Safe Room

The dust spelled safety. The room’s lingering smell of abandonment told the fugitives nobody would come looking in here.

Katie first locked the door behind them before looking around at it. Without light except for what little came in from just below the entrance, it was gray and dark, its features just barely visible as if the room was covered in thick fog.

Frankie walked past shelves of aging commodities. From every angle, some representation of Ron Racoon’s beady eyes watched them. Posters rotted off the walls like ancient melting cheese, their use expired, now only relics of another year hardly any different from this one other than its changing aesthetic preferences.

She wiped the thick ash of time off a table, dirtying her palm. On it only lied more haunting images of Kidney’s mascot, unused postcards and gift sets. Things that only meant anything once you bought them.

“Hey.” Katie whispered, not sure if anyone was still watching. At least, there were no cameras here, though the racoon’s eyes never blinked. She pulled up a rug out of a barrel of unwanted things she had discovered. “You wanna just… camp out here for the night?”

Frankie’s eyes slowly fell downward. She was tired, for sure, and there was no way they’d make it out of here tonight. Still… their chances of escape would only decrease, come sunrise.

“No. …We have to keep moving.”

“What if they find us?”

“They’ll do that either way.”

“It isn’t like we can check into a hotel. You said they might have your face, right? This could be safer than anywhere above the ground.”

The little sister sighed. She gave her elder a look that was hard to make out on the shroud of gray.

“Why do you wanna stay here so bad?”

Katie clasped her hands.

“I… think I like it here. It feels still. Like it’s trapped in the past.”

Her counterpart groaned and took a rug. It was no use arguing.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She pinched. “If that were the case, you’d have all the time in the world to do what you want.”

She smiled at her sister’s response, already beginning to roll her makeshift bedding out onto the cold, inhospitable ground.

“You’re right.”

Soon they both laid, Frankie watching their bag after setting it right in front of her face while Katie just stared at the blank wall.

“Why did we ever blow up that coaster…”

“It keeps me up at night.” She seemed to agree with the sentiment, though not with the same frustration of her younger sibling.

“I can’t believe we did all that crap just because some guy didn’t like the direction a comic book publication was going in.”

“I just… wish I could’ve ridden it.”

Frankie scoffed. Of course that’s what she was talking about.

That night, she had a dream that she often had. She was back in school again, but Katie was nowhere in sight.

Caught alone in the halls, in between classes, Frankie felt lost and exposed. Expected to report to her teacher’s room, time ticked away as she quickly became late and the hallways emptied.

She didn’t know where to go. Very quickly, those school halls started to resemble the ones of this underground labyrinth they found themselves in. Not understanding what she was supposed to do, all she could pray for was that no teachers would spot her out where she shouldn’t belong.

She never did find the room she was trying to go into whenever she had this dream. At best, she’d hide in a bathroom… and wait for the time to slip away.