Tip One - Knowing Whose Home Alone

Tip One - The first meeting

               The rain started suddenly catching those who were outside unexpectedly.  He watched from the shadows as the two girls shrieked and ran toward the corner.  Even though much closer to him now he still couldn’t make out what they were saying. It didn’t matter though, he didn’t care what they were saying so long as one of them lived close by. They stop briefly at the corner to hug and say their good-byes before one of them ran further down the opposite street. Well that one was probably out. The other ran toward a nearby house and stopped in front of the door. Out came a pair of keys and the door is unlocked. Hopefully this one was the one. He moved forward a few steps forcing his body to stay awake. He knew if he passed out now there would be no chance of being found. The girl opened the door and shook off water before taking off her shoes. He smiled a bit, noticing that she didn’t call out to anyone in the house. She was alone. He moved closer, praising and cursing teen girls that didn’t know how to protect themselves. After the girl’s shoes were off she finally closed the door. But it was too late. He knew enough. He moved as quickly as his body would allow him to. The wound on his shoulder stung and his body felt like it was covered in ice. He stopped in front of her door and listened for talking, just to be sure, before knocking. He heard her as she walked back toward the door and he forced himself to stay awake a little longer. The door opened and the black hair girl looked up at him, a towel in her hair drying it. “Hello, Can I he-“ the words died away from her lips as she saw him. He heard her gasp and the towel dropped.

               “I just…” he found his voice, like the rest of his body, was slowly starting to fail him, “I just need… someplace warm.” He stumbled slightly his legs starting to feel weak. He felt her hand go out as she caught some of his weight. She pulls him into the house and closes the door.

               “Can you stand for… just a minute?” she asks her voice shaking. He nods. He’d be willing to do whatever it took to get warm again. She slowly lets go of him, readying herself to grab him again if needed. Seeing that he would in fact stand a few moments longer she races down the hallway and out of sight.

               The house was warm. Pictures lined the walls of the entryway and the hall. The corner of a large living room could be seen on the left further down the hall and a kitchen at the end of the hall. Stairs laid on the right spiraling upstairs to a second level, his guess, up to bedrooms. She hurries back carrying two large beach size towels. She wraps one around him before handing him the other one.

               “You should dry off,” she seemed to have gone from being afraid to being panicked. He carefully takes the towel and winces the movement causing pain to shoot down from his shoulder. Her eyes travel to his shoulder and she sucks in her breath as she sees the blood covering it. “Oh my god,” she moves over to him and lightly pushes the torn shirt away from his shoulder. “You need to go to the hospital.” She drops her hand and turns back toward the hallway. “I’ll call an ambulance” He looks up.

               “No,” he reaches out and grabs her arm, stopping her from her quest. She looks back at him a frown on her face. “No,” he shakes his head, “please, no hospitals. You can’t call them, please.”

               “But your shoulder” she turns back toward him.

               “Please,” he begs her. His body starts to shake and he forces himself to stop it. If he passed out, swayed, or even showed any sign of falling over he knew she wouldn’t listen to him and the ambulance would be called. She stares at him a few moments longer before slowly nodded.

               “Ok,” she finally says, though he can’t tell if she’s saying it so he’d let her go, or because she really means it. “I won’t call them.” He waits a few moments. If he lets her go and she makes a break for the phone he’d never be able to catch her and he wouldn’t make it far if he left her house now. He either had to let her go, and trust she wasn’t going to call, or stand here and take away more of what little strength he had left. Slowly he loosened his grip on her arm and then finally, he let her go. She moves a step away from him, and he wondered what she was thinking. “You need to get out of those wet clothes, or you won’t warm up.” She says softly. He nods. “If… you take them off, I’ll go get some of my dad’s things, they should fit you alright, I can put those into the dryer.” He nods again. He knew what she was saying, what she really meant. If you take those off I’ll leave, but you’ll have to trust that I won’t call 911 while I’m away. At this point, he knew he had no other choice. She was right, being in the soaked clothes would not help him at all and taking them off and putting on dry things would be his only choice, but he’d have to trust her to leave him long enough. He couldn’t follow him, no matter if he trusted her or not. She swallows and then hurries upstairs. The task of pulling off his wet shows proved to be a lot harder than he thought. Bending over hurt his chest and shoulder and his fingers didn’t seem to want to work right. He pulled off his socks next. Even that proved to be a lot of work. He stayed standing afraid if he sat down he wouldn’t be able to get back up. He paused after removing those. Shuddering he slowly pulled off his jacket. He didn’t think he’d be able to take off his shifter by himself. He knew he couldn’t lift his arm too far above his head. So he stood there and shivered. The girl comes down the stairs moments later. She pauses, seeing that he is still mostly dressed.

               “Can’t lift my arm, to get off my shirt.” He says quietly.

               “Oh..” she walks over and places the dry clothes on a small table before walking over to him. Carefully she takes the bottom of his shirt and lifts it up. He winces as the material rubs against the wound. She pulls it off and drops it down onto the floor. Swallowing she grabs the towel and starts to dry his chest. She avoids the spot around the wound, which doesn’t bother him at all. When she finishes she glances down at his pants before looking back at his face. “Will… you be able to…” she grows quiet and her cheeks turn bright red.

               He moves back a step and unsnaps his jeans. Being careful to move his shoulder as little as possible he pulls them down and off. Her face darkens as she slowly moves over and hands him the towel. He takes it and dries his legs the best he can before dropping it. When he looks at her, he finds she is already holding out the dry clothes to him. He moves away from the wet ones before taking the pants and pulling them on. He looks at the shirt and then her before shaking his head slightly. He’d never be able to put it on, not only that his shoulder screamed in pain and he doubted the shirt would help.

               “You should lay down,” she carefully takes his arm and leads him into the living room couch. He sits down. “I’ll go get you some blankets.” She hurries from the room. Carefully he pulls himself onto the couch and lays down. He was tired. He knew he should just pass out and hope that he’d eventually wake up, but he didn’t think he was in the clear on her not calling the authorities. A knock on the door catches him off guard. Maybe she had already. Had he really under estimated her? He went over the amount of time she had been upstairs and wondered if perhaps it had been enough time for her to explain everything to them. He hears her open the door and speak to the person outside. The door closes and two sets of footsteps come down the hall. Damn, it would suck to be outsmarted by this girl. He probably should have known it was going to happen, but something about her made him think she wouldn’t do that. The girl stepped into the living room, followed closely behind by a very soaked brown hair girl. It took him a moment to figure it out. She hadn’t in fact called the ambulance, but instead she had called her friend, who, from how wet she was, hadn’t made it back to wherever she lived. He relaxed slightly, though the presents of the second girl was in fact a bad thing, it wasn’t the authorities, which was to him, the best thing that could happen. The black hair girl, the one who lived in the house walks back over to him. He notices the two blankets in her hand before she puts them over him. The other, the brown hair girl, silently watches him. He knew the look she was giving him. She was judging the situation. She was obviously the leader of this friendship. She was looking him over, wondering if he was in fact a threat to her and her friend.

               “Why didn’t you call the cops?” the brown hair girl asked.

               “He said not too…” the black hair girl looked back at her friend, a frown on her face.

               “He said not to because if they were here he couldn’t kill you.” The brown hair girl walked over to stand by the side of the couch. She looked down at him, her eyes taking in the wound on his shoulder and the bruises on his chest. “If they are here he can’t finish with his plan.”

               “I have a plan?” he asked her, “I can hardly even stand.”

               “It could be an act. The moment she turns around you rape her, or kill her.”

               He stares at her and wonders if she’s joking. He couldn’t see himself a threat. Hell at the moment he was probably not even capable of defending himself against these two girls. If anything he was the one at risk, not them, and yet, she seemed pretty serious about her statement.

               “It’s no act” he said softly. His vision was getting blurry he would need to sleep soon.

               “So why no cops?” the brown hair girl asked, as she crossed her arms.

               “Cops cause media, media causes attention, attention means parents find out”

               “Well how did you know that her parents weren’t here to begin with?” she glared at him, “Where you just watching her house? Waiting for her to be alone?”

               “I knew when she came in, she was alone…” he winces in pain, all he wanted to do was sleep, not be questioned by this girl.

               “How...” the black hair girl’s voice softly starts to question she pauses, maybe deciding if she wanted to know what the answer was. Deciding she did she quietly finishes, “how did you know... I was alone?”

               “A tip,” he coughs, his chest was really starting to burn. “even if no one is home… and you know no one is home…  when you open the door call out, ‘I’m home’, so people watching will think you are calling out to someone inside.” He looks at the black hair girl, it was her house, it was her choice what happened from here on out. He wasn’t able to fight much longer, he was slowly losing touch with reality. “I’m not here to kill you… I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

               “You must have family? Can’t you just call them?” The brown hair girl sighs, “I mean why come to some complete stranger’s house?”

               “I left my car with a friend…” he tries to sit up on his elbows but his body won’t support his weight and he falls back onto the couch, “I left my cell phone in the car,”

               “So, I’ll get the phone and you can call him.” The brown hair girl turns.

               “He’s out with his girlfriend,” he looks at the black hair girl. She had to see… she was the important one. “He’s asking her to marry him tonight. His car is in the shop, needs to be repaired. He has the whole thing planned out. I couldn’t… I can’t ruin it for him.” He winces.

               The black hair girl looks at her friend, “Katie, we can’t just… I mean… he needs to sleep.”

               The brown hair girl, Katie, sighs, “Fine… Emma, this is crazy… but fine” Katie looks at the boy, “Fine, but I’m watching and you better not do anything stupid or I’ll call 911 without any second thought”

               He nods weakly before dropping onto the couch and closing his eyes. He hoped it was true. He hoped the black hair girl, Emma, wasn’t going to be talked out of that decision.

               “This is crazy, Emma” Katie hisses at her friend, “you shouldn’t let a complete stranger who could be a rapist or killer or, hell you saw the wound he was in a fight, maybe he robbed a bank”

               “I couldn’t leave him in the rain, Katie…” Emma whispers, “It’s just a night… he was soaked and he was just.. I couldn’t leave him.”

               “Your parents would be flipping out if they knew you had a half naked guy you didn’t know laying on your couch.”

               “They won’t be home till Monday morning, we still have time and… we won’t tell them.” Emma looks at the boy, “He’s around our age”

               “Killers come younger and younger, what about that kid that shot his school teacher? He was only like what? Eight or something stupid like that.” Katie argues.

               “He has to stay… just… call your parents and tell them you have to stay with me because of the rain…”

               “Fine” Katie sighs. She turns and walks to the phone, “but this better be worth it. I’m going to say I told you so if he turns out to be a killer and we both wake up dead in the morning.” Her footsteps trail off as she walks into the hall. He wanted to comment, wanted to tell her if they were dead they wouldn’t be waking up. Wanted to tell Emma she wasn’t in any danger, but his body had stopped responding, and before he could even hear what Katie’s parents had said, everything had gone black.

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[TLK]

There's a lot of dialogue here. But who are the characters? I'm not convinced that the dialogue tells us.