The Alternative

Our new home in Whyalla might have been a construction disaster, but it could have been so much worse.  The new houses haven't caught up with the ancient rent-a-wrecks just yet.  Our friend J arrived in town during the worst of the rental crisis, and found herself a two-bedroom bungalow at the east end of town.  So, okay, ants were parading in through wide cracks in the walls and the bathroom was thirty-years overdue for a good scrub-up (or a bonfire, choose your poison) but it had all the necessary bits, yeah?
            Mostly.  Her front door didn't have a lock, so her first night in the place she locked herself into her bedroom, just in case. In the morning, she climbed out of bed, walked over to the door, turned the door lock - and the door handle fell off in her hand. She was locked in.  Her cell phone was on the other side of the door, and she was reluctant to holler out to her neighbors at six-thirty in the morning.
"Were you worried?" I asked her.
J shrugged.  "I was a little bit worried at first, but I looked around my room and noticed that the window had fallen out.  So I climbed out that way and walked around to the front door in my pajamas."