Round 10 Transcript

The rain makes every sound ambiguous—water hitting glass, water hitting leaves outside, something moving inside the house. The lamp feels heavy and inadequate in my hands. The back door is still open, a rectangle of blackness framed by the kitchen doorway. My eyes adjust slowly to the dark, seeing shapes that aren't there and missing things that are real. The floorboard creaked again. Definitely not outside. Definitely somewhere in the narrow hallway between here and the front room. I have a knife from the block on the counter—the biggest one, serrated edge, eight inches long. It's not much against whatever's making those sounds. My fingers tighten on the lamp base. This is my house. I know every fucking creak in this place. The intruder knows there's someone home—saw the lights earlier, heard my movements. They're methodically clearing the ground floor now. I can't stay put in the kitchen forever. I need to see what I'm dealing with before it gets to me. The lamp is a heavy blunt instrument if I get close enough. One hit to the head could drop someone. But that means getting close enough for them to grab me or pull a gun. The groaning wood comes again—louder this time, definitely at the far end of the hallway near the front door where the intruder came in. They're moving through the sitting room now, checking shadows. I need to make a decision.

The house breathes darkly around me, wood settling. I move silent on the carpet toward the kitchen where the knives are, flashlight beam tight and focused down. The rain outside is steady and loud, hiding sound. I listen hard for movement upstairs over the drumming. Nothing clear yet. The back door is unlocked—stupid—and the hall is exposed, so I slide against the wall and angle my body toward the stairwell, guns ready, sweeping the space. No heat signature visible in the dark. The lamp on the side table catches my eye for a second—heavy base—and I shift my grip on one of the handguns to hold it with both hands. The wood stairs creak above me softly, definitely movement. Someone's up there for sure now, shifting weight. I count three seconds, then four. Time to push. "Jeane!" I call out sharp and loud into the house, my voice cutting through the rain. "You don't know me, but I'm here for you." Pause. No answer. Good. Let her think I'm someone else, friend maybe, confused, lost, just a voice in the dark. I don't wait—I step fast toward the stairs and start climbing them two at a time, guns up, sweeping left-right-left as I go.