Living outside the city had improved my life significantly, it's peaceful, quiet and relaxing. Never have I felt such inner peace then living in an area with a scarcity of people. That is until one day my doorbell rang out of the blue. It was on a Sunday morning and I just got done sipping the final remains of my green tea. The sudden noise of the door bell startled me, I forgotten that it was slightly broken and sounded more like a screeching cat then a bell, plus I think it was only the second time I've heard it.

"I'm not expecting anyone" I thought to myself.

Slowly, I crept up to the door and looked through the peephole to see who it was. There was no one there, so I cautiously opened up the door and a short gust of wind blew in, I continued to open up the door and saw nothing. Suddenly a booming voice echoed throughout the house.

"You should not have opened the door!" howled the voice "I could've been an assassin or a vacuum salesman just hiding off to the side just waiting to stick my foot through the doorway."

Instinctually I turned around and motioned my hands in a karate stance with my only martial arts experience being a watcher of Bruce Lee movies. I got a good look at him and he was quite the peculiar looking person, he was sporting a long grey beard, wearing a neon orange safety vest on top of a dark grey robe and had a traffic cone on his head. He was also carrying a worn out stop sign on a post like it was a walking staff.

While trying to catch my breath I stuttered "Wh...Who are....you an...and how did you get in?"

"I am safety incarnate" the peculiar man exclaimed "and I got in because of your negligence to safety" he continued while showing me a checklist that had an X inside squares that was next to the sentences "Didn't open door to stranger" and "has fully functional doorbell".

Still breathing heavy, I had to sit down and try to process what was going on.

"Maybe a drink will make you feel better" the safetyman said as he materialized a coffee mug and handed to me.

I nodded thank you and took a sip, after just a couple of seconds I started feel very woozy and my vision started to get very blurry and I saw the safetyman slowly walk up to me with the list.

"I'll have to put an X on taking a drink from a strang...." he exclaimed right before I blacked out.

A few hours later I regained consciousness and gradually started to sit up. As I sat up I felt something fall off me and a heard small thud. It was a my wallet and piece of paper. I looked at the paper and it was the checklist with mostly X's in the squares and on the bottom it showed that I failed the inspection and that I was also charged $75. Finally I checked my wallet and saw that $75 was taken from me and that's when I learned there's always a price to pay no matter where you live.

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The End