The rain, the buzzing electricity in the lights, the man's voice and frantic pacing… The longer Carmo stared at the door – which should've been in splinters because she'd [i]heard[/i] it damnit, she'd heard it crack and shatter and imagined it was bone instead of wood – the more all the sounds meshed together into white noise in her mind. It started off low and hushed but grew and grew until it was deafening. She was blind and dead to the world around her, trapped in the whirlpool of her own thoughts. She'd heard it. She'd heard it and heard every moment of her life wash through her. But she hadn't seen it. Had it even been real? It was certainly real enough to the man. Carmo had forgotten his name already, but not the way his sticky red life seeped through his ruined clothes. 

He was saying something to her, but Carmo couldn't hear him. She couldn't understand.

So instead she just squeezed her eyes shut and turned on her heel. After a deep, shuddering breath, she walked back up the stairs and found the entrance to her apartment. The sound of the door slamming shut behind her was the final note anyone would hear from her for quite some time.

—

1:45 am

Hiko was far too big and far too tired for these chairs. Wicker and wood, the quaint bottom-sized furnishings lined the side of the stairway, a polite distance from the rest of the room. The waiting room chairs were too small to recline in, so Hiko sat hunched forward, thick elbows seated in his lap, looking out at the rain. His coat lay discarded on a second chair, obscuring it entirely in black and grey angles of modern art. A sleeveless polyester blend revealed his muscular arms -- and he'd be lying if he said the bandages didn't make it somehow more stylish. 

He hadn't meant to stick around. Ms. Koizumi had tied up all the loose ends, for better or... For the better. If he left now, her nightmare could end. And his... He could figure it out. 

No matter how much he said it, the front door failed to look any less like a meat grinder, all potential and sharp glass and cheap, breakable, splintering wood. And beyond that... It was a lot harder to be a hotshot all alone in the waiting room at a quarter to 2, one shoulder lacerated to the muscle. Hiko looked down at his hands. 

World Without Words trumpeted from his phone's dated speaker, grainier than he'd expected. All things considered, he was glad he'd forgotten his $300 headphones; his phone's cosmetic case -- all retro pop-art-deco and color abstractions -- lent some reverberating body to the tinny instruments. It was a bug, not a feature.

He had told himself a few times now that he was staying for her. Whatever the hell had happened earlier, the claw was still out there. She was the only one it hadn't ignored. If it had its sights on her, he had to stay and help her fight it. If it had its sights on her, that was his fault -- and he had to take responsibility.

That's what he told himself. But there he sat, still terrified by a [i]door[/i], wondering if this team captain schtick was just an excuse to stay warm.

—

Carmo didn't sleep that night. She tried to wash away the terror, but it stained her skin like a tattoo. She tried to find safety under her covers, but every breath she took moved the fabric, the friction creating a noise that was so similar to that awful scratching. When she did manage some sleep, it was of a tall bleeding stranger, and shattered wood – shattered bone. 

While in the darkness her apartment was a haven, in the morning it was nothing but a reminder that curled her stomach. As the morning light stretched across the sky, the events of just hours ago seemed more and more like a passing dream. But Carmo still couldn't forget it completely. As soon as the first rosy rays of dawn leaked through her windows, Carmo was out the building's (still undamaged) door. It was the weekend, so she wasn't expected to report into the office that morning. So instead she took her laptop and charger to the nearest coffee shop, trying vainly to return to her article.