She stands between the doors to the house, the front door open to the night. As she lights her cigarette she looks out into the light drizzle. She can hear it as it hits the metal awning of the house. It's then that she hears a strange clicking sound. She leans out a bit, not far because she's only wearing socks and to step further would risk wet feet. And then she sees it, loping down the street, not like a normal quadruped, but like an ape. It had and apelike body... and it's head. It's head was a mass of antennae and insect-like mandibles. It was clicking with a pair of these mandibles.
Then it stopped and turned. It had no eyes that she could see, but it seemed to stare at her, clicking all the time. She unconsciously took a drag on her cigarette and tapped it before she really reacted. By then, it was charging towards her. She slammed the door closed in front of her. It slammed into the door and knocked it a bit inward. She backed up and opened the other door behind her. It was sturdier and hopefully it would hold.
She ran to her room as it slammed into the front door again and again. She could hear a cracking as the door gave way. By then, she had ran to the place where she had a crowbar hidden. She crouched in her room as she heard it slamming into the inner door again and again. Then she heard the clicking above her head, right outside of the window. It didn't register right away, but she realized that there must be more than one of them. The one at the door stopped it's assault and joined the one by the window.
It was then that she ran, shortly before they crashed through her window, one after another. She ran out the busted front doors, barely squeezing past them. She ran out into the street and was halfway down the block before they busted out of her house. There were apparently two of them. Where were her neighbors? She ran and ran, but they got closer and closer.
Finally she was at the beach. She didn't know why she had come this way. She was barefoot and the sand was covered with snow, the water ice-cold. But the beasts slowed, walking gingerly on the snow towards her. They crept toward her steadily though. She backed away until the water was at her back. The beast leapt at her, but with cold and already numbing feet she leapt to the side, swing the crowbar. It connected with the beast's head, catching on an antenna and knocking it off. The beast clicked loudly and retreated.
Now both were pacing around her in semicircle. She shook her head. She couldn't hope to hold them off forever this way, she would have to take the offensive. Gathering her resolve, she ran at the closest beast, swinging her crowbar at it. It struck a mandible and the beast shrugged back from her. Then the other beast charged at her and she swung at it, managing to block the arm it threw at her. Then she ran back into the water and they both charged her. She ran and they chased her into the water. Suddenly they were even slower and clumsier. She hit at them again and again.
Finally they collapsed in the water. She walked, somehow, back to her shattered home and found her cellphone. She called 911. She didn't dare look at her feet or her hand where she had held the crowbar. The ambulance came and they helped her into it. She was in a daze.
They managed to save all her hands and her feet, miraculously. They let her out some time later. So she tried to find out what had happened to the beasts. She called the police, the newspaper, the coast guard. No one else had seen a thing. She asked her neighbors, but no one had seen a thing. The police looked at the doors and ruled it a home invasion, though she didn't know how. She used the insurance to but better doors. Her extra spending money went to upgrading the windows with bars. In this quiet little town, that was strange.
She took up smoking in the bathroom, with the fan on. Never again did she go outside at night. And everyone thought she was crazy.
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