The challenge at The Lightning and the Lightning Bug is to offer up a killer opening line and then follow it up with only five additional lines.
She stared defiantly into his eyes on the other side of the kitchen window refusing to blink as her hand skimmed items in the drawer finding the butcher knife and gripping it in her hand. She heard the thud as he dropped to the ground from his perch on the water meter. Half crazed she raised the knife above her head and turned towards the kitchen door throwing it wide open. He had pursued her long enough, now she intended to put an end to it once and for all. She ran screaming into the night prepared to do what needed to be done. He had pushed her so far outside herself that she was willing to bring bodily harm to another living being something that she would have found abhorrent six months earlier.
Author’s note: I had a stalker for a while in college. This incident followed months of threatening phone calls, other window peeking incidents, and a break-in. Something about seeing his face hovering on the other side of the window over the kitchen sink moved me from feeling victimized to enraged. At that moment I decided I wasn’t going to take another day of this.
What he didn’t know was that my roommate was in the next room reporting a window peeker to the 911 operator. So, I knew the police were on their way.
I think the unexpected shock of a mad woman bursting into the night screaming and brandishing a butcher knife was more than he bargained for as he ran scrambling for cover of darkness.
To my daughters, this was not a good choice on my part!
