bad metaphor

Yesterday Eli returned from a trip to the Mayo clinic, a second in a series of horrifyingly barbaric-sounding surgeries on his eyes. During the course of the last two years, he has developed this rare eye condition due to hyperthyroidism that has caused his eyes to bulge out. Luckily, he has good health insurance and access to the best health care you can get in the States, so he did not have to bribe a guy with a rusty knife in a back alley, somewhere. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be recuperating as well. The poor thing has rather intensely bloodshot eyes, and at night he has to wear this gnarly mask that looks like two mini colanders sewn to a Ninja Turtles sash. He looks a bit like a fly. Anticipating his homecoming, I cooked a big feast for him and his parents – by 10:30, both of us were already deep in REM sleep.

At around midnight, I was suddenly roused by the tinny sound of the little gnomes in my cell phone playing the marimbas. Blearily I stumbled through the darkness towards the beachy music, picked up my phone and saw “Unknown.” Now if my wits were razor sharp, like they usually are (ha!), I would have screened it – instead, I answered, “…hello?”

On the other end, slight mechanical background hissing, and then an unfamiliar man’s voice: “so, do you want to talk now?” Innocuous enough words when printed on screen in the safety of daylight, but at midnight from an “Unknown,” rather sinister. In my foggy head, the voice sounded at once wounded and enraged. I was going to say, “Excuse me, do I know you?” but was so startled by the call that I just ended up hanging up instead, and was wide awake by the time I went back to bed. Not five minutes later, I heard what sounded like the front door opening. Debated whether I was safer hiding under the covers, like I used to when I was little and afraid of tornadoes (because I was clearly unable to blow away if I had 20 blankets weighing me down), or getting up to investigate.

Like an unwise horror movie victim, I chose the latter. Tiptoed down, tried both front and back door to discover that they were both locked; heard my roommate laughing from his bedroom. Ah, so he had been the one to come home, and obviously wasn’t being murdered. Good.
Tiptoed back up the creaky stairs to my room, when I saw in the shadowy light from the hallway, the silhouette of a…rifle? A machete, on the floor?! AHH…oh, wait, my roommate had borrowed that air-rifle and knife from my boyfriend for a film shoot*. He’d obviously just returned the items to us by leaving them in our room. Okay, and if the real murderer came, we’d be armed. But, say the murderer were big and strong and wrested these weapons from us…

“Don’t worry,” mumbled Eli, sitting up in bed and looking at me with his fly-face. “If there’s a murderer I’ll scare them away.”

Somewhat put at ease, I resumed slumber.

Now, after a bit of rest and some coffee, I’m wondering if that call was from:
a) a murderer who calls people before he murders them
b) a telemarketer, selling I don’t know what, maybe murder?
c) a jealous, murderous boyfriend misdialing in the midst of an argument
d) a debt collector with the wrong number

* – My boyfriend is the owner of such items for non-sinister reasons. Or so he says.