ALIVE [Connor]

[15] Convenience

November 6th. 2038.

AM 02:00:02

Sleep was a far away dream by the mid-point of the night. Isla couldn't rest, not with everything that had escalated so quickly. She couldn't crawl into bed and close off her mind. She couldn't eat, she couldn't stay still. She needed to pace around and around. And eventually, she needed some fresh air.

Her face slathered in a green clay mask, the 'detoxication' that the product promised was certainly not helping.

Stepping out in a large coat, zipped up over pyjamas, Isla ventured out to the convenience store next door with a bag slung over her shoulder. She saw no one of interest on the way, for the lateness of the hour deemed just how dysfunctional she had become. The dishevelled, wide-eyed faces of Scout and Markus were playing back in her mind, creating a series of ruminating thoughts which she simply could not shake.

Leo was dead.

Markus had claimed the fate of her ex-boyfriend.

He was sure, above all else, that he had unintentionally killed his owner's son. 

The world is a shit-storm.

The automatic doors glided open, the store was empty as Isla arrived. Her downcast expression breaking for just a moment to offer the cashier a fleeting, half-hearted smile.

"Evening, Isla. How're the dogs?"

"Oh, y'know...good, slobbery." The cashier was the store-owner's brother, if Isla was recalling it correctly. He tended to the night shift, unphased by her green face, he had always assumed that she was a professional dog trainer.

Isla played along with it. 'Deviant-hunter' wasn't exactly a common profession. And 'detective' seemed to raise a lot of questions that she was no mood to answer during the course of most small talk.

Trundling off between the brightly-lit isles, she listened absently to the music sifting through the store, finding herself caught in the prying eyes of the cashier as he watched her from the counter. He was not suspicious, simply curious if anything. For Isla was a regular customer, a perk of being a next door neighbour to the shop in the first place. His expression was placed in concern rather than suspecting the woman of attempting to steal anything, despite the countless times he had already complained to her that the store's CCTV system had stopped working properly three times in a row, over the course of the week.

As Isla glanced up at the camera in the corner, she noted the way the tiny red light beside the lens was dulled to nothing but black.

Make that four times.

She appeared a little lost, despite knowing the exact layout of the store from visiting so frequently. Often times she needed an extra carton of milk or a bottle of whiskey - depending on the day, or rather night, she had had to endure.

During this particular one, Isla wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, playing it off as if she was reading the label of a can of soup at one point before slowly replacing it back onto the display stack in the middle of the store. Anything to distract her train of thought.

She was nibbling at her chapped lip, cheeks appearing rosy thanks to the biting air of the November chill. Her beaten converse squeaked underfoot, intensively so as she halted in front of a back wall of nothing but refrigerators, stocked with four and eight packs of different beers and ciders. She gazed at them for a long moment, a conflicted hand lingering somewhere near the fridge's handle as she considered sliding open the frosted door.

And yet the visual of a troubled Hank Anderson hunched over his kitchen table made her refrain. Conflicted, she pocketed her hand, still staring at the discount deal on the crates of cider cans, just as she heard the sounds of another customer entering the store.