It was about 11 o'clock on a Saturday night. I'm usually out by this time -- I've got a game with several people on most Saturdays – but this week most of them had other things to do, so I'm in for the night. I'd just gotten out of the shower when I heard someone open the front door and start sneaking in. I don't even have a towel with me; I'm embarrassed to say I was planning on picking one up from the floor in the living room. My wife being out of town had made me a bit sloppy.
Naked an unarmed, I waited in the bathroom for a bit, listening to their movement through the apartment. I only heard one person, and the footsteps soon moved past me. Slipping out of the bathroom as quietly as I could manage, I took a quick look around. The door to the study was still closed, and the one to the outside had been closed again. Nothing in the living room seemed to have been disturbed. The noises were coming from the bedroom. I noticed a knife on the edge of a counter, so I scooped it up, thumbing open the sheath binding and pulling the blade out, steeping down the short, cluttered hallway to the bedroom. I glanced around the corner, not quite sure what I expect.
What I got is a young woman, probably under twenty but definitely more than eighteen, with a river of black hair and an ample chest, going through my wife's jewelry. She couldn't have been much more than five feet tall, and was wearing a thin-shirt and cut-off shorts against the sultry Houston night, but with as cold as I keep the house, her nipples were already straining the fabric. She was looking at a pendant I gave my wife while we were dating, and was about to slip it into her pocket when she felt the cold prick of a knife at her throat.
"Hi. That's not yours."
I'm rewarded by her face draining of blood, her body tensing like a deer frozen before flight. She turned to look at me, slowly, lest I mistake her movements, her blue eyes were wide with fright. She started to stammer a flood of excuses, but couldn't finish one before her brain supplied her with another.
"I was hoping I could use the phone because my car broke down... and my mother's sick so I gotta get... I was just lookin' because the sparkles caught my eye..." A slight increase of the blade's pressure cut off her words in mid-excuse, enough to tell her that I was not in buying it. Her eyes, somehow, got even wider, the pupils growing so much that the blue nearly disappeared from her eyes. Gently, I removed the pendant from her hand, where it was still poised to slip into her pocket. Taking hold of that hand, I twisted it behind her back and marched her into the living room, pushing her face down onto the floor. Removing the belt from the pants I had discarded on the floor earlier that evening (like I said, I got a little sloppy), I tied her hands tightly behind her back, then put down the knife out of her line of sight, but still easily within reach, should I need it.
"Wha... what are you gonna do with me, mister? My boyfriend, he's waiting for me outside. He's gonna know somethin's wrong if I don't come out soon." I crossed into her line of vision, then, and locked the door. She started to cry. "Please, mister, I don't got no boyfriend outside, please don't call the cops. I ain't never been in trouble and I don't wanna go to jail."
I let her cry for a moment, standing outside her limited field of vision. She gradually quieted down, trying to locate me, but didn't stand anywhere she can see.