yes, he was going crazy. It was now, this very situation, that Kotton wished his impaired hearing was less dysfunctional. Actually, he hadn’t put it past him the various ‘odd cases’ of sounds he might experience by being mostly deaf. He hadn’t taken the time to think about the ‘auditory hallucinations’ that may come from being hearing inept. But since he was thinking about it now, maybe what he had heard was nothing at all. Maybe he was as sleep deprived as he felt. This was encouragement enough for him to sensically wander back to his bedroom. His bed was calling him once again, inviting him to lay his body across the mattress and close his eyes. And no, this wasn’t an auditory hallucination, at least not this time.
But that fucking knocking sound.
It came again!
Kotton knew right away that this was no sensory mirage. There was someone or something at his door and they were knocking on it.
He flew the blankets he had just covered himself with to practically fly past the kitchen, past the living room, to address whoever or whatever seemed to be requesting his attention behind the front door.
But still there was no one there.
Now was the time to give in to any and all forms of paranoia. Kotton placed upon his skull an imaginary soldier’s cap and readied himself for war. If he was going to be played with, then he might as well play.
The first thing he did was strategically place every chair and couch cushion he owned against the front door. He moved chairs, tables, other random pieces of furniture so that he had made himself a rudimentary barricade. Providing protection first was the most pertinent thing any warrior did.
Once he had scavenged the entity of his home for things that would make great barriers against whoever or whatever was trying to invade his home, Kotton deployed his next trick. He needed to plan out rosters for his team. There was Imogen. He had placed her as backup, in case the criminal trying to infiltrate his home made it past all the barriers he had just positioned against the point of entry. With her claws, she could swipe at ankles and with her teeth, she could chew at limbs, rendering enemies incapable of advancing further onto his property. Next on the docket was Spirit. He had her positioned at the front, since she would be the one to alert of any unusual activity. She would be the whistleblower, giving advance notice of any impending attacks onto his person. Lastly, there was Twig. Well… there was Twig. Kotton decided to strike out his name since he couldn’t come up with any duty he could perform that was beneficial to the situation.
With that out of the way, Kotton focused his attention on the study of the infrastructure, the quality that made up his front door. It was the only passage inside his outside, not including the many windows occupying various parts of his house. Wait- had he made sure those were shut and locked tight?
Five minutes max- that was how long it took him to vault across the coffee table, pivot himself around the corner that met hallway from living room, and jump the hurdle that was Imogen’s favourite cat toy. In his haste he had found that the bathroom window had in fact been left open. It took him mere seconds until he managed to bring the pane down and latch it so it rested harmoniously against the rest of the window sill. He still needed to return to the living room though, and that required additional speed and endurance. He softened a breath of stale air and held it as he once again jumped the hurdle that was Imogen’s favourite cat toy, manoeuvred his body to refrain from hitting his side against the corner that separated hallway from living room, and once again leapt himself over the span of the coffee table.
Since every entry point into his place of comfort had been closed, locked and blockaded from any external attempts at access, a faint sense of relief enveloped Kotton’s shoulders. He had done his due diligence in making sure his fortress was impenetrable.
After he had found solace in feeling comfortable with the methods he used to make his house more secure, there came another knock.
A beat. Two. Both dissimilar to what he knew was the normal pacing of his heart. It manifested in the form of several knocks at his front door, and Kotton still wasn’t expecting anyone. Whoever this indignant and ill considerate person was, they would boil his peace of mind until there was nothing left but tiny pieces of salt, floating nebulously in the heated waters. Although, apart from feeling how he felt, he wouldn’t act. He retained his being and what was left of his composure as if frozen by a winery breeze far below temperature of anyone’s ability to survive.
One. Two. Three. The knocks were so loud. So loud.
That was all he needed to continue his logistical measures. He wrote out his plan, organising schedules that included his family. He insisted that Imogen would watch the front until the sun gave its last shine before falling into the horizon. Then, Spirit would relieve her and observe the first most place where any attack would likely commence. She would stand guard until the lunar sphere shifted in the sky and gave way to day break, where Twig… Kotton scratched out his name one again before writing his own in the same section. Kotton would debrief Spirit once the sun glimmered against the morning sky. These scheduled shifts would undoubtedly ensure no stranger worm their way into his palace.
He listened.
And listened.
And he placed his better ear against the wooden panelling of the front door. And listened. He listened for several minutes and those minutes grew into hours before Kotton felt confident that there would be no additional knocking this very night. Still he stayed, lying just before the front door for an additional two hours or more before solidifying his belief that there would be no additional knocking.
Finally did the calling of his bed make sense. Finally did the comfort of his mattress, blankets and pillow coerce him to fall into restful slumber.