DAY 24: Next Door to Dead

A man wearing a polo shirt with an alligator on the tit strolled up the walkway, climbed the stoop in three quick steps and, looked both ways down the lawn to see if anyone was watching. Of course, no one was.

A knock on the door caught Lucy off-guard. Not surprisingly, when she checked the clock it said 11:45 p.m. Who in limbo would pay me a visit at this time of day? She wondered, not without a bit of necessary suspicion. Lucy was trying to make up her mind if she should just ignore the knock and go back to sleep (it was past her bedtime) when her uninvited guest got her decided by hammering on her door like a really upset kid who returned home from school to discover momma had left for work and forgot to put the key under the flower pot by the door or under the door mat.

If you don’t come answer the door miss, the pounding seemed to say. I’m gonna wake up all ya neighbors. And really, one of the neighborhood dogs had begun to let out a woof. What Lucy didn’t want was for Mrs. Rosa, the woman next door, to come tell her to answer her door with her sonorous voice. Lucy dragged her butt out of bed. She hated having to stay awake past her bedtime. It was one of her pet peeves.

Lucy hesitated for the space of 60 seconds when she got to the door. She was a single woman who lived alone; she was vulnerable. The consciousness of her situation came upon her like a heavy blanket. She almost turned on the lights but thought the better of it. I can’t imagine any of my friends visiting at this hour, she thought, as she turned and did a recheck of the time, picking out the clock, hung above her plasma on the wall by the streak of light that peeped in through the crack in the curtain. It is midnight! She exclaimed under her breath.

Burglars were unheard of in her part of town and that seemed to give her a little relief that whoever it was wasn’t there to rob her. Yet, she felt the alarm called sixth sense going off inside her. Could it be possible that? . . . The thought sent shudders through her. What if one her courtroom cases had instigated such hate to warrant an attempt on her life? (Lucy was a lawyer.) And now, that she brought her mind to bear on this new fact, terror seized her in a deathly grip. She’d won a case for a guy once. He was to inherit about a million bucks from his former boss. On his way home, the guy was paid a visit by the bomb squad-the mob’s version.

Great drops of sweat soaked into her pajamas that Lucy looked as if she had fallen into the bathtub while reaching for her robe. She reached for the door again then, as an afterthought picked up a side stool and held it up like a player set to receive a service in a tennis match. For some odd reason she couldn’t explain, she didn’t feel like calling the cops. Lucy unlocked the door by only a squeak leaving the latch on. And stepped back to about 8 meter safety radius incase the stranger decided to kick in the door.

Lucy called out in a voice that didn’t quite sound like her own to her ears, “Who are you and what the hell do you want?”

            “Just me. I got a message for you.”

Lucy tried to place the voice, where had she heard it before. She didn’t think she recognized it from anywhere. But, something else began to happen; her fears began to subside. Somehow, she felt she could trust this person even though she had never seen him before.

            “I got a message,” the stranger repeated. “It’s for you.”

            “Well, slide it in. I’ll grab it from here.” She still wasn’t too willing to give in to the prodding of instinct.

            “I can’t exactly do that, Ma’am.” Shuffling of feet like the guy didn’t know exactly how to proceed. “It’s not exactly a package. It’s a word-of-mouth kind of message.”

            “Can’t you just spit it out and get it over with? Do you gatto be inside to do it? And who sent you?” The last question came by a sudden bust of inspiration.

Eventually, Lucy let the guy in. He was from the future and he’d come to warn Lucy about a case. She was to pass it up or it might turn out to be fatal for her and her future family. But the guy who was bringing the case to Lucy was innocent and he would go to jail if Lucy passed it up.

Notes to myself:

How I work in the dramatic ending is left for the rewrite.

Will Lucy take the case or let it go?

Will the man from the future help her?

What relation does she have with the guy from the future? (Should there be any ties?)

Could I make him Lucy’s future husband but who is forbidden to tell her that bit of info on this assignment or she dies automatically in the future?

What if she’s in critical condition and her husband asked for one more chance to set things right and he is sent to the past to warn her by The Doorkeeper (a mysterious figure who appears and offers to help)?

What if Lucy doesn’t take the chance?