Another World of Dreams-The Escape

Chapter 10 - Skyberg

They stood next to a red plank in a small alley and waited for the right moment.

"Are you sure no one is watching?" asked Liv. "Let's pretend we are here by mere incident."

Kaan scouted around them with his sharp eyes and listened for approaching footsteps.

"No one is near," he said.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." Though she had asked far too many times already, he showed no trace of annoyance, but she wished it did. "My whole life people have been watching me. I can tell."

She tied up her hair, put on one of the knitted hats and pulled it over her face. She had cut two holes for her eyes and was expecting to look like a brave vigilante in the disguise, but it turned out she felt warm and stupid instead. Covering your face doesn't make you evil, she told herself. Plus, it was a clever thing to do if you were to live outside the law.

"Keep an eye out," she said and threw the empty bag over her shoulder, then climbed over the plank and landed on a backyard of dried mud. She hunkered and sneaked over to the backdoor across the yard, gave the handle a gentle push and slid open the door. The clerk sat in the middle of the room with his eyes fixed on the street outside, biding his time to harass the next customer to step inside his store. He played with a silver coin which wandered between his fingers.

Liv's pulse throbbed like beating fists against her temples and her blood started rushing to her head. She admitted she had been naive to hope for an empty room and cursed her rotten luck, then accepted the clerk's presence as an exciting challenge. As quiet as a night assassin, she crept to the counter and lifted the strongbox off the shelf. The clerk fumbled with his finger, and the coin rolled away on the floor.

Liv sensed his movements behind her. She let go of the strongbox, then swung around with her arm outstretched and her fist clenched tight. The blow met the astonished man between his eyes. Without hesitation, she struck him again with her other hand and scratched her knuckles against his teeth. He was tougher than she expected a sales clerk to be and threw himself at her before she could run outside. The man slapped her in the face and cracked her lip. His hands found her throat, and she screamed in panic. Liv bit his finger and tasted warm iron as his blood mixed with hers. He jerked his hand away and flew across the room as she kicked his chest. She stumbled to her feet, but before she could reach the door, the clerk tackled her and flung her back against the floorboards. A shelf fell over, and the lines of items smashed to the floor. She kicked her legs and slapped her hands against his face, but her blows grew weak and only triggered him to fight harder.

Liv searched the surrounding floor with her shaking fingers and caught hold of a hard and cool object. A cast iron candlestick. With her last powers she struck it against the man's head. He lost consciousness and collapsed on top of her, as numb as the constable outside of Southport.

She crawled to her feet and tore the perfume bottles from the shelves next to the front door. A suffocating scent of flowers filled the air and she screamed out what remained of her anger. After catching her breath, she took the key that hung around the clerk's neck and picked up her bag. She unlocked the strongbox and emptied its content before she rushed out through the backdoor.

Kaan remained where she had left him and did not say a word as she jumped over the plank and showed him her booty. They headed towards the inn, but chose another road than the one they had arrived by, along an empty street with small box-shaped villas on both sides.

Liv's forehead was thick with sweat and her face so pale that one could wonder if it had ever seen the light of day. Every part of her body ached, and she sensed that she was bleeding somewhere, but it was not the pain that troubled her. Things had gone wrong. Even if she told herself they were right to steal from Arthur Greene, recalling how she beat the clerk unconscious nauseated her. She found it impossible to stop herself from replaying the fight in the store in her head. Kaan had shared little details of the events leading up to his escape, but she understood that he had injured two of the Dream Park's officers, maybe killed them. Above Southport, the constable had been aiming his rifle at them before she struck him. In both cases it had been self-defense, but this was different. At least she had felt strong after her earlier fights, but now sickening feelings of guilt and regret came storming as a hurricane.