Triskaidekaphobia

I see it everywhere now. It never used to be like that, you know? But now, now it's following me. Look at the calendar, it's Friday the 13th. Look at the time, it's 12:13. Go to the damn deli, why it's lucky number 13. I can't shake it. It's like a hungry predator, hypnotically watching its prey, sharpening its claws on a rock while the moon rises overhead. 

I've begun to fear it; the abundant times I catch a glimpse of this simple number is suffocating. Exhausting, really. I don't understand why-- why this number haunts me. It's driven me mad and I can't explain why. I never used to fear it so-- I never used to repeatedly trace the number throughout my docile cream colored carpet. I never used to draw it on my walls and on my skin. I never used to let it consume me. 

I know it's an old wives' tale, black cats and ladders and all that jazz, but bad luck started accompanying me because of it.

First, my boyfriend leaves, then it's my best friend, then my neighbor, then my co-worker. They all start ignoring my phone calls, stop answering their doors. It's disheartening, but then other things start to go wrong, like my TV breaks, (goes all snowy), and the TV people never show. The postman stops bringing my mail, too! Then those two policemen show up at my door, asking about this and that, as if I don't have my own problems to worry about! I'm in my robe and slippers and they get grisly about possibly homicides, as if I could care! Then, oh boy, the next night, two more police men show up, looking for the other policemen! I say, sounds like you've got to sort out your own problems before you start trying to figure out the problems of the city!

I start to see things too; dark things, scary things-- tar black monsters, 13 of them to be exact, that growl and claw outside my window late at night, their gaping maws and canines like rocky, butcher knife sharp cliffs glow an eerie pearly white and sometimes and hauntingly light green. I went to the market once and saw a color swatch that reminded me of the color-- seafoam it was called, and that seemed so delightful, but on these creatures, it was anything but. Putrid and ghastly. 

I rarely sleep now. I sit up all hours of the night just watching them try and shred their way into my room, night after night. I play music to distract myself sometimes. The creatures don't like it and only groan louder, so I turn it up louder, as loud as it can go. 

Oh the landlord didn't like that. Came down once clanking and rattling down those stairs like an old skeleton. Told me to quiet down and I told him that he'd soon regret that, as a few of the creatures had vanished. 

I slammed the door and then actually slept for a couple hours. When I awoke, there was yet again pounding at the door, so I rise from my place on the burgundy rug and open the door to find now the landlords wife. She begins to shout something incomprehensible and it makes my thinking so very hard that I scream and scream for her to quiet down and finally she does. She doesn't speak nor move a muscle. So I whip around and find broken glass right below my window.  

The creatures have gotten in, even after I scrawled the number in blood red lipstick all over the glass, hoping to counteract the bad luck and the menacing creatures as a child hopes a sheet will fend off the demons. 

I can't see them but I feel their hot breath and the room starts to swirl around me, as if they're chasing their tales in a circle, capturing me in a pitch black whirlpool. 

And the only humanity I can acquire myself is the small screwdriver on the floor right next to me. And I take that screwdriver and finally put an end to these 13 creatures of the night. 

The eleven serial killings that have plagued city have finally been solved with the death of Mrs. Kathryn Alastair and apparent suicide of the homicidal maniac herself, thus bringing the headcount to thirteen total deaths.