The car keys jangled as they fell, splashing into the puddle and flicking the muddy water all over her new shoes. Lily swore, and bent down to pick them up, causing her wallet and the ridiculously over priced jar of jam to fall out of her arms and smash onto the wet pavement.
Lily briefly contemplated crying, but decided she couldn't be bothered. She sighed, picked up the soaked wallet and the disemboweled, broken jam jar that had spilt its sticky innards over the concrete, and walked towards the car. Stuff the jam, she thought. No, sorry, the 'boysenberry preserve', as its bright red, once intact label had defined. Her demanding, picky mother-in-law could just eat the name brand stuff like any other person. Lily slammed the car door shut with a little more force than necessary, and checked the time. She was late. Yet another thing for her fiancés' dearest mother to complain about.
She reached into her bag for her phone to call her husband-to-be, praying that for once in his life Paul actually had his phone with him and not left it in the freezer like last week, or at the petrol station the week before that. She scrabbled for several minutes, digging through the old receipts and broken pens before realizing that her phone wasn't there. The irony hit her like a brick. She must have left it in the bank.
Mentally cursing herself, Lily slammed the car door for the second time in so many minutes, and jogged across the car park back to the screaming red archway of the Westpac sliding doors. She marched around the car of some blithely ignorant idiot who had decided to ignore the dashed lines that spanned the curb and park directly in front of the banks entry, and paused to take off her sunglasses at the request of the overweight guard standing just inside the banks entrance, the garlicky stench of his breath encouraging her haste to remove them.
She strode inside and joined the short queue, grateful for the lack of people, the familiar surroundings reminding her Lily of the ghastly conversation she'd had only minutes earlier with her loan manager. I'm surprised I could even afford to buy that bloody boysenberry preserve in the first place.
She waited impatiently in the line, scuffing the mottled grey industrial carpet with her boot. This is the last thing I need. It was bad enough that Paul had actually invited controlling, over bearing Maureen to stay with them in their home, but for a whole week? That meant an entire week of being forced to practically live in the kitchen like a proper housewife, and enduring constant digs at how Lily's full time career was "nothing more than abandonment and ungratefulness towards her own husband" ...Lily thought she'd be lucky if she got through the week without abandoning her grip on a chopping board and chucking it towards Maureen's head.
And now she was later than ever. This wasn't being helped by the old biddy at the counter in front of her fussing over her change, taking her sweet time and not knowing nor caring that for every minute Lily was late, Maureen would fine one more thing criticize. It wasn't, as she constantly reminded Lily, that she was trying to be spiteful, she was 'simply trying to show Lily how things were supposed to be done'.
Finally, finally the counter was freed as the elderly woman shuffled away, dragging her wheelie trolley with her, and the bank teller waved her hand for Lily to come forward, her scarlet inch-long nails glinting in the light. Why, Lily thought, would such things be at all practical when your entire job consisted of typing on a keyboard and counting out coins?
"Hi, how can I help-"
"I left my cell phone here about twenty minutes ago" Lily interrupted. "I was talking to a manager about mortgage payments and I think I left it as his desk."
"Okay, well, Mr Stanton is in a meeting right now, but if you'd like to just- "
The bank teller's face froze, her cut off words hanging in the air as her eyes widened and popped at something beyond Lily's shoulder. The name tag that was pinned to her dangerously-tight ruffled blouse indicated that her name was Tracey, and Lily could see the gold filling at the back of her frozen, gaping mouth, crouching, sheltered by the glistening yellow tint of smoker's teeth.
"What is it, what's the problem?" demanded Lily, twisting her head around over her shoulder just in time to see the chubby security guard drop to his knees in the doorway, as if struck by the sudden urge to pray.
Lily's brain took several seconds to take in the shifting blur of a scene, noticing the red streak on the guard's back growing larger as the man slumped over onto his side, and awkward way he lay there, one of his thick legs twitching. As if the volume dial of a stereo was being twiddled up, Lily's sense of hearing began to tune into a background frequency of tinny sound. The noise built up and up to a crescendo, and it was then Lily recognized the sound. People were screaming. Lily didn't understand, why were people screaming, what was going on, why was the man on the floor, who was shouting. Her eyes focused: a silhouette was standing in the doorway of the bank, where the guard once stood.
The silhouette moved, and Lily saw that it was truly a tall, broad man dressed in entirely black clothing, his face hooded, black boots glinting in the glow of the bank's fluorescent tube lighting.
He's the one yelling.
"EVERYONE DOWN, ON THE FLOOR, GET ON THE FLOOR!"
On the floor? Why? I can't get on the floor, I need to get home, I'm late.
It was then that the man walked forward, and Lily saw what was in his arms. Oh my god.
The black gun looked nothing like the ones she'd used when Paul had forced her to go paint-balling last Autumn, or the slug gun she'd used as a kid when she went to her friend's farm that one time, where he'd accidentally shot a Fantail and they had to hide the body under a pile of gravel so they wouldn't get told off.
This gun was shorter. It looked heavier though, more similar to the machine guns of Hollywood films than it was to the air rifle she'd used, but without a sniper range like the guns in movies, and no giant belt of bullets hanging from it.
It's a gun. It's a real gun. Why does he-
Lily's inner monologue was cut off by her brain becoming aware that the man, the gunman, was moving towards her, his boots stomping against the ground so hard she could feel his foot falls.
"I SAID GET DOWN. GET ONTO THE FLOOR. GET DOWN ONTO THE FLOOR!"
Lily felt strange. She didn't understand. She wanted to scream.
I am screaming, she realized. She couldn't move. It was only then that a truly coherent thought formed itself in her mind. He's robbing the bank. He's got a gun, and he's robbing the bank.
He shot the guard.
