Kristine Joy, Writer

writing prompt from ChatGPT
A stranger knocks on your door, holds up an 
everyday object (a spoon, a sock, a notebook, 
a leaf, etc.), and says, “You dropped this.”
Write what follows — without ever explaining 
where it was dropped or why it matters.

Jules was bustling around the house because she needed to be out the door at 6 p.m. on the dot. If she was late, eyebrows would most certainly be raised and she couldn’t have that regardless of her status, but also, especially because of her status.

She didn’t have time to kill, which made whoever just rang the doorbell quite unwelcome. She thought about ignoring the bloke, despite the fact that he’d already seen her through the window — probably just a solicitor — but then it dawned on her — What if?

She opened the door with such force that you’d think a hurricane had been the cause. The stranger held up a black-coated stainless steel bolt, “Jules Winter, you dropped this.”

Flustered, though the hint of disturbance would have been better hidden of course, “A bolt? Where…I mean…why do you think it is mine or that I need this? And how do you know my name?”

The man in a black trench coat — Why is he wearing a black trench coat? Where did he “find” the bolt? Did he have the other three or are they still in the pocket of my night black pants? — reached for her hand, turned it over, placed the bolt in her palm and then curled her fingers over it to form a fist. And then he turned to go.

He was down the front steps and on the path that led to her driveway — He doesn’t have a car? Did he walk here? — before her voice came to, “What do I do now?”

Without turning back towards her and his voice fading away, “The bolt is in your court. Confess, or live knowing that your past could surface in the present any second of any day of…”

She couldn’t hear the end of his threat, if that is what it was, but didn’t need to. She slammed the door as if the hurricane had reversed course. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” she screamed at the foyer portrait of her late husband, “This is your fault LEONARD!”

Her expletives paralleled the situation; she was buried in it.

How did this happen? But she knew exactly how it had happened. The socket wrench, sat atop a turquoise placemat on the kitchen table, and stared back at her.