𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗼 Shorts

♔ DtM x OC - 3

RILEY

I closed the bakery door and locked it, but didn't bother pulling the grille down. Mum would be furious, except she'd gone to the mall along with everyone else.

The journey to the mall was a short one. Dennis ate his donut as we fast-walked up the street, and I inwardly bemoaned leaving behind my chocolate muffin.

As we got closer to the mall, we saw more people. Dennis an I exchanged worried glances as we heard them spouting the same kind of things his parents had prattled on about. The ones going in the same direction as us had arms laden with money, and the ones going the other way had their arms, bags - and in one case an upturned umbrella - filled with inventions that would really only be used once in a blue moon.

"Come on," Dennis said as we neared the entrance. "Those buffoons won't let Gnasher inside. We'll sneak in the back."

Gnasher took the lead, and we circled the building, but there didn't seem to be any entrances.

"This is useless. We'll never get in at this rate," Dennis huffed. "Gnasher, you might just have to stay outside.

Gnasher whined.

I turned my gaze skywards, and my eye caught an irregularity in the structure.

"What about that vent?"

"Vent? Brilliant!" Dennis held his hand up. When I high-fived him, it stung.

"The truth is in here somewhere," Dennis mused. "Just how to get up there." He eyed me speculatively. "Any good at giving shoulder rides?"

I shook my head quickly. "No, definitely not."

He shrugged. "Then you'll have to go first. Climb on my shoulders."

My eyes widened in disbelief. "As if! I'm not about to-"

"Riley."

I startled, and ended up staring at his smirk.

He knows my name he knows my name he knows-

"Trust me."

And I did.

He put his back against the wall and bent his knee, and I used his thigh as a step to stand on his shoulders. He straightened up and held my calves while I pried at the vent.

It came away in my fingers - I bet they thought no one would be breaking in like this! - and I hauled myself up into the relatively large vent.

Immediately it smelt like dust, chlorine, and tangy metal. I wrinkled my nose and turned around, back to the entrance, and put my arms down to take Gnasher from Dennis.

Surprisingly, Gnasher didn't gnash my arm off as soon as I touched him. I closed my fingers around his middle and pulled the (heavy) dog up into the vent with me, before putting a hand down to help Dennis up.

He took a running jump and cleared most of the wall before latching onto my hand. My arm was nearly wrenched out of it's socket, and I braced my other hand against the wall.

I only had to pull a couple of inches before his fingers grasped the sill and he pulled himself up. I scrambled backwards as he entered, glad that it was dark so he couldn't see me massaging my arm or my admiration of his upper-body strength.

His voice cut through the blanket of darkness like a hot knife through Camembert. "After you."

"Just like the movies," I muttered, turning on my phone to use as a light. It cast an eerie blue glow over the both of us, and I gave him a curt nod before turning around and following Gnasher into the gloom.

At the first fork in the vent I paused, unsure of which way to go, but then faint, muffled notes reached my ears.

"What's the matter?" Dennis asked behind me when his hand collided with my foot. "Why've we sto-"

"Shh," I commanded. "Do you hear that?"

"What?" He asked.

"Music," I said softly, my ears straining.

I picked the left path and followed it until I came across a T junction with a grille in the middle of the floor. I carefully picked my way over the grille, but Dennis caught my foot as he looked down.

"It's Curly down there!" He hissed. "Look!"

I turned around awkwardly in the narrow vent and peered through the metal mesh at the scene below. We weren't high up at all, so I could hear the two boys below us talking as loud as day.

"Curly," Pie-Face said. "I love this thing."

"Me too, Pie-Face," Curly replied. His inflections were all in the wrong places, so the wrong syllables were emphasised. "What is it?"

Pie-Face's expression didn't change. "I have no idea, but I need another seven. Lets go home and smash our piggybanks."

"Then we can buy one of those automatic piggy bank smashers," Curly replied monotonously.

"Perhaps they will take my parrot in part exchange," Pie-Face mused as they wandered away from our grille.

I glanced up at Dennis, who seemed troubled. "Well," he said slowly, "looks as though we're the only sane people left in this town."

I was about to reply with something optimistic, but a noise interrupted me. Maniacal laughter echoed hauntingly in the vent, and I cocked my head in it's direction. Dennis nodded at me to continue onwards and Gnasher led the way, me crawling behind.

I kept going, learning not to flinch at the feel of the occasional fluff and dust under my fingers. The next vent wasn't right, so we shuffled along to the one just before the bend, with a large grille in the wall. I gasped at the sight inside.

A small man with a squat hat and a wild-west style outfit sat in the chair in the middle. He spun a gun lazily around his fingers, glancing obsessively at the screens that covered an entire wall - all showing images of the zombie-like shoppers.

A crazed, taller man was bustling about the shelves that lines the other walls, muttering to himself and every so often adjusting his hat - a miniaturised umbrella - over his ectoplasm-green hair.