Sinful Saints

2

Animal Farm by George Orwell.
That was the book I had been looking forward to buy on Sunday, 26th March. It was raining quite heavily that day and I was walking around inside Borders, bending and sitting while going through all the books on the racks.

In order to get my hands on the book, all I needed to do was to go to the Fiction shelf near the instore Starbukcs. On the fourth shelf of the books with authors arranged from N, O to P, was Orwell. I flipped through the book and checked the price on the reverse side MYR34.90. Did I mention that I wanted to buy this book earlier? My bad.

So I checked to see if anyone was around and seeing no one, I hid the book under my shirt. I saw this in a movie where people were so calm while they're doing it, but heck, I was nervous. My next plan was to walk out from Borders and once the sensor at the gate detected my misdemenour, I was going to run as fast as - wait, no - not as fast as I could. But just fast enough.

"Bismillahirahmanirahin" went my whisper as I drew closer to the entrance, before realizing the mantra doesn't quite make sense. For the few metres ahead, I prepared myself for a sprint. For God's sake, I even wore running shoe that day.

Titt! Titt! Titt! the sensor sounded so funny I almost forgot to run.

I passed the Chatime stall in front of Borders when the guard finally started to give chase. I thought of probably buying a drink or two just to wait for him. I kept running anyway. I went to The Street and the guard was keeping up the pace. He had a slow response, but boy, could he run. At that exact moment I started to have a change of plan as I thought of all the nasty things that could happen to me if I got caught.

I always to that - a sudden change of plan.

I looked behind and the guard was getting nearer, so I drew together all the energy I had and started to get ahead of him.