The Stranger

The Stranger

Part One – The House

It was a late summer night and Melody was on her way home. She had gotten off work early, but had to stop by the store on the way home to get some flowers for her garden. She looked at her watch; seven o'clock already, the evening was slipping away fast. As she turned the first corner on the street in the neighborhood she lived in, she saw the same men standing out on the street. It seemed like they were always waiting for her, making lewd gestures and trying to get her to pull her car over. As usual she locked her doors and rolled the windows up tight, glad that she had paid the extra money to have dark tint put on the windows. She could see them but they couldn't see her. That was the way she liked it. They were low-life's, a bunch of niggers, spicks and poor-white trash. Weren't even worthy of her speaking to them.

She let out a small sigh as she turned the final corner in her neighborhood, she was glad to get off of that street. The section of houses in the front of her subdivision had changed dramatically since she first moved in. The back section had the much "nicer" homes, they cost almost twice as much as the ones near the front. Even so she had placed her house up for sale. She had cursed the realtor that had sold her the house. She had purchased the house during the winter months, nobody was outdoors. Though the first part of the neighborhood did not look that impressive, the part that she moved in was very exquisite and the price was more than reasonable. Four months later, spring arrived and the men started hanging out on the streets. It wasn't until then that she realized why the house had sold for so cheap.

After a few of the men had actually followed her down the street to her house one day, she hired a contractor to make her home more secure. She had a 16-foot privacy fence installed all the way around her yard to prevent anyone from seeing in. The patio was completely screened in with glare screen. This was a new type screen that prevents someone from seeing inside of it unless they are at least 5 feet from the house. The garage door was put in with a sensor that would beep if anyone was within ten feet outside of the door when it tried to close. This should give her a warning if one of "those people" should try to run inside of the garage before the door closed. She could at least lock the door and stay inside of the car.

Finally she had burglar bars installed. Not typical bars, but bars that were hidden inside the glass window and when the windows tinted (which they did automatically during the daytime), you could barley see the bars inside of them. There was a sensor installed on the windows so that even if she raised them and forgot to lower them, they would automatically close if they felt pressure being placed on the sill. The sensor also detected if something was blocking it from closing and would not lock down all the way, but as an added precaution, it could only be raised back up from the inside.

Yes, she was proud of the security system she had for her home. No-one could get in unless she wanted them to. Her friends said that she had paid too much for all the security. She told them; "when I lay down in the evening to go to sleep, I go to sleep! How about you?"

Melody pulled the car into her garage, went in the house, placed the flowers on the ledge by the window and quickly changed clothes. It was late and she wanted to get into her back yard to finish planting her flowers. She grabbed her yard shoes off of the shelf as she headed out the door onto the back deck. After putting on her shoes she realized that she had left the flowers inside the house. She reached through the windows and grabbed the flowers, being sure not to lean on the window sill and make the window fall. Melody took the flowers and planted them in the yard. It took her a couple of hours, but she finished before it was too dark.

She sat on the patio chair, took off her shoes and sat them on the floor. She had no sooner gotten her shoes off when the phone rang. She was expecting a call from an important client and did not want to miss it. She reached through the window to grab the phone. She had almost grabbed the phone when she tripped over her shoes that she had sat on the floor, landing on the window sill, before she could do anything else, SLAMM!!, the windows fell down on her neck. She let out a loud scream of pain. The windows felt like it had broken her neck. The contractor must not have adjusted the settings correctly for this window, she thought to herself.

While she was cursing him, she started to pull her head out. Her face froze with panic when she realized the window had come down so hard that her head was actually stuck in the window! She couldn't pull it out and she couldn't raise the window. She looked around the room as much as she could, trying to see something she could grab. The phone was right there in front of her, still ringing. If she could push the receiver off she could send for help. She strained to reach the receiver, it was right at the edge of her fingertips, just a little bit more. Just as she finally reached it and pushed it off of the hook, it stopped ringing. "Hello, hello, are you there?" she yelled into the phone. She received nothing but silence. Finally the operator came on with the recorded message telling her to hang up the phone.

She groped the wall outside the window to see if she could find anything. As she groped along she felt the hoe that she had been using to plant the flowers. She grabbed it and began beating on the side of the house and yelling, hoping someone would hear her and come to her rescue.

After about an hour, she started to get tired and laid there with her head stuck in the window – crying. She started to believe that she would die like this and was about to give up hope when she found another burst of energy, she was not going to die this way!! It was about eleven o'clock at night, it was quiet, surely someone would hear her now. She grabbed the hoe and slammed it up against the side of the house as hard as she could and screamed for help. Just when she thought no-one had heard her, she heard the patio door open. Finally, someone had come to help her!