Fall into Danger!

I live a pretty safe life. My neighborhood is located in Suburbia, USA where getting my mail at 4:30 instead of 4:00 is the biggest danger I face. Police sirens are rarely heard, criminals don’t run rampant in the streets, and my super huge German Shepherd has only tiny squirrels to scare away. I can walk said German Shepherd at midnight if I want to and not worry that I’ll be abducted or something equally as heinous.

I work in a safe town in a safe school, surrounded by safe colleagues and safe students.  

Bottom line? My life is basically populated with fuzzy pink bunnies. For the most part I like it that way. I do.

But…

I am a writer, you know. Sometimes I fantasize about danger. It’s kind of my job to do so as a fiction author. I imagine scenarios that are jam-packed with suspense, action, life-and-death decisions, and of course gorgeous men that are at the center of it all. That last part is my favorite. I’ll admit it.

I can be engaged in a mundane task like weeding my yard for example. A truck will drive by and even though I know exactly which neighbor is in that truck and that it drives by at precisely that time every single weekday, I’ll pretend the driver is a 6’4” ex-Marine dressed in all black. He’s wearing dark sunglasses, a scant beard circles his full lips, and he’s got a gun on the passenger seat. A gun he plans to use. He peels around the corner in front of my house, screeches to a stop, and jumps out of his truck. In three long strides, he is standing beside me, the tips of his black boots touching my pile of yanked dandelions.

“Let’s go,” he says.

I look up with a you-talking-to-me expression on my face… and streaks of sweat and dirt no doubt from my toiling in the yard.

“There isn’t much time. They’ll be here any minute. I’m your only chance.” He extends a big, sturdy-looking hand to me.

I gape at it, mesmerized by the size of his fingers and the calluses on his palm. Man hands. Oh, boy, do I love some man hands.

Sliding my soil-covered hand into his, I let him pull me to my feet. I’m wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, but somehow I’m pulling off a cute, girl-next-door look and not the sloppy gardener look I’m usually sporting.

He whisks me into his truck, hops into the driver’s seat, and we’re off.

Away from danger.

Or perhaps into it.

Either way, I’ll be on an adventure—if only in my mind—until my weeding task is done. Then I’ll most likely be attacked by fictional ninjas while I’m folding the laundry.

Danger. It’s nowhere… and everywhere.

For more fictional danger, try my book Firefly Mountain which includes firefighters, a lunatic arsonist, and a paranormal ability capable of really heating things up.

Toodles,

Chris

www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com