Ava

What a day.
My feet felt tired and heavy, pressing painfully against the sides of my shoes with each step I took. Maybe some sole inserts would help with the pain. I’d been meaning to get new ones, but a good pair of shoes (the kind that wouldn’t split open within a few weeks), was over my budget. If I invested in cheap ones, they’d run down faster than I could snap my fingers, and I would have wasted twenty or thirty bucks that could have gone to a decent pair. So, I’d have to live with the shoes I had for now.
Exhaustion tugged at me like an unrelenting ache as I gathered my mail from the downstairs box and then treaded up the stairs, avoiding the rickety old elevator at all costs. I’d lived in this building for years, and only once or twice had I ridden the thing up. The entire building was old and run down, and the maintenance man that was supposed to be around every day checking on things had only made an appearance half a dozen times over the years. I didn’t trust it otherwise. Better safe than sorry, I figured.
The third floor was empty, like usual. Paint peeled from the walls on either side of me, but it was clean, cleaner than many buildings on this side of the city. The tenants were quiet, too. The entire building was. Every once in a while, I’d run into a drifter or some teenage kids looking for trouble, but for the most part, even the homeless people who walked the sidewalks outside paid me no mind. My complex wasn’t the safest building in Seattle, but it was habitable, and the rent was a steal. That’s all anyone could ask for, wasn’t it?
Arriving at my front door, I stopped just briefly to take a breath and dig for the keys in my purse. I felt so tired that I wasn’t even sure I would make it inside and to my bed. I wasn’t necessarily physically drained, but emotionally. Dealing with the teens at Meadowbrook every day was trying, and sometimes it downright sucked. But even then, even when I got home feeling like something that got dragged out of a dumpster, I never regretted my work and the people I’d grown to care about. I was just---tired.
I stuck the key in the door to open it, stopping short when I realized the deadbolt wasn’t locked like I had left it this morning. That couldn’t be. Even in a charming city like Seattle, the crime was still so high in some areas (especially mine) that locking houses and car doors were inevitable for people. It was a habit, a natural reaction. I never forgot a step like that, especially since my place had been broken into a year prior. Since then, I hadn’t skimped on safety.
Feeling on edge suddenly, I yanked off the lid of the pepper spray I had hooked on my key chain. A friend had given it to me a few days before my move to the big city, but I never had to use it—or even thought I might have to use it—until now.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door a crack, hesitated, and opened it further. It didn’t dawn on me to call the police. Not yet anyway. If I had just forgotten to lock the door, I didn’t need that kind of humiliation. I wanted to check things out myself first.
I stepped inside, pepper spray poised and ready to fire. My house was dark aside from tiny candles flickering all around me. Confusion fogged my brain, and a trill of fear shot down my spine. I reached over to fumble for the living-room light in the dark. However, before I could get my hand on it, a large, hulking figure emerged from the darkness, walking toward me. I shrieked, terrified, and closed my eyes just as I slammed my thumb down on the pepper spray and lunged forward, screeching like a banshee.
Whoever had broken into my home had picked the wrong person to mess with.