Fire Meets Gasoline : After Ashes

Chapter Six : Chase

MIKE TORRENTES. It was almost time to close the store, and I knew my friend, Jennifer, would be at the back of the store getting all the boxes sort out for the people coming in the morning, the truth is that even though I would enjoy working alone, it was good to become friends with someone there, it was one of the things I never would actually enjoyed since the fact I had the hide my capabilities to the fullest, but it turned out no one would notice when things would get to me quicker or when the stuff would get cleaned just before the end of my shift. I met Jennifer just a day after working in the café, we first started talking about basic work stuff, and then eventually she mentioned Hunger Games and from that a spiral of topics came through us, to the point I invited to have dinner at the apartment. Yujun told me a million times it would be better to wait to get to know people before inviting them inside our home, and he was right, but I just simply decided to ignore that, I had a feeling she would stick around for longer than a week.

As I closed the front and locked the door, I heard a loud thump coming from the back, I imagined Jennifer left something fell off, so I screamed her name and no reply was given, I imagined myself in a horror movie and started to slowly walk towards the door that led to the back of the store, just for Jennifer bust out of the door, looking like she saw someone dead. She reached my arms and grabbed the front door.

"Jen we can't leave yet!" I screamed as I held her.

"No Mike I-I saw a guy at the street just outside our parking lot-he had a knife!" She pleaded in my arms.

"Oh c'mon I just know it's in your head! A knife? Really?"

"Mike, I'm serious!" She took her hands off me and took her phone, "Look! See what's behind the selfie I took!"

As I looked at her phone, I saw a beautiful woman with really long dark hair, big green eyes and red lips as well as golden hoop earrings that blinked at the street light. And behind her, a faint image of a man wearing a dark coat, going into hiding in the walls of the building behind ours.

I tried to look fearless and brave, but my eyes flinched and Jennifer went on a complete breakdown. For someone that has no context of her life would call her dramatic, however, she was right in the same store when it got broken in and two criminals stole the stuff from the manager. She had every right to be worried.

Jennifer then pulled down the curtains from the front windows and turned off the lights quickly.

"Do you think they will think we left since everything is turned off?" She asked in fear.

"I think whoever that person is, would actually enjoy the fact people left a store full of cash!" I replied.

"Look I don't want to get robbed again, we gotta get the hell out of here!"

"We can't go through the front door because the only way to close the store without the alarm going off is through the back!"

"Then check if the man is there!" She bumped my chest.

"That-that's because you're scared! You want me to check first so if he's there he just kills me!"

"So you want me to go over there?!"

"No that's not-not what I said-"

"Then be a man and go over there!"

I looked at Jennifer with stressed eyes and turned my beck on her, I walked slowly to the back as I looked through anything I could grab and hit the phantom menace. I took a broom that was standing around and took with me once I reached the door. It took me a while to twist the handle slightly for the left in order to open it. I believed Jennifer and the picture she took, but I hoped it was all a misunderstanding and there wasn't a man standing around waiting to kill us. I then left the store through the back and looked at all my sides with attentive looks and the hard grasp of the broom in my hands, the chill of the night definitely made it worse to focus and the sudden sound of cars beeping across the blocks made the hair at the back of my head stand up. I then screamed Jennifer's name full of disappointment and anger.