Invasion Day: what's in a name? [Short fiction]

The screen door isn't locked. Or closed.

I switch off the engine and get out of my car, unbelieving, and step onto the short, concrete driveway that runs beside my front porch.

Three steps. One step up. Then two steps.

I stare at the gap between the front door and the splintered jamb without really seeing anything. I take an increment of a step but the door remains open. Or is it almost closed? I can't tell. Pervasive disbelief clatters like hail pellets. 

Did I leave that door open? Shit! Could I really have been so forgetful? I can sometimes be like this, unfocused on the moment.  My thoughts are muddy. They feel inconsequential as I approach my front door. Iv'e never seen it like this before, so expanded, a blown-up version of before. Coming very close to the thin wire, I look inside around the gap. My eyes see the familiar long passageway with the daylight at the end but it's from another time or like some film set. The unfamiliarity of it scares me.

I feel my heart at last and the reality which accompanied me to that entry-way disappears and a new universe slams into me. I feel it taking me over. I don't know what to do. I can't take my eyes away from that slit. The rules have changed and the nature of my old life bleeds like dust.

There's someone inside. I hiss an obscenity. 

I step back and find myself sitting on the low wall that fronts the porch, my arms braced like staves against the bricks. The word breathes out of me. Fuck! What if there is actually someone inside? But I don't think about that. Can't. I reach the long way forward and pull the lightweight screen towards me, push open the heavy wooden door with my right hand and walk inside my house.

I see nothing, no one. I begin breathing again. I walk the length of the passage and notice nothing. Perhaps I'm imagining this. It's only later that I will notice that I'm trembling and that I have suddenly weak knees. I pass my sitting room and the two bedrooms on my left, noticing how very long that passage actually is. I hear nothing from the adjoining unit, across the double-brick dividing wall.

The brightness of the kitchen and dining area momentarily startles me. Without warning or even volition, I stop. Something's wrong. I don't know what and I can't see what but something isn't right, not where it should be.

Not where I left it.

My iMac is gone - or maybe misplaced, or ... but the modem isn't. It's there, see, buddy. It's there under the table where it was on Friday when you left. Keyboard, mouse, power chord and extension - what the fuck? The space they have left seems bigger now than in that previous universe.

I begin to pace around the tiled room, tiles that make that room even bigger now. Hollow. Not mine. I feel my hands move on their pendulum arms and enfold the back of my head.

Fuck! Fuck! and with venom, again: fuck!

I've been burgled. My home has been burgled. I stand there, trembling and weak-kneed ...

I retrace my steps towards the big-bang of this new universe, but not quite. I move through the familiar door frame. A draw in my bedroom remains ostentatiously open and I almost feel the breath of their ghostly departure (it must be "them" I imagine, decide). My tablet and mini laptop also gone, wrapped in a single pillowcase (there's the other one, solitary) with the other small stuff. I can see a brown button staring at me like an eye from the carpet. I dares me to pick it up but an instinct stops me from touching it.

I check the wardrobe, standing in the twilight between the two open doors, afraid.

Later, after the police have left, I will realise that my rings, cuff-links and watch are also missing, but right now I'm determined to find every last bit of evidence that strangers have been inside my home. I walk the length of the house again and eventually I am pushing the front door open further with my foot and brace my back against the flimsy security door to open it. I just want to ... actually I don't want anything right at this moment so I fasten my eyes on the creek reserve across the road and the row of houses on the other side, two hundred metres away. It has always been a pleasure to have that stretch of greenery at my doorstep.

I have been watched. Possibly from over there. I feel helpless. I am being watched.

I ring the police. They come quite quickly. They inspect and nod their heads. I answer their sparse questions. They are talking to me.

"You're pretty lucky, you know. Most of the time the houses are trashed."

"What?" I say.

"Looks like these guys knew what they wanted, quick in-and-out job."

The other cop says: "We'll let you know what happens, but we can't promise anything. Are you insured?"

"Insured? No. I'm not insured." I tend to trust people.

"Dusting for prints is next to useless because they didn't have to touch anything with their hands. Jemmied the security door and used their feet to bash the door open. And wood's not good for prints."

The tall guy tells me: "You can clean up now. We're done but you'll get a report from us for the landlord and the Estate Agency. You won't have to pay for repairs."

"Thanks, fellas. Thanks for your help," is all I can squeeze out. Their eyes are supportive, handshakes firm and brotherly.

I watch then leave, their police car disappearing around the far corner. They are good people, I tell myself. They'll do their best.

I walk to my car, get my travelling bag and hear the remote lock snap as I secure the vehicle. The garage door slides closed with a gentle thud.

This must be what it feels like. A home invasion. 

I walk across the tarnished threshold, push the door against the shattered lock and hope to god that the flimsy latch will hold for the night.

Whatever it might bring.

Much later I close my eyes against the darkness.

The deep realisation that it wasn't only my home that had been invaded follows me into unconsciousness.