Chapter Three
Chester, Chester, Chester; thought Gary to himself as he slowly walked towards the door. He was scrambling his brain to see if he could make some sort of connection, even an obscure one, to the name "Chester". But as he stalled to approach the door, whoever was at the door kept pounding on the door as if they were trying to knock the door down with their single fist. No matter how thoroughly he studied even the deepest crevices of his memory, he couldn't connect the name "Chester" with anything at all, even as the front door approached as he slowly slid his feet across the hardwood parlor, ever so shyly.
Finally, he gave up trying to associate the name with anything he was remotely familiar with. He was dealing with something new, foreign even, and possibly a threat. He sped up his pace towards the door, until he faced the light wood grain of his front door. He reached behind the hat rack, grabbing the shotgun he kept hidden behind the hat rack. He kept it there, because Gary had always had a fear of home invasion and burglary that most would call paranoid, he called it common sense.
Gary pumped his shotgun, the iconic Stevens Model 520/620 shotgun, and took a deep breath. He found himself absent mindedly staring into the wood grain of the door, tracing the curves and lines with his mind. Their came another rapping at the door, so heavy and abrupt that it shook the fillings in Gary's old and decayed teeth. Gary swung open the door, stepping back to point the shotgun at the door way, all in one swift motion.
Light shined into the dark house, the agreeable and exuberant chirping of songbirds chimed outside, along with the melodic sound the bamboo windchimes made in the smooth morning breeze. But no person, or even any sort of malevolent force was standing on his welcome mat. For a brief moment, Gary ventured to believe that the pounding on the door could've been the wind. Maybe the wind was much more intense than it was when he opened the door. But there was two flaws with that possible explanations. For starters, the conditions outside seemed nothing but optimal, white fluffy clouds, smooth baby blue skies like acrylic paint, dry pavement, and green grass free of mildew; it seemed hard to believe that wind so strong that it simulated pounding, hard pounding, on the door had just swept through his area. And finally, to Gary at least, it seemed way too perfect.
Gary dismissed the possibility of it just being a freak gust of wind and that his mind was taking advantage of his paranoia, and stepped outside in his white, cotton socks. He still had the shotgun at the ready as he peeked around the corner, towards his driveway and garage, and behind his topiaries that were cut to look like rabbits and other woodland animals. The topiaries served as a very spaced out wall to separate the walkway that connected his driveway and his front porch. After checking around his driveway and front lawn, he stepped back into his doorway.
He almost closed the door, if not had he glimpsed something in the corner of his eye sitting on his door mat. Gary reopened the door, and slung the shotgun over his shoulder by it's padded leather shoulder strap. On the welcome mat, eerily out of place, was a perfectly square, pink box with "For you, Gary" written in eccentrically written, over-the-top, cursive. The longer Gary stared at the box, puzzled, the more uneasy he grew.
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