>>5471825 >>5471908 >>5472012 >>5472296 >>5472442Despite the clear danger in front of you, it takes a bit longer than you'd like to admit for you to fully entrust your weight to the rope. Upon doing so a shiver travels down your back. Whether from the fear of hanging 15 feet in the air without a harness or from the unusually chilly weather, you're not quite sure. You calm down for a moment, making a conscious decision to fix your eyes on your breath condensing in front of you instead of below you. No need to make yourself more nervous about this than you need to be. Then, taking another thud from the door as a signal to go, you begin your descent.
The first thing that you realize is that it's much harder than you expected to descend a free-hanging rope with no footholds. You are effectively carrying around 190 pounds of weight with just your hands, which as someone who can only describe themselves as 'in average shape' at best, is rather unpleasant. But there's nothing to be done for that- you just need to continue. After some careful movement downwards you hear a slight tearing noise, and glance up. Your blanket, rather unsuited for this as it is, has frayed a bit. Nothing more than some small tears though- you should keep going before it gets worse.
Left hand move. Right hand move. Left hand move. Right hand move. Left ha-thunk- oh god the rope is swinging now. You freeze up and try to stay as still as possible. A second or two later, the rope does the same. Letting out a sigh of relief, you glance below you. Your feet are probably lined up with the top of the living room windows, but you're still a little high up. Just do your best to ignore it... the anchor isn't going to suddenly fly out of the window... get down.
As if to contradict your fears, as you begin descending once more you immediately hear another thud, and your rope begins swinging again. Longer this time- uncomfortably long. The rope does eventually stop moving though, and while you do now feel an uncomfortable amount of give at this point, fortunately you're very close to the ground.
It's with a sigh of relief that you feel your feet step into the hedge below you and can finally ease yourself off the rope. A final faint noise from above bids you farewell from the thing, likely your nightstand returning to the floor. You imagine that it could probably be heard from the outside, but, well, it's less of a racket than using the door would've been at least.
You grab your golf club as you catch your breath. You can't afford to rest yet. That climb probably cost you a minute or two, and you don't imagine that door has too long to live. Once that thing gets through it will see the open window and the rope, and it will know what you did. You need to keep going. Your thoughts turn towards heading to your car, or maybe sneaking back inside to confront it, but neither of those are guarantees. The safest thing to do is just keep running.
