My cousin, Karen, suggested this first line to me. I wrote for five minutes. This is what I got. (If any of you have any more suggestions for prompts please let me know.)
It was four o’clock in the morning when Mary finished her research for the night. Just as she was about to log off, the message icon on her Facebook page lit up. Okay, one last message, she thought, as she reached to tap it open.
The message was from her old college buddy, Shawn. “Hope everything is going well! I recently moved to the area! We should meet up!”
Mary wrote back, “That would be fun!”
She was officially signing off for the evening when Shawn’s response popped up. “You have a beautiful house.”
“Thanks!” Mary wrote even though she didn’t think her profile picture did the house justice.
A third message: “It smells like you.”
A cold sweat broke out over Mary’s skin.
A fourth message: “Your bedroom’s a mess.”
Mary snapped her laptop shut. She took a deep breath and told herself that this was when a smart person would shrug of the comments. Shawn was just drunk and being a jerk as always.
Mary looked for her cell phone to call her friend Stephanie, not because she was scared just because she liked waking up her friends at four in the morning. Her cell phone was in the bedroom.
Stephanie flicked on her bedroom light and told herself that she wasn’t relieved that it was empty. She snatched up her cell phone off the bed and was about to dial Stephanie’s number when she froze. She wasn’t certain if she had left her desktop computer on but she was positive she hadn’t left her window open. Mary opened her cell phone and tried to call Stephanie but couldn’t. All of her contacts had been changed to “Shawn.”