Second Page of the Book

Below is the second page of my book for your pleasure.  I hope you enjoy and please feel free to leave any feedback.

Abraham had never been in the apartment when Jennifer was not there.  Therefore, everything seemed to be normal.  The alarm continued ring and begging for someone to respond.  He puttered around the bed toward the alarm clock.  Then he saw it sitting there on her nightstand.  It appeared to be a note.  It seemed important to Jennifer because it was by her bedside.  He wondered what it was because it seemed odd to him.  There were no other notes lying about the apartment.

 

It had been Abraham’s policy never to bother his tenants’ things when he had to go into their place.  He dutifully considered their space to be their place.  However this particular piece of paper seemed different than anything he had seen before.   It appeared to tell a story.   Abraham’s curiosity grew stronger and got the best of him.  He leaned down and picked it up from the nightstand.   He drew it close to his eyes.  The note was written in some sort of red ink, but without his glasses, he struggled to make out what was written.  Abraham quickly reached for his glasses in his green cardigan sweater pocket.  The red ink caught his eye.  It seemed to sparkle in the light; however he could not make out the message.  His gut was telling him something must have happened.  Jennifer seemed to come home late, but he quickly dismissed the thought, telling himself that Jennifer was a cautious, street-smart girl.  He put the glasses on, now able to see clearly what he was looking at.  The color left his face and his mouth dropped open.  It was a note written in blood.  He could see the thickness of the dried blood and it seemed to hover above the paper.  The blood transfixed him and it beckoned him to touch it.  He instantly dropped it to the ground.   Abraham sprinted out of the apartment in fear for his life, as if the note was going to come after him.  He fled down the stairs to the safety of his apartment and called 911.

“911 what is your emergency?”  the operator asked on the other line.

Abraham gulped. “There…is a bloody note in one of my tenant’s apartment.”

 

He paused a moment and composed himself and continued to say, “Something is wrong, please come here quickly because I fear something has happened to her.”  Abraham spoke while his whole body shook from fear.  After hanging up the phone Abraham sat down and began to cry for a few minutes, his heart ached for what seemed to have occurred to the poor, sweet Jennifer Brown.

 

A half hour passed before Abraham could hear sirens in the distance.  He rose from his seat and did his best to compose himself.  He had treated Jennifer as if she was his daughter.  A couple times she could not make the rent, so he let it slide.  He knew she would pay him eventually.  He worried about her because she was a single girl living in New York trying to make it and it seemed she had no one around to give support.  He was a night owl and would often hear Jennifer coming home late.  He would usually open his door and lovingly tell her he was concerned for her because a young woman needed to be careful waking alone at night in this neighborhood.  She would laugh it off and thank him for caring.  Once, Abraham had given Jennifer a can of mace for protection. Jennifer loved the fact that Abraham had taken an interest in her in her life because so few people had.  She had always felt tossed aside by those close to her.  He was more than an apartment manager to her; he was almost like a father figure.  When he noticed that she did not come home at the usual time that day and then received the calls from tenants about the alarm, he was dreadfully fearful for Jennifer.