“Looking for these?” asked Frankie, jangling a set of keys in his hand. He was leaning out the living room doorway.
Andrew was cornered; inside his very own house – but it may as well have been some dark, deserted alleyway for all the safety it provided now. Andrew looked around and snatched at the first thing he saw, which turned out to be a golfing brolly. He lunged forward, holding the long metal umbrella in front of him like a pike.
Frankie dodged back into the living room. “The fuck you going to do with that? Catch the blood that’s gonna be raining down when I catch you?”
Andrew considered the viability of his weapon and realised it wasn’t going to hurt anyone – at least not enough to win a fight. The only option was to run – but to where?
Andrew eyed the stairs. With panic threatening to explode his heart, he made a break for it. Frankie tried to grab him as he passed, but Andrew managed to fend him off by poking the umbrella into his face. The sharp point found its mark and caused Frankie to flinch back against the wall, clutching one eye.
“Fuckin’ dead man!” he shouted after Andrew. “I’m going to mess you up.”
Andrew rushed up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Frankie continued shouting hateful threats from the floor below, rallying his drug-addled troops into battle. Andrew sped across the landing and headed for the only room he knew that had a lock: the bathroom.
Once inside, he slammed the door shut behind him and turned the lock to: engaged. Then he dragged the linen basket across the tiled floor and used it as a barricade. He collapsed on top of it and placed his back against the door, huffing and puffing like a marathon runner. It would all be for nothing, though. The door was too thin to hold out for long, and upon realising that, Andrew figured out his biggest mistake.
He was trapped.
In any other room of the house Andrew could have escaped through one of the windows, or at least cried out for help, but the bathroom had only a slim, horizontal pane of frosted glass set high into the wall. Even if he broke the glass it was too small to get through.
Andrew gave up, leant his head back against the door. It wasn’t long before Frankie arrived and started to kick it in.
***
“You’re a dead man,” said Frankie, thrusting another kick at the door.
The wood at Andrew’s back was already cracked, splintered, and weakened further with every blow. Andrew pushed against it, trying to brace the wood, but he already knew that it was a lost cause. Frankie was going to get through eventually.
Andrew checked out his surroundings; the bathroom seemed alien to him. Once a room where he could relax, de-stress, and release the worries of the day, it was now his prison; a cage where he was the rat trapped inside.
Another kick struck the door and rattled the fragile woodwork of the frame. Andrew stepped away from the door and begun rifling through the bathroom’s wall cabinets, but couldn’t find a single thing to defend himself with (unless toothpaste had recently been reclassified as a deadly weapon). The recently-renovated bathroom was a jewel of modernist design – which meant it was pretty much empty.
Andrew put his hands on the only thing that seemed even slightly useful and pulled. The chrome towel rail came away from the wall easily, the thin cavity wall offering little resistance. The quality of newer built homes did not compare to the industrious design of Victorian housing, but Andrew was thankful for it right now. However it was also the reason that a large, cracking dent was widening in the middle of the bathroom’s flimsy door.
Frankie was going to get through soon and Andrew prepared himself for it; the earlier option of running no longer available.
“You’re finished, old man,” Frankie shouted through the door, rage filling his voice like steaming liquid into a beaker. “Going to string you up and let your family watch you hang!”