Day 4: Safe or Sane

The noise from the kitchen that awakened Nora in the middle of night was just a dream. That was what she told herself when she couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed. She was just imagining things, because she was on such a high alert. This was after all the first time since high school she was spending the night away from her own apartment. No, there was no reason at all to leave Emil’s bed when she was so pleasantly cocooned in blankets.

But when her eyes closed, all she could think about was that someone was there. Inside Emil’s home, when she was supposed to take care of it while he was away. What if they took everything he had, and she did nothing?

Or what if they took Nora while she was asleep, and did unspeakable things to her? The sequence of worries snowballed into a gigantic mass of anxiety that kept Nora too tense to sleep, no matter how much she wanted to.

She turned to face the nightstand and picked up the clock resting on it, just in time to see the seconds hand ticking itself towards the twelve mark, officially bringing the time from 2:40 to 2:41. It felt like her head had been replaced by a bowling ball, but not a wink of sleep was in her eyes.

It still was probably a dream… But now she had to check it out just to calm her nerves. How else was she ever going to be able to sleep again?

With every cell in her body in protest, she climbed up from bed and headed towards the kitchen with a torch she got from Emil’s wardrobe.

Between the blinds of the window under the kitchen sofa, the early rays of sunlight shone through, leaving spots of warm colours on the floor of the kitchen otherwise rendered a blueish hue by the darkness. The light from the torch swept across the room, illuminating the mess that Emil left it in before leaving, just like he left it every day when he was at home. Nora’s conscience wouldn’t permit her to leave anything this untidy while in her presence, but she had only been in his house for two days, and been otherwise preoccupied. And at that moment she was simply too sleep deprived to do anything other than groaning in disapproval.

Something was moving in the corner of Nora’s eyes. As she aimed the light at the shadows, the amber eyes of a brown, black, white and just slightly orange cat shone brilliantly back at her before jumping off the kitchen counter. So it was just Missy, living her own nocturnal life. Her owner was on a trip south to visit his air-**** buddy at the hospital, who was undergoing an operation. And since Nora was the only one of his friends who could be trusted with not burning the house down while he was away, it became her responsibility to take care of Missy while on his trip.

Nora sighed in relief and turned around, only to recoil as she found herself standing face to face with a masked woman, dressed top to bottom in black clothes that snuggly hugged her athletic figure.

Nora looked at the ninja, and the ninja looked back.

“AEEEEEEEHHHH!!!” Nora screamed as she ran past the ninja into the hallway and shut the door.

THUNK!

THUNK!

THUNK!

THUNK!

One after another, the knife-blades pierced the door just as Nora closed it. Silence fell in the hallway while Nora became paralyzed with fear, wondering and hoping that this was just a dream. The door was cut in two by a samurai sword, and like a bolt of lightning Nora ran to the front door and pulled it open. She found another ninja waiting outside, her samurai sword raised above her head. The cat-watcher slammed the door and locked it, as it was pierced by a katana soon after.

Not only did they step out of the kitchen and literally knock on the door, but the ninjas were coming out of the living room as well.

“But… Who the hay are you?” Nora shrieked, “If… If you don’t get out of here right now… I’ll friggin’ call the cops!!”

With a clean swipe of her sword, one of the ninjas cut the phone cable. They snuck closer, as ninjas do, armed with their swords and ninja stars.

Nora looked frantically around, shrinking away as far back as she could but found herself surrounded. The basement door was behind her, the only way out from this terrible situation. She reached for the door handle, but it turned on itself before she could touch it, and the door opened.

A hand reached out from the gap in the door and grabbed Nora, pulling her inside by the collar of her nightgown with such **** that she dropped her flashlight. A tiny inconspicuous black bottle fell from the other side of the door, before being slammed shut and locked.

Nora flicked the switch to the basement stairs, something she was cautious to do since the lightswitch hung outside the wall, without faceplate, from the wire connecting it to a clear light bulb dangling off the ceiling. She found herself less than an inch away from a trim young lady with long chestnut coloured hair hanging down her back. She was about an inch shorter than Nora, though the stranger stood two steps lower than her, so in reality was probably a lot taller.

“...Ah.” Nora uttered, but the stranger pressed her index finger against her lips. Something about her expression calmed her down. Granted, she should have been more worried seeing the mischievous smile and and grey eyes delirious with excitement, but they so reminded her of Emil that she couldn’t help but feel she was in good hands.

Probably.

“Terribly sorry, missy.” The stranger said as she descended the stairs, gesturing to Nora to follow, “We’ve got ourselves a rather nasty infestation of ninjas here! I’m afraid you must find somewhere else to stay tonight!”

Nora gulped, but followed, “I see, but… I don’t actually live here at all. You see, this is…”

“Emil Huhtala’s place.” The stranger ran into what was supposed to be a workshop, but was more like the inside of a barn the way it was organised, “Yeah, I know. He was the one who sent me back here to check if everything turned out great!” The stranger found her way to a red-painted safe, about as high as Nora, but the side of its base only about the size of her foot.

“But…” Nora walked up to the stranger as she fiddled with the combination lock of the safe, “He was the one who asked me to take care of his house while he was away!”

“Oh, sure! I’ve got no doubt you’ve done a tremendous job feeding the cat, watering the flowers, taking out garbage… Yeah, all that he needs done while he’s away!” The stranger pulled on the handle but the door would not budge, “But as it happens, it sort of slipped his mind to tell you this kind of crap can show up, and he asked me to check in, just, you know, in case… And boy oh boy was that a wise decision!”

Nora shook her head in confusion. Before Emil left, he had gone over when to feed Missy and with how much, where to buy and store the cat food, from where his cactuses preferred their water… She could hardly fathom that he forgot to tell her anything important, but she would never have expected potential ninja attacks to be a potential candidate.

The stranger impatiently fiddled with the handle of the safe, and when it refused to open she slammed her fist against the metal. What was she doing with the safe? Was she planning on locking them together in the safe until the ninjas went away? They would be pressed together tightly against one another, packed like sardines. Nora had no ideas what depraved thoughts might come across the stranger’s mind while they would be locked like that.

“Here!” Nora said as the stranger moved out of the way when Nora approached the locker, “Let me try.”

All Emil had told her about the red safe, apart from the combination, was that he kept his vast fortune there ‘just like Scrooge Duck.’ Knowing that Emil used the bank to store his money like everyone else, and that it was no significant figure he would store there anyway, the only thing she could be certain about the safe was that it was not used for that.

Nora spun the knob, first left, then right, then left again and then right an entire rotation.

“Four… Twenty-three… sixty-four… seventeen.”

CLICK!

The door swung open, revealing the bolt action rifle inside, which the stranger swiped along with a cartridge box she attached to the belt of her form-fitting jeans. She looked the rifle up and down with an excited expression deprived of all restraint, “Now we’re talking!”

The stranger slipped five rounds from the box into the magazine-opening by the stock of the rifle, pulled the bolt and aimed the barrel at the door.

“But, wait a moment here!” Nora ran to the stranger, extending her hand but unsure whether to touch a firearm or the one holding it, “You’re not gonna kill them with that thing, are you?”

“First of all,” The stranger said, “If you call her ‘that thing’ in front of Emil, you’ll never hear the end of it. Just an advice, you know? As it happens, her name is Kirsi, and Emil would want you to call her that. But no, I have no intention at all of harming anyone. But if they get a taste of Kirsi’s love, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll think twice before setting foot in this abode uninvited again!”

Nora looked astonished back at the armed and evidently violent young lady, “Exactly what kind of people does Emil happen upon actually?”

“I’d rather say that it’s we who happened upon him”” The stranger said, “But Allison is my name. Pleasure to make your acquaintance!”

“Allison… That sounds American.” Nora said, “In that case, it would explain quite a bit.”

Before Allison could reply, the ninjas entered the workshop, and the stranger shot an empty paint can on a shelf next to the entrance. Rather than scaring them off, the ninja at the front beckoned Allison with the back of her hand, as her teammates flipped in on the scene.

Giving her little choice, Allison pulled the bolt, dropping the empty shell on the floor, and fired again, only for the ninja to duck and remain unharmed. Allison fired again and again, but the ninjas simply jumped and backflipped out of the way every time.

Nora looked impressed at the nimble evasions of the trained assassins as they dodged every single round with speed and precision, “How’s it possible for them to dodge bullets like that?”

“Obviously that’s not what they’re doing!” Allison replied as she checked the magazine, to find it empty, “They’re equipped with technology that destroys bullets before they hit.” The ninjas pulled out their weapons and made themselves ready to charge in, “Okay! I do believe that’s our cue to exit! Come on! Move it!” Allison hid behind a shelf so she could reload.

Nora ran into the garage, which in many ways was an extension of the workshop. The mess took up so much space, Emil had to keep his little vomit-yellow Opel on the driveway, which was occupied by Nora’s mint green Volvo PV444 while he was away.

The garage was where he kept the old bathtub where his still was stored, and where what he called his time machine was kept.

Nora wasn’t sure what kind of bad joke Emil intended with that, but the device appeared to be the likely union of a Formula-1 car and a construction crane stripped of their wheels.

Nora reeled in the chain of the garage door as fast as she could. Too fast in fact, as the chain abruptly tugged back, refusing to move no matter how hard she pulled.

“Oh, god damnit!” Nora yelled as she looked at the gates having ascended not even enough to get her hand between the shutters and the floor. “It’s stuck! What the hell do we do now?”

Allison shot into the workshop as she backed into the garage, “Ah, crap! I hate to admit it, but this is starting to look rather bleak. At this point we don’t have a choice. Jump into the machine!”

Allison dropped Kirsi as a ninja leapt at her with a sai. The young, excitable woman stepped away and dodged the thrust, grabbing the ninja’s arm mid air and throwing her on the ground.

Nora looked around the garage, even though she had an idea what Allison meant. That idea was, after all, unacceptable. Finding no alternative though, she looked perplexed at Allison fighting the army of assassins.

“But you can’t be serious…”

“Listen now!” Allison threw a ninja over her shoulder onto another, “We can squabble about what we should’ve done when whatever’s gonna happen has happened! Now is time for action, and as far as I can see there’s only really one thing to do!”

Nora wasted no time leaping on to one of the two seats of the so called time machine, finding herself in front of all kinds of levers and switches and pedals and metals that she had no context whatsoever for understanding. She found what looked like an oversized bicycle handle in front of herself.

Allison landed on the seat next to Nora’s and rubbed her hands together, “Now let’s see here… We don’t exactly have time to set up a program right now… So this’ll become really exciting!”

“But.. Does it actually work? Are we really going to travel through time?” Nora couldn’t even fathom how silly something like that was, but it would be even sillier to draw any lines of what is too silly on a night like this.

“We can certainly hope!” The stranger, who really became stranger the longer Nora spent time with her in spite of now knowing her name, pulled one of the levers and several differently coloured diodes lit up as the machine started humming in a strange almost mystical way, “Anything can happen right now, but if nothing happens soon there’ll only be slices left of us!”

With that the machine began purring, gears spun and bands of metal spun around orbs of light as if orbiting around it. “Hold on tight!”

They were surrounded by smoke…