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Thirty Feet of Infinity
Today.
Ellen wakes up every day--six am, always--to ready herself for work. Outside she sees a normal New England day: gray overcast with high chance of rain.
Her breakfast consists of a bagel with light cream cheese, nothing spectacular. What could she expect on the salary of manager of a small store? Yet, she is riddled with an unseen fear and apprehension in her being. Some inexplicable knot enters her core. As she washes her plate, as she always does, she turned her attention to the television sitting on the counter. The fog outside is covering most of Bangor. She doesn't give it much thought. It would ruin her day to think that today was different.
An exact hour has passed between her waking and her standing next to her door. Through the peep hole of the oak door there was a faint light given by the porch lamp. As she began putting on her shoes that are faithfully waiting for her at the door, the light disappears. She breaks her routine, and peers out. Nothing, nothing is outside, as if something covered the peep hole. At first slightly worried, then terrified as whatever mass is out there passes away from the door. Not a sound, not a step, just a single light reappears through the peep hole from the porch lamp.
Not willing to let anything stop her from getting to work, she goes upstairs to a spare room that once her and her ex-husband slept in. In the spare closet, she pulled out a weapon that only the asshole that was her ex would make: a baseball bat with nails through it.
Carefully tip toeing back to the porch launch; she makes not a sound, like whatever stood at her door. Carefully she slides her hand around the knob like a serpent would do and like that serpent, unrolls her hand to open the door.
Fog there and nothing more. She exist the launch peers about looking for whatever may be there. The grass is wet from the rain and a great whiff of the ocean is present in the air. It is not uncommon but not frequent this far north in Maine. All she needs to do is get to the store near the Husson College and she'll be safe--
As she nears the car a bird caws loudly in the distance but it is muffled by the fog. Ellen turns towards the sound but sees nothing. A white mist only thickens as she looks further and further out. Infinity could be right before her and she'd only see thirty feet of it.
She briskly walks to her car, with a great feeling of terror in her. A thousand eyes hid in this fog and each eye's gaze pierced the fog filling her with the thousand bugs to make her skin crawl. Something of a crickets’ song enters the mist and dies just as suddenly.
One last turn she makes before entering her car, holding the terrible weapon in her hands. She wasn't sure what was out there, but decided to hide it in the trunk just in case. She wasn't going to be late today, or any day.
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