Day 665: 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday - Prompt: house guest

Ms. Maggie Thornton, secretary to the police commissioner in Big Loft, VA, occupier of room 313 in the Rosewood Apartments, woke up with a start. Someone was frantically knocking at her door, and screaming.

Ms. Thornton picked up her baseball bat, and looked through the peephole – it was her cousin Margie, with a huge black eye and busted lip.

“Margie!”

“He tried to kill me – he tried to kill me and he's right on my trail – I just got the door to the apartment building closed behind me, and he broke the glass on the door – don't turn your light on or he'll know to come straight here! He's in the building already!”

Ms. Thornton looked up and yelled –

“Captain Lee! Wake up! Come down!”

“Already here,” he said from the hallway. “Attend to your house guest, Ms. Thornton – I've got this.”

“He must have heard the commotion – he's so attentive!” Ms. Thornton said as she pulled her panicked house guest in and into the bathroom where no light could be seen from outside. “He's from Special Forces – Brett has done his last beating, you can be sure of that!”

The next morning, Mrs. Margie Bell went to press charges on her husband, taken into custody – but not without him showing signs of his futile struggle against apprehension. Two black eyes, a fat lip, a broken nose, and two broken hands – and an added charge of resisting arrest were what he got for his trouble.

“I can't go back to that house – can I stay with you until this is all over?” Margie Bell asked her cousin.

“Of course you can, Margie. Let's go get the things you need from your house, and then you stay as long as you like.”

At her apartment, someone had thoughtfully already provided Ms. Thornton extra groceries by the time she and Mrs. Bell got back home.

“You must have really loving neighbors,” Mrs. Bell said.

“One, at least,” Ms. Thornton said, and then said to herself, “Is that what is actually going on here … has Captain Lee …?”