This week’s Story Starter teaser is:
As the sound of a gunshot echoed in the hallway, a woman pushed open the door to my apartment and jumped inside.
Fandango’s Story Starter #254
The Stranger at My Door
As the sound of a gunshot echoed in the hallway, a woman pushed open the door to my apartment and jumped inside.
She slammed it shut behind her, her breathing ragged, her eyes wide with panic.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Please… don’t make me leave.”
For a heartbeat neither of us moved.
The hallway fell silent.
Too silent.
I looked toward the door, then back at the stranger standing in my living room. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty. Rain soaked her coat, and one hand clutched a leather satchel so tightly her knuckles had turned white.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. “I just need five minutes.”
Every sensible instinct told me to call the police immediately.
Every human instinct told me she was terrified.
I nodded toward the sofa.
“Sit.”
She hesitated before lowering herself onto the edge of the cushion, still holding the satchel as though it contained the last piece of her world.
After a long silence, she finally spoke.
“The gunshot wasn’t meant for me.”
I frowned.
“It was meant to scare someone into staying quiet.”
She slowly opened the satchel.
Inside were files.
Photographs.
Documents.
Evidence.
The kind that could destroy powerful people.
“I’ve spent two years collecting the truth,” she said quietly. “Now they know I have it.”
Another silence settled between us.
I realized then that fear has a way of knocking on the wrong door.
Or perhaps…
the right one.
I reached for my phone.
Not to turn her in.
But to call someone I knew I could trust.
Some doors protect us from danger.
Others open because they are exactly where courage is meant to begin.
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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