By the time Alicia finished her homework an hour and a half had elapsed and the two glasses of whatever sat before her lost more of their contents from evaporation, than they did from consumption. She looked from the window and caught sight of the blue car passing between the café and the club. That was the third time in the last fifteen minutes she’d seen it.
Once more she lifted one of her books and peered over the top. The car passed by without stopping and she was certain she hadn’t been spotted. A minute later she saw the man who’d been driving the car walking towards the café. Not only was he walking in her direction, he was staring straight at her. She immediately stood leaving her school books on the table and pushed past the short chubby waitress heading for the kitchen.
‘Hey,’ shouted the waitress. ‘You’re not allowed through there!’ But Alicia was gone.
She burst into the kitchen but stalled looking for an exit. To her right stood short fat balding man turning burgers on a burnt-black hob who eyed her suspiciously. Looking directly ahead she saw a door at the back of the kitchen marked FIRE EXIT.
‘Hey…’ she called out to the man. ‘Is that door locked?’
The man stared shaking his head. ‘No, but’
‘Great, thanks…’
Alicia ran at the door hitting the bar that ran across the middle of it and it opened with ease. She shot into an alleyway first looking right then left. That’s when she saw the driver of the car; he hadn’t actually entered the café after all. He was at the far end of the alley running in her direction. She turned to go back inside but she’d run through the door so fast it’d bounced back and closed behind her.
Alicia turned back to her right to see the other end of the alley only a few yards away. She could be out and away before he was even half way along it. She ran for all she was worth, only looking back as she reached the end of the alley to see how she was doing, ‘Not bad,’ she thought. ‘The guy’s gone!’
That's when she hit a brick wall, well it felt like a brick wall to Alicia. She fell back and looked up at the obstacle she’d slammed into. But with the sun in her eyes she could only see the silhouette of someone standing over her.
Alicia smiled as the silhouette reached down as though offering to help her to her feet. ‘Thanks, I need you help, there’s a man’ but that’s when the oxygen disappear from around her.
Whoever this was held something over her nose and mouth, something Alicia had never smelt before. She tried her hardest not to breathe the fumes in but she’d little choice in the matter. Listening as her own stifled screams left her mouth but went no further than the kerchief covering it, she struggled as best she could.
Her arms began to feel weak, heavy, held down as though gravity had multiplied ten-fold. And with a mind of their own her eyes succummed also and began to close. Through the haze she heard a voice, she thought with an Italian accent, shouting something to her, but at that precise moment she fell limp, lifeless, and a grey mist descended over her eyes…
