The Intruder
- Mar 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Anna Scotti
In the worst version, which is also the true one, they’ve left the windows open, but they feel safe because they’ve dragged the queen mattress into the living room so they can all watch TV, the two girls and the younger girl’s boyfriend. The intruder sees them there, through the screen, all sweet soft thighs and long limbs, two girls who hours earlier washed their cars in the driveway, the younger one in cut-offs and a transparent white tee and the other one in a bikini that left her ass hanging out the bottom, as he watched helplessly from his bedroom window, rocking the baby that never stops crying while his wife showered, the door locked against him as if he might want her, all sweat and fat and red-rimmed eyes and temper. The girls are not real girls; they are pictures from a magazine, that curved and clean and luscious.
He lifts the screen off quietly, quietly, and somehow shoves his big bulk into the hallway without a sound. He has come with bad intentions, worse than stealing. Why else the knife that will later be found, bladeless, in the little hallway? Why else no mask? In this version, the boyfriend hears him, and tries to hold him, hollering for the girls to call the police, struggling desperately with a man who outweighs him by forty pounds, vying for the knife. Later the intruder will tell the police, “I can’t say I stabbed him; we were struggling for the knife and he got stabbed.” Yes. Eight times. In this version, the girls live, but they are never the same. In this version, the intruder lives right next door, and he has a wife and a new baby. Next door. A new baby. He watched the girls wash their cars, and he had dinner with his wife, kissed the baby, went to bed, and got up later and got a knife and found some gloves and went next door. But even this version, the worst, which is also the true one, has redeeming features. The boy’s mother knows he was a hero. The girls live and one of them is normal, more or less. The house is sold at a discount to a couple who know what happened but do not fear ghosts. Their daughter wins the state spelling bee and their son skips third grade. No one knows what happened to the baby and his mother. That could be another good thing about this version.
In another version, the boy isn’t there at all. Only one of the girls is stabbed. The younger girl gets out of the house and flags down a car, and then she and the driver bust back into the house, confront the intruder, and trap him in a closet until the police come. The stabbed girl laughs at her own wound–a sliced palm, from where she grabbed the knife, yelling, “Not tonight, mothertrucker!” Her roommate and the brave motorist will tease her forever about that, but even under duress, she is not comfortable with cursing. Later, the stabbed girl marries the brave motorist and they befriend the young mother next door. They are like an aunt and uncle to the baby. No one visits the intruder in prison, but they hear that he found Jesus shortly before he hanged himself.
There are a lot of versions where the girls get out of the house but the intruder also gets away. In one of them, they recognize him as their neighbor. They confront him and he apologizes, sobbing. One girl googles “post-partum depression in men” while the other rocks the baby against her chest, crooning. She is surprised that the baby smells like dried apricots. She cannot resist kissing the soft down at the crown of his head.
You probably don’t want the zombie apocalypse version or the one about vampires in love, but you should know there’s a version where the intruder enters without a knife, steals their wallets and purses, and sneaks out again. Everyone learns a lesson! Keep your windows closed at night, even in August! There’s also a version where the intruder just wants money for drugs; nothing worse. But the girls are a little drunk, and they’re big girls, possibly lesbians, and there are three of them, not two. They catch him going through their purses and although they don’t actually hurt him, they do mock him and shave his head. They’re not careful with the razor, and he’s cut a little, though not seriously. Then they drag him over to his front porch, naked, and ring the bell. They run away before his wife answers. It would be a better story if the wife somehow got in on it–let’s say he slaps her and she slaps him back harder and goes next door to live with the big potential lesbians. But nobody’s gonna believe that one; it’s just too good.
In my favorite version, the intruder stops outside the open window. He can see a sweet stretch of calf and thigh, an arm gleaming with perspiration. He can’t see the boyfriend, but he can see the two girls’ tousled heads, a jumble of limbs, a lovely mess of nightgowns and damp sheets and moonlight. He thinks it over. He looks up at the golden moon. He sighs. He thinks of his baby asleep next door, the fat-creased thighs, the veins that are visible in his fluttering eyelids. The intruder’s young son is so small that he still wears nightgowns, but the intruder has been looking forward to purchasing pajamas with action figures on them, and a tiny backpack. He puts one hand on the windowsill but it’s already over for him. His heart beats rhythmically and softly. He wonders if it is possible that one of these girls will someday bear a child, and that child will marry his child, and he will dance at the wedding. He sighs. His wife waits at home and although she does not want him in the way she used to – her breasts hurt and she is very tired – she would like to sink into the sweet sweating expanse of his broad chest. She would like to sleep for just an hour, that’s all, before the baby cries, before her husband rises to dress and rushes away to the real world, the world of order and time clocks and paychecks. Tonight, I am her fairy godmother, and I grant her wish. Her husband is not a monster. He is boring and frustrated and he has foul breath. But he is in the bed beside her. The baby is in a little cradle on her other side. Next door, the girls sleep, tangled in the sheets, sweating lightly. The younger girl has one arm flung across her boyfriend’s bony ass. Her other hand touches her friend’s face. They sleep on. They sleep on.
Image © Europeana
Anna Scotti's poetry can be found in The New Yorker, Nimrod, Chautauqua, and other literary journals, and in her prize-winning collection Bewildered by All This Broken Sky. Her short stories are regulars in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and have taken many prizes and honors. A 2025 collection of Scotti's short fiction, It's Not Even Past, was characterized as "brilliant" by the critic Jeremy Black, and will be re-released by a new publisher this year. She has a second collection coming in 2027. Scotti is also the author of the novella Big and Bad, winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. A former journalist writing for national and international magazines, Anna teaches creative writing, business writing, and grammar online, and blogs for SleuthSayers.org Find her at https://www.annakscotti.com/.