You wake up at 4 am, and there is a man you have never met standing over you.
Your move, writer.
Play it as terror first, if only to feel the floor drop out — the streetlight through the blinds catching a face that means you harm, the seconds before you decide whether to scream or reach for anything within arm's reach. That version writes itself in short, ragged sentences.
But let him be harmless and see what opens up. Maybe he's lost, wandered in from a house identical to yours three streets over, more embarrassed than menacing. Maybe he says your name like he knows you, and the fear curdles into something stranger — recognition you can't place.
Or skip fear entirely and go tender: he's older, unsteady, holding a photograph, asking if you've seen a woman who hasn't lived here in forty years. Grief wearing the shape of an intruder. Let the quiet be louder than any scream.
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