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"I think you might want to buy a knife."
Claudia's eye never wavered from the peephole as her left hand rose carefully to grasp the button at the end of the security chain.
Even though she wanted to shriek, or puke, or run.
The scrawny young man standing on her well-lit front porch didn't seem very threatening. He actually looked a bit like a grown-up Harry Potter, with his mousy hair and wire spectacles and refusal to raise his head and try to look threateningly yet fruitlessly in backwards through the peephole, like all proper late-night potential dangers should.
Still, she was freaked. She asked him to repeat himself as she quietly pinned home a security device designed to stop any intruder, so long as any intruder weighed less than ninety pounds and wasn't intent on getting inside.
"Please," said the stranger out front. "I think you might want to buy a knife."
Claudia's eye never wavered from the peephole as her left hand rose carefully to grasp the button at the end of the security chain.
Even though she wanted to shriek, or puke, or run.
The scrawny young man standing on her well-lit front porch didn't seem very threatening. He actually looked a bit like a grown-up Harry Potter, with his mousy hair and wire spectacles and refusal to raise his head and try to look threateningly yet fruitlessly in backwards through the peephole, like all proper late-night potential dangers should.
Still, she was freaked. She asked him to repeat himself as she quietly pinned home a security device designed to stop any intruder, so long as any intruder weighed less than ninety pounds and wasn't intent on getting inside.
"Please," said the stranger out front. "I think you might want to buy a knife."
Continue reading Short Story: Door to Door.
