I had to write this as a school assignment a while ago. Please comment on it, I won't be offended. 
The Letter
Patiently waiting for darkness to set in, Doug sat on a fence facing the house. “Don’t these people sleep?” He thought. It was way past midnight and if the residents would not go to bed soon days of observing the house and its inhabitants would have been a waste of time.
Ever since last week he had been watching the house from a save distance to find out when the man and his wife would go to work, what time they went to sleep, he even knew when they went to the grocery store and what kind of food they were getting. Tonight, however, everything was different, the couple normally went to bed at 11 p.m. but right now they were still awake judging by the lights in the house still being on. It was almost like they knew something was going to happen. It had to happen tonight, the guy who was paying him to do the job wanted it to happen tonight and a week of surveillance should be enough. And besides the contractor wanting the job done on time, it was cold and Doug never did like the cold.
*
Inside the house, Lisa was talking to her husband, Steven, on the phone. “I really think we should use our savings to pay our debts.” She said, judging by her facial expressions, her husband seemed to disagree. “Listen, Steven, I don’t want to argue with you like this, through the phone. Just come back home and we’ll talk it through, OK? Silence. Lisa started looking more and more worried, possibly mixed with anger. Steven had stopped answering her; all she could hear was his breathing nervously into the receiver. “Steven, are you there?” Still no answer. Seconds later she heard a click, he hung up on her without saying anything at all. Angrily she threw down the phone and decided to go to bed; Steven would probably come home later that night like he always did when they had argued.
*
“Finally!” Sighed Doug, he had been sitting on the fence, shivering, for hours now and he just saw the lights go out. He put out his cigarette and started walking towards the house. Two feet from the door he saw a flower pot; he lifted it and grabbed the key from underneath. He used the key to open the door and he went inside. Finally everything was going according to plan. All he had to do now was to get the jewellery box and leave the way he came in, without making any noise because he knew that at least one person was inside the house.
Quickly - yet quietly - he went into the living, Steven had told him that the kitchen was to the right, the stairs leading to the bedrooms right in front of him and to his left was the study, the door to it was opened and the brown cabinet on which the box was supposed to be stood right in front of him, he walked towards it and grabbed the box. Everything did look exactly like Steven had told him, to the neatly positioned chairs, couch, and table in the living and the desk, cabinet, and chair in the study. With such a good description of the house, he could have done this job blindly. He stuffed the box inside his jacket, exited the house, got in his car, and went home. Now he had to call Steven to tell him that everything was going to plan. But, he was going to ask for more money than the $2000, - Steven had promised him, he wanted some sort of compensation for his sitting on that fence in the cold for hours.
Before making the call, Doug wanted to know what was in the box that made it so valuable; the box itself was very plain and boring-looking so why was it so valuable? Why did Steven tell him to get this specific box and not the TV-set or one of the laptops which were also in the study? What is in this box? Steven had told him not to open the box but curiosity won, Doug pried it open. Inside he found some letters and some very old jewellery. Digging a little further he found seven small diamonds glittering at the bottom of the box, neatly tucked away to the side but visible for those looking closely. “Wow! This stuff is worth much more than the lousy $2000, - I’m getting for this job! I could sell this…or maybe keep it to myself until Steven pays me more, much more than this.” Thinking through several plans to get more money out of this, one more horrid than the other, Doug parked his car and he, too, went to bed.
*
The next morning, Lisa woke up. Still no Steven to be seen. Now she was starting to get worried about him, he had never stayed away all night before. They had had arguments like this before, usually about money or the lack thereof, but never before did Steven fail to get home. She started making breakfast for herself, though she made coffee for two without actually noticing until she poured a cup for herself. Sipping her coffee, she called Steven on his cell phone, voicemail: “Hello, you have reached Steven’s voicemail, please leave a message after the beep.” “Steven, if you hear this, please call me. I’m getting worried about you; just call me to say you’re OK. We’ll talk later, OK? Love you.”
Steven not answering his phone only made her worry about him more. She finished her coffee and went into the study to look for her jewellery box in which she kept her late father’s letters which she always read when she felt upset. Thinking about her father and reading his letters always calmed her down in these situations. Standing in front of the brown cabinet she mused: “Hmmm, that’s odd, where’s my jewellery box? I always put it on this cabinet, I can’t have misplaced it.” However sure she was of her never misplacing it - or anything else for that matter, she was what some would call a neat-freak – she sex, searched the entire room and when she couldn’t find anything there she searched the rest of the house.
When she was sure she had searched every corner of the house, she decided to call the police for the box and its contents were worth a lot of money, and it was insured. Steven had insisted on insuring it about a month ago. Half an hour later a police officer called Joe Barker arrived and helped her filling out all the necessary forms. She also informed him about her husband’s absence since last night but the police officer said that he couldn’t file a missing person’s report until said person was missing for a longer time. He did tell her to call her if anything odd happened or if her husband still wouldn’t be home tonight.
Still worrying about her husband, Lisa showed the policeman out and she left for work.
*
In the meantime, Steven stood waiting for Doug to call him at an abandoned parking lot. He was worried too, not about the ordeal his wife had to be going through this morning – he figured she would be OK – but because of Doug’s not calling him after the theft or showing up here at the parking lot where they had agreed to meet for Doug to hand over the jewellery box to Steven after which Steven would put the box in his private safe at the bank.
There he stood, phone in hand, anxiously waiting for it to start vibrating. The only one who had called before was his wife on his other phone who sounded rather panicky which was very unlike her for she was the composed and calm one of the two. Right now, he dared not answer the phone, not knowing whether the jewellery box had successfully been stolen or not and he definitely didn’t want to let on that he knew more about this than he should.
Minutes later, Doug rang; he wanted more money for sitting in the cold for hours and for the content inside the box because it was worth considerably more than what he was getting paid. “I’m not paying you anymore than I already have, Doug! I can’t help it that you had to wait outside for longer than you expected. And you weren’t supposed to look inside that box!” Doug’s answer made Steven go pale; he was scared but didn’t want Doug to know so. He didn’t know what to do now, he mumbled something like “I’ve already paid you and you’re not getting more” in the phone and hung up, got in his car and went home to see his wife to comfort her for losing her precious jewellery box.
When he pulled up to the driveway he saw his wife standing outside, waiting for him, and looking very angry and sad at the same time. As it was too late to turn around because she had already seen him, he hesitantly drove on and parked the car and got out of the car. He walked towards the doorway in which his wife was standing, arms crossed.
“Where were you all night? With whom? I have been worried sick! I even called the police to go and look for you but the police officer told me they couldn’t do anything until you would be missing for longer than a day. How could you do this to me? Did you know someone got into our house last night and took my jewellery box?! You know it has my dead father’s letters in there, those can never be replaced!” “Please, calm down honey, let’s just go inside and talk this over, I was working late and fell asleep in my office. I forgot to call you to tell you that I was going to be late and I’m sorry about that, but please calm down now so we can talk, inside. I’m so sorry…please forgive me.” Saying all this Steven ushered his wife inside to the living room where they, well he, sat down. Lisa was pacing the room, going back and forth to the study where she would stare at the cabinet on which the jewellery box had always stood. “Please sit down and let me talk to you. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, running to and from the study. Just close the door and sit down. Please?” “I’m not calm and I won’t be until you tell me what is going on and I have this sneaking suspicion that you know a lot more about this then you are letting on.” He tugged at her, trying to make her sit down. “Let go of me! I’m not sitting down until you start explaining!” “But sweetheart, I can’t explain anything to you when you are freaking out like this.” “I’m not freaking out! I have been worrying about you all night and now you’re telling me to calm down?!” Again, he tugged at her, motioning her to sit down. Then he said, in his soothing voice: “You know me, right? I would never do anything to hurt you and I know how much you value that jewellery box. Come on, sit down with me. Let’s just call the insurance company and ask them what we should do next. You already called the police, right?” “Yes, I did, right after I found it missing. A policeman called Joe Barker or something helped me filling out the forms, I even made copies. Here, see?” “I see, that’s great honey, let me call the insurance company now.”
Steven picked up the phone and dialled the number, this somehow seemed to relax Lisa a little and finally she sat down, sobbing quietly.
“Hello ma’am, I know it is getting late already but my wife’s jewellery box has been stolen and now we would like to know what to do. Could you help us?” Lisa intently looked at her husband, waiting for an answer that would make everything go back to normal again, she wanted a solution that would bring back her letters, she didn’t even care for the jewellery and the diamonds that much. “OK, we will come to the office right now, thank you so much for helping us at this hour.” “Well?” Lisa asked. “We have to go to the office downtown and there we have to fill out some more forms with them and then they will talk us through the process of getting our insurance money back. Let’s go.” “Right, let’s go, this way we will have things sorted out quickly, right, Steven?” “Right.”
Walking out of the door Steven thought he could see someone sitting on the fence opposite their house, but he reasoned to himself thinking that because darkness had started setting in the shadows of overhanging branches could look a lot like people sitting or standing somewhere. He opened the door for his wife at the passenger seat and then got in himself. The drive to the office of the insurance company seemed much longer than previous times, Steven was worried and Lisa just sat there quietly, staring out of the window into the darkness. She didn’t say a thing the entire time.
At the office they sat down in a small room with one of the insurance people, a lady who wanted to see the police report and asked questions likes “were all the doors locked?” and “did you put the jewellery box in a safe place?” Lisa answered all the questions, saying she had locked all doors and windows before going to bed, she didn’t mention her husband not having been there all night. “I kept the jewellery box on a cabinet in my study; it is not a fancy-looking box, just a plain one so I thought no-one would go for that unless they knew what was inside. Do you think it is possible that someone knew what I kept in there?” “Who knows ma’am, it is always best to keep your valuables locked away, maybe at a bank or something if you don’t have a safe of your own at home.” The woman answered. “So it was my fault? My putting it on that cabinet out in the open caused someone breaking into my house and taking it? They didn’t take the laptop that was sitting on my desk, that’s what I think is a bit weird. I thought those were stolen a lot these days.” “No ma’am, it’s not your fault it has been stolen, nobody thinks this is going to happen to them but the truth is that is can happen to anybody and maybe you should have put in a safer place, yes. But as I said before, no-one is to blame for this. Now, please fill out these forms as accurately as possible and you can go home and we will take care of everything.”
Both of them feeling slightly better when they left the office walked to the car. During the ride back Steven said “We’ll get your jewellery box back, I just know it.” He kept saying so several times until they got home.
It was almost 10 p.m. when they got out of the car. Lisa got out first. Right when she closed the door she heard a loud noise followed by a thud on the ground. She looked around to see what happened and saw her husband lying on the ground. Dead. She screamed for help but none of the neighbours answered her calls. She then ran into the house nearly tripping over something solid. It was her jewellery box, she quickly looked inside and saw all her father’s letters, the jewellery and the diamonds were gone. Then she saw a note lying on top of the letters, it read:
“Dear Mrs. Johnson,
I’m so sorry about what happened to your husband but he left me no choice, honestly. Here’s your letters back, I can’t use them, I need the jewellery to get out of the country and settle somewhere. You will never see me again.
Regards, D.”
“Never see him again? I have never met anyone that sounds like this, I think. Could it be I saw him before? That he was someone at the grocery store?” Still stunned, Lisa went inside and called the police.
If she had looked out the window or just looked behind her when she was still standing outside, she would have seen a lone figure slowly getting off the fence opposite her house and walking away.
~The End~
The Letter
Patiently waiting for darkness to set in, Doug sat on a fence facing the house. “Don’t these people sleep?” He thought. It was way past midnight and if the residents would not go to bed soon days of observing the house and its inhabitants would have been a waste of time.
Ever since last week he had been watching the house from a save distance to find out when the man and his wife would go to work, what time they went to sleep, he even knew when they went to the grocery store and what kind of food they were getting. Tonight, however, everything was different, the couple normally went to bed at 11 p.m. but right now they were still awake judging by the lights in the house still being on. It was almost like they knew something was going to happen. It had to happen tonight, the guy who was paying him to do the job wanted it to happen tonight and a week of surveillance should be enough. And besides the contractor wanting the job done on time, it was cold and Doug never did like the cold.
*
Inside the house, Lisa was talking to her husband, Steven, on the phone. “I really think we should use our savings to pay our debts.” She said, judging by her facial expressions, her husband seemed to disagree. “Listen, Steven, I don’t want to argue with you like this, through the phone. Just come back home and we’ll talk it through, OK? Silence. Lisa started looking more and more worried, possibly mixed with anger. Steven had stopped answering her; all she could hear was his breathing nervously into the receiver. “Steven, are you there?” Still no answer. Seconds later she heard a click, he hung up on her without saying anything at all. Angrily she threw down the phone and decided to go to bed; Steven would probably come home later that night like he always did when they had argued.
*
“Finally!” Sighed Doug, he had been sitting on the fence, shivering, for hours now and he just saw the lights go out. He put out his cigarette and started walking towards the house. Two feet from the door he saw a flower pot; he lifted it and grabbed the key from underneath. He used the key to open the door and he went inside. Finally everything was going according to plan. All he had to do now was to get the jewellery box and leave the way he came in, without making any noise because he knew that at least one person was inside the house.
Quickly - yet quietly - he went into the living, Steven had told him that the kitchen was to the right, the stairs leading to the bedrooms right in front of him and to his left was the study, the door to it was opened and the brown cabinet on which the box was supposed to be stood right in front of him, he walked towards it and grabbed the box. Everything did look exactly like Steven had told him, to the neatly positioned chairs, couch, and table in the living and the desk, cabinet, and chair in the study. With such a good description of the house, he could have done this job blindly. He stuffed the box inside his jacket, exited the house, got in his car, and went home. Now he had to call Steven to tell him that everything was going to plan. But, he was going to ask for more money than the $2000, - Steven had promised him, he wanted some sort of compensation for his sitting on that fence in the cold for hours.
Before making the call, Doug wanted to know what was in the box that made it so valuable; the box itself was very plain and boring-looking so why was it so valuable? Why did Steven tell him to get this specific box and not the TV-set or one of the laptops which were also in the study? What is in this box? Steven had told him not to open the box but curiosity won, Doug pried it open. Inside he found some letters and some very old jewellery. Digging a little further he found seven small diamonds glittering at the bottom of the box, neatly tucked away to the side but visible for those looking closely. “Wow! This stuff is worth much more than the lousy $2000, - I’m getting for this job! I could sell this…or maybe keep it to myself until Steven pays me more, much more than this.” Thinking through several plans to get more money out of this, one more horrid than the other, Doug parked his car and he, too, went to bed.
*
The next morning, Lisa woke up. Still no Steven to be seen. Now she was starting to get worried about him, he had never stayed away all night before. They had had arguments like this before, usually about money or the lack thereof, but never before did Steven fail to get home. She started making breakfast for herself, though she made coffee for two without actually noticing until she poured a cup for herself. Sipping her coffee, she called Steven on his cell phone, voicemail: “Hello, you have reached Steven’s voicemail, please leave a message after the beep.” “Steven, if you hear this, please call me. I’m getting worried about you; just call me to say you’re OK. We’ll talk later, OK? Love you.”
Steven not answering his phone only made her worry about him more. She finished her coffee and went into the study to look for her jewellery box in which she kept her late father’s letters which she always read when she felt upset. Thinking about her father and reading his letters always calmed her down in these situations. Standing in front of the brown cabinet she mused: “Hmmm, that’s odd, where’s my jewellery box? I always put it on this cabinet, I can’t have misplaced it.” However sure she was of her never misplacing it - or anything else for that matter, she was what some would call a neat-freak – she sex, searched the entire room and when she couldn’t find anything there she searched the rest of the house.
When she was sure she had searched every corner of the house, she decided to call the police for the box and its contents were worth a lot of money, and it was insured. Steven had insisted on insuring it about a month ago. Half an hour later a police officer called Joe Barker arrived and helped her filling out all the necessary forms. She also informed him about her husband’s absence since last night but the police officer said that he couldn’t file a missing person’s report until said person was missing for a longer time. He did tell her to call her if anything odd happened or if her husband still wouldn’t be home tonight.
Still worrying about her husband, Lisa showed the policeman out and she left for work.
*
In the meantime, Steven stood waiting for Doug to call him at an abandoned parking lot. He was worried too, not about the ordeal his wife had to be going through this morning – he figured she would be OK – but because of Doug’s not calling him after the theft or showing up here at the parking lot where they had agreed to meet for Doug to hand over the jewellery box to Steven after which Steven would put the box in his private safe at the bank.
There he stood, phone in hand, anxiously waiting for it to start vibrating. The only one who had called before was his wife on his other phone who sounded rather panicky which was very unlike her for she was the composed and calm one of the two. Right now, he dared not answer the phone, not knowing whether the jewellery box had successfully been stolen or not and he definitely didn’t want to let on that he knew more about this than he should.
Minutes later, Doug rang; he wanted more money for sitting in the cold for hours and for the content inside the box because it was worth considerably more than what he was getting paid. “I’m not paying you anymore than I already have, Doug! I can’t help it that you had to wait outside for longer than you expected. And you weren’t supposed to look inside that box!” Doug’s answer made Steven go pale; he was scared but didn’t want Doug to know so. He didn’t know what to do now, he mumbled something like “I’ve already paid you and you’re not getting more” in the phone and hung up, got in his car and went home to see his wife to comfort her for losing her precious jewellery box.
When he pulled up to the driveway he saw his wife standing outside, waiting for him, and looking very angry and sad at the same time. As it was too late to turn around because she had already seen him, he hesitantly drove on and parked the car and got out of the car. He walked towards the doorway in which his wife was standing, arms crossed.
“Where were you all night? With whom? I have been worried sick! I even called the police to go and look for you but the police officer told me they couldn’t do anything until you would be missing for longer than a day. How could you do this to me? Did you know someone got into our house last night and took my jewellery box?! You know it has my dead father’s letters in there, those can never be replaced!” “Please, calm down honey, let’s just go inside and talk this over, I was working late and fell asleep in my office. I forgot to call you to tell you that I was going to be late and I’m sorry about that, but please calm down now so we can talk, inside. I’m so sorry…please forgive me.” Saying all this Steven ushered his wife inside to the living room where they, well he, sat down. Lisa was pacing the room, going back and forth to the study where she would stare at the cabinet on which the jewellery box had always stood. “Please sit down and let me talk to you. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, running to and from the study. Just close the door and sit down. Please?” “I’m not calm and I won’t be until you tell me what is going on and I have this sneaking suspicion that you know a lot more about this then you are letting on.” He tugged at her, trying to make her sit down. “Let go of me! I’m not sitting down until you start explaining!” “But sweetheart, I can’t explain anything to you when you are freaking out like this.” “I’m not freaking out! I have been worrying about you all night and now you’re telling me to calm down?!” Again, he tugged at her, motioning her to sit down. Then he said, in his soothing voice: “You know me, right? I would never do anything to hurt you and I know how much you value that jewellery box. Come on, sit down with me. Let’s just call the insurance company and ask them what we should do next. You already called the police, right?” “Yes, I did, right after I found it missing. A policeman called Joe Barker or something helped me filling out the forms, I even made copies. Here, see?” “I see, that’s great honey, let me call the insurance company now.”
Steven picked up the phone and dialled the number, this somehow seemed to relax Lisa a little and finally she sat down, sobbing quietly.
“Hello ma’am, I know it is getting late already but my wife’s jewellery box has been stolen and now we would like to know what to do. Could you help us?” Lisa intently looked at her husband, waiting for an answer that would make everything go back to normal again, she wanted a solution that would bring back her letters, she didn’t even care for the jewellery and the diamonds that much. “OK, we will come to the office right now, thank you so much for helping us at this hour.” “Well?” Lisa asked. “We have to go to the office downtown and there we have to fill out some more forms with them and then they will talk us through the process of getting our insurance money back. Let’s go.” “Right, let’s go, this way we will have things sorted out quickly, right, Steven?” “Right.”
Walking out of the door Steven thought he could see someone sitting on the fence opposite their house, but he reasoned to himself thinking that because darkness had started setting in the shadows of overhanging branches could look a lot like people sitting or standing somewhere. He opened the door for his wife at the passenger seat and then got in himself. The drive to the office of the insurance company seemed much longer than previous times, Steven was worried and Lisa just sat there quietly, staring out of the window into the darkness. She didn’t say a thing the entire time.
At the office they sat down in a small room with one of the insurance people, a lady who wanted to see the police report and asked questions likes “were all the doors locked?” and “did you put the jewellery box in a safe place?” Lisa answered all the questions, saying she had locked all doors and windows before going to bed, she didn’t mention her husband not having been there all night. “I kept the jewellery box on a cabinet in my study; it is not a fancy-looking box, just a plain one so I thought no-one would go for that unless they knew what was inside. Do you think it is possible that someone knew what I kept in there?” “Who knows ma’am, it is always best to keep your valuables locked away, maybe at a bank or something if you don’t have a safe of your own at home.” The woman answered. “So it was my fault? My putting it on that cabinet out in the open caused someone breaking into my house and taking it? They didn’t take the laptop that was sitting on my desk, that’s what I think is a bit weird. I thought those were stolen a lot these days.” “No ma’am, it’s not your fault it has been stolen, nobody thinks this is going to happen to them but the truth is that is can happen to anybody and maybe you should have put in a safer place, yes. But as I said before, no-one is to blame for this. Now, please fill out these forms as accurately as possible and you can go home and we will take care of everything.”
Both of them feeling slightly better when they left the office walked to the car. During the ride back Steven said “We’ll get your jewellery box back, I just know it.” He kept saying so several times until they got home.
It was almost 10 p.m. when they got out of the car. Lisa got out first. Right when she closed the door she heard a loud noise followed by a thud on the ground. She looked around to see what happened and saw her husband lying on the ground. Dead. She screamed for help but none of the neighbours answered her calls. She then ran into the house nearly tripping over something solid. It was her jewellery box, she quickly looked inside and saw all her father’s letters, the jewellery and the diamonds were gone. Then she saw a note lying on top of the letters, it read:
“Dear Mrs. Johnson,
I’m so sorry about what happened to your husband but he left me no choice, honestly. Here’s your letters back, I can’t use them, I need the jewellery to get out of the country and settle somewhere. You will never see me again.
Regards, D.”
“Never see him again? I have never met anyone that sounds like this, I think. Could it be I saw him before? That he was someone at the grocery store?” Still stunned, Lisa went inside and called the police.
If she had looked out the window or just looked behind her when she was still standing outside, she would have seen a lone figure slowly getting off the fence opposite her house and walking away.
~The End~
