“I just threw up in front of everyone,” she mumbled to herself, even more embarrassed. She decided to head straight back to her room, take some more medication and try to fall asleep. Sleep might be better for her than food anyway.
Her head felt even worse now, a heavy thud thumping low at the base of her skull and travelling across to the front of her head. She couldn’t imagine sitting there and eating in front of everyone feeling like this. The pain, and the embarrassment, were too much.
Though they weren’t, not really.
Not with what she’d done. What she was running from. What she was running towards…
She exited the bathroom, intending to head for the front door and go back to her room but as she passed her table the young blond waitress stopped her by placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I ordered you the soup. It’s chicken and vegetable. It’s real nice. You’ll feel better after that, I promise.” She offered Delores a smile, and this time it wasn’t fake. This time it was full of something else; understanding. “Ordered you a water also, didn’t know what you’d want to be drinking, other than your coffee, but I figured everyone drinks water.” She shrugged and guided Delores back to the table almost as if she knew Delores had planned to escape.
Delores looked at the soup, her stomach giving a large and painful grumble in response. She nodded and slid into the booth. She didn’t look up at the waitress but instead picked up her spoon and dipped it into the steaming soup, hoping to finish it and get out of here as quickly as possible.
She raised it to her lips and tipped the spoonful of soup into her mouth. It was hot, but not scalding, and flavours burst against her tongue, delighted in the taste of something new. She dipped her spoon in again, and brought it to her mouth before swallowing it down quickly, letting the liquid settle in her stomach before diving in for more.
She should be more careful, wait longer to see if the soup was actually going to settle, but it was the first real food she’d enjoyed since… since everything had happened.
She couldn’t bring herself to wait longer between each spoonful. How much joy did she have left in this life?
A bread roll on a small white plate was placed on to the too big wooden table and then slid across to her. She looked up as the waitress walked away.
Chapter Four
Danny
Danny stood with a stretch.
His back cracked in a series of quick pops and groans and he rolled his shoulders in response. Night-time was drawing in, and he was tired, the sun had long since dipped from view and had been replaced with its reputable counterpart.
Danny had a new video game waiting for him at home, and he had to meet some friends later on, but as usual, Aiden, the owner was late. He should have been here over forty-five minutes ago.
Aiden had no respect for anyone, least of all Danny. They had gone to high school together, but where Danny had dropped out of college and bummed about for a couple of years partying and having fun, Aiden had gone on to study hard and get himself some nice letters after his name. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference though when it came to finding a job. Skills or no skills, there were no jobs out there for anyone right now, and Aiden was resentful of Danny and the freedom that he’d been able to have while he’d had to study hard, because now both of them were in the same place, and going in much the same direction.
Somehow Aiden had scraped the cash together to buy this place. But from what Danny could see it was a sinkhole, and with each passing month the burden of debt was building. Aiden wasn’t a people person; he hated most people in fact. And certainly didn’t like the normal scum that stopped at places like this, believing that he were above them all.
So somehow Danny had landed the job of working for Aiden for minimum wage, and Aiden stayed away as much as possible. When he was here he made sure to make Danny as miserable as possible. Danny was almost certain that locked in the stock room was a forty-inch wide screen tv that got pulled out after he went home. That was just the sort of dick move that Aiden would pull.
Danny trailed around the counter and slipped his carefully folded up newspaper back into the stand so that no one knew it had been read. The headline on the front caught his eye and he reached over to pick it back up.
Mystery surrounds missing woman.
The little bell above the door jingled and he turned with a scowl, expecting to see Aiden. But instead of Aiden, he was greeted with a large man with wide shoulders, greasy hair, and a shotgun in his hand.
“Behind the counter, boy,” the man growled out, and slammed the door shut behind him before sliding the lock into place. “I want the cash from the register and the safe.”
Danny didn’t argue the point that he didn’t have the code to the safe, or bother to tell the man that he’d just pissed his pants and it was running down his leg and into his two year old sneakers. Instead he headed back around the counter, his hands held high where the man and the world could see them.
“Open it up, now.” The man gestured with the gun to the small register on top of the wooden counter.
Danny moved over to the aging contraption and pressed the button for the drawer. It slid out on rusty hinges with a groan and Danny reached in and pulled out the small amount of money that it held. From his reckoning it was around one hundred and twenty dollars, give or take. He handed it over to the man, trying to not look as scared as he felt. He was twenty seven years old, but right now he felt as helpless as an old man.
“Where’s the rest?” the man barked out, agitated. “There should be more than this, I was told there was more. What about the safe? Where’s the damn safe?”
“I don’t know the code to the safe, sir.” Danny winced as the barrel of the gun came towards him, hitting him square across the forehead and making him see stars. His body was flung backwards, hitting the wall behind him. The keys on the pegboard rattled, but stayed in place. “Please, Sir!” Blood trickled into Danny’s eyes from the small cut made by the gun. “Please!” he held up his hands in defence, covering his face as much as possible.
The large man charged around the counter and grabbed Danny by the shirt, pulling him up to standing and bending him over the counter. He forced the end of his gun against the side of his head.
“I’ll ask you one more time, boy. Where is the god-damn safe?”
“Please, it’s in the back office, but I don’t know the code,” Danny yelled, panic tightening at his throat and making his voice sound like he was going through puberty all over again. Tears trailed from his eyes, skimming the side of his nose and dripped down on to his ratty t-shirt.
The man bent down to stare into Danny’s face. “I won’t ask you again. I was told there would be more money, and that you knew the code to the safe, now where is it?”
As he looked in to the man’s eyes, his own reflection staring back at him, Danny’s mind went back to the woman from earlier. Her blank stare, the emptiness that lived in those eyes. He finally got it; he knew why she’d chilled him to the bone, why he was so worried and frightened for her.
She knew she was going to die.
As he stared at his own reflection in the other man’s eyes, the horror chilling his body, and running trails of fear up and down his spine, he saw that same finality. And he knew he was going to die too.