AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I creep up the three front steps before knocking lightly on the front door and waiting for someone to answer.
“Hello? Is anyone home?” I shout while knocking on the door a second time.
When no one answers after the third knock, I pause before checking the doorknob.
“It’s not breaking and entering if the door’s unlocked, right?” I whisper as I poke my head through the door and scan the room.
“Hello?” I say a little louder this time and freeze, waiting for someone to appear in the darkness.
The light from the front porch streams through the door, allowing me to make out a few shapes in the room. There is a room off to the left of the door, but the door is shut tight.
“If there was someone in there, I’d know it.” I give myself a personal pep talk before continuing to scan the room.
Right in front of me by the closed door is a set of stairs as soon as you enter the room, and off to the right seems to be a small living room. The owners wrapped the furniture around what seems to be a small fireplace.
After a few moments, I step into the door and close it tightly behind me before locking it. Just because the owner was dumb enough not to lock the door doesn’t mean I’m not going to.
Not wanting to take my chance at exploring the rest of the house, I rest my hand on the staircase and run it along the wall until I find the railing. I take a moment to ponder whether I should turn on the flashlight on my phone, but decide against it. I have no idea if there is someone here or not. The last thing I want is to alert the owners to an intruder.
Without a flashlight, the trek up the stairs takes much longer than it should, but I make my way to the top. There is a bathroom directly in front of me and a bedroom to the right.
“Let’s just think of this as a hotel stay,” I say as I step into the bathroom and shut the door. “I mean, a shower and a warm bed shouldn’t be too expensive.”
Without a second thought, I reach behind the curtain and turn on the warm water before stripping out of my clothes. It takes a little longer than I’d like, but the room fills with steam, and I step behind the curtain. I know this probably isn’t the smartest thing to do, but I can smell myself. A shower and warm bed sound a lot better than trekking back to my cold-ass car and waiting to be rescued. The owner of this home could come home at any minute, but the need for a shower seems to have outweighed everything else.
I don’t waste any time in the shower before grabbing a towel off the hook before drying quickly and pulling out a clean pair of panties and a t-shirt to lie in the bed. As soon as I’m dressed, I return the bathroom to its original state before tiptoeing into the bedroom beside it.
Sliding my hand along the right wall, I try to find a light before bumping something soft with my knees. I hope it’s the bed. I lean forward slightly and push my hands into the soft mattress, then move them up the side of the bed.
“Let there be light,” I say into the darkness as I flick the lamp on before flopping down on the bed.
It’s a cozy bedroom with the large bed and another end table with a lamp and a large window and a decent-sized dresser taking up the other wall. Nothing too fancy, but exactly what I’d expect in a home like this.
Just as I drop my bag on the floor beside the bed, I notice some blank sheets of paper sitting on the end table. I can leave a note explaining what happened and beg them not to kill me in my sleep.
I search through the top drawer and come up with a pen. After thinking about what I want to say in the note, I press the pen to the paper and begin to write. I finish quickly before turning off the lamp and climbing into bed. It doesn’t take long for me to get comfortable, and the weight of the day presses down on me.
“Here’s to my possibly last night on Earth being in this amazing bed.” I yawn before I lose the fight with my eyelids and drift off to sleep.
CHAPTERTHREE
BROOKS
“That was enough peopling to last me another year,” I say to myself, pulling at my collar for the millionth time tonight.
I’ve spent the last few hours wining and dining clients, hoping to land the contract for the new housing development being built near the base of the mountain. It could mean steady work for my entire crew, and I’d be set for life. I’ve worked myself to the bone for most of my life, and I doubt I’ll ever stop working, but it’s nice to know that I have a good chunk of money set aside just in case I want to retire before I’m too old to enjoy it. Fingers crossed my meeting tomorrow goes as well as tonight, even though I hated every minute.
“No pain, no gain,” I mumble before climbing out of my truck and heading toward my house.
I moved up into the mountains for a reason, one being the lack of neighbors snooping around. After spending the last twenty-plus years in the Marines, having a quiet place to rest my head is all I need. It’s a pain in the ass in the wintertime, but the solitude is exactly what I needed. A place to escape all the memories of my past and to build a life for myself outside of being a Marine.
That’s the one thing they never tell you about when you sign on the dotted line. They tell you what to eat, wear, and say every day of your life to the point where you’re moving on autopilot. Then when your time in the service is up, they give you a nice certificate and send you on your way. There’s no real class that teaches you how to be a civilian again, or even how to function without someone telling you what to do every day. That uniform became my entire identity, and when I retired, it left me with no idea how to function.
I can’t really complain. I have teammates that are doing far worse than me, and some who had a family to come home to and keep their feet planted firmly on the ground. The only thing I had was a plot of land in the middle of the mountains in Tennessee and a knack for working with my hands that I turned into a lucrative business.
My senses go on high alert as I approach my front door. I can’t put my finger on it, but something is off. I scan my porch, searching for any signs of movement, before turning my attention to the nearby trees. It’s too fucking dark to see more than a few feet in front of me, but I look anyway, prepared for any type of threat that might be coming.
“You’re getting paranoid in your old age,” I say with a shake of my head before climbing the stairs and opening the door.
