Lydia Johnson loved two things: her poodle and her wine. Tonight, she’s out of wine and someone took her dog.
Writer’s Prompt
The streetlights in Oakhaven didn’t illuminate; they leaked a sickly yellow pallor onto the cracked pavement. Lydia Johnson killed the engine of her Buick, the silence hitting her harder than the hospital’s antiseptic stench ever could.
The air felt thin, scorched—like bread forgotten in a toaster.
She stepped inside. The silence wasn’t the peaceful kind she enjoyed with a vintage Merlot. It was heavy. It was hollow. Buttons wasn’t there. No manic skittering of claws on hardwood, no high-pitched yaps. Just a square of notebook paper resting on the mahogany coffee table like a shroud.
You want your toy poodle back, it will cost you $1000.
Lydia didn’t panic. Panic was for the young, for those who still thought the world owed them mercy. She poured a glass of Cabernet, then another, the red liquid staining her lips like a bruise. At eighty-two, her heart was a clock with a frayed mainspring, but her hands were steady.
She walked to the hall closet and pulled down a dusty shoebox labeled Arthur. Inside, nestled against his silver watch, was a snub-nosed .38 caliber. It felt cold, heavy, and honest.
She checked the cylinder. Six rounds of copper-jacketed insurance. She slipped the steel into her cardigan pocket, the weight pulling the fabric taut.
“What are they going to do to an eighty-year-old woman?” she whispered to the empty room.
She stepped back out into the humid night, the address on the back of the note burned into her mind. She saw the shadow of a man standing by the corner store, watching her. Lydia didn’t flinch. She just reached into her pocket and rested her finger on the trigger.
How does Lydia’s confrontation end? Does the shadow belong to the kidnapper, or someone far more dangerous? Finish the story.
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