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A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE
A Property Recollection by Regina Young
Filipa Rodrigues Abreu
September 19, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
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🖋️ A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE
A screenplay treatment for House.Roc Entertainment & Star 86 Studios
Written by: Filipa R. Abreu in Association with ChatGPT Noir Division + Gemini Industries
🌟 Editor's Note
Please be advised this content is for mature audiences. Regina Young and “Young Realty” are figments of the authors imagination. This is a Human-AI Hybrid Creation. Stay Creative:) Tip Jar + Mee at the end of Publication 💋
🖋️ A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE
By Regina Young,
We were finished with our final walkthrough, right before heading to the attorneys office for Closing Paperwork.
I paused at the front gate, my finger resting on the latch, the way you hover before saying something you know will be dismissed.
"Nice gate," I’d said. “But it doesn’t close. Make sure you add that to your to-do list before moving in and don’t forget to change the locks. I will send you my vendor list by the end of the day.”
The husband, barefoot and bright-eyed, laughed it off.
“We don’t believe in fences,” he said. “People are good.”
I didn’t say anything then. How can I argue with goodness. I just marked it in my notepad.
The family was charming, in the way that only new homeowners can be. They’d painted the kitchen a butter-yellow, strung twinkle lights along the fig tree. Their youngest daughter sang while she watered the plants, and their teenage son skateboarded through the living room barefoot like it was 1999 again. They made fresh bread, gave jars to neighbors, left their windows open wide, even at night.
They were good people.
And like most good people, they didn’t see it coming.
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The hired him just for the garden.
A quiet man with soil in his nails and something unreadable in his eyes. Hired on a whim, through a friend of a friend of a farmer’s daughter, or some other golden chain of loose referrals. He never gave his last name. But he brought sunflowers. Said he planted them in honor of their daughter’s song.
Soon, he was fixing the front door latch. Then, walking their dog. Then, invited for dinner.
They said it felt “natural.”
One morning, the husband came down to find the man seated at the kitchen table—shirtless, sipping from his mug. Casually. As if he belonged. As if he always had.
Still, the family made excuses: “He’s just grateful.
He’s harmless.”
“Everyone deserves the opportunity of a dignified life.”
They’d begun to narrate his presence the way one does a creaking pipe. A quirk. A feature, not a bug. The mother even joked, “It’s like he came with the house!”
I stopped by to check on them and repeated my concern over changing the locks. But they waved me off.
“This home isn’t a prison,” the father said, arms open like a preacher in his own cathedral.
“I just think,” I replied, slow and calm, “you ought to remember whose name is on the deed.”
The Stranger didn’t care for deeds. He had no need for Documents.
He knew the cracks in their wall. And how to slip through them.
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In the mornings, he opened the fridge like it was his. Took whatever he wanted: cold chicken, leftover risotto, the last orange soda from the top shelf. He drank from the bottle. He put it back half-empty. They never asked.
He’d begun to use the father’s razor. Wore his robe once, left it hanging wrong. The wife straightened it, absent-minded, humming a tune.
And in the evenings—when steam curled through the hallway vents—he stood quiet outside the bathroom. The light spilled under the door.
He could hear her singing.
He never touched her. Never said a word.
He just watched. The glass fogged, then cleared.
The outline of her back. Her shoulder. The way her hand moved through her hair. The soapy bubbles on her shoulder.
He knew things about them now. What time they ate. When they fought.
How often she cried in the pantry…
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It’s always the people who’ve never had to build anything who say, “We don’t believe in walls.” They call it kindness.
I call it risk.
Because when you fight to have anything, you know things can be taken.
You lock your doors. You build fences. You enforce boundaries.
You don’t confuse welcome with a free for all.
They think that makes me cold.
Strangers don’t always sneak in. Sometimes, they’re let in. With lemonade.
It’s not about fences and locks—though those help.
But about decisions.With the courage to say: “This far, and no further.”
Don’t confuse openness with virtue. Don’t cast your pearl before swine.
True Love is Fierce Protection.
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