Perseverance
An Unwelcome Guest
I'm not making any money from this, nor do I own the Ninja Turtles - I'm just borrowing them for a while.
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Charlotte hadn’t slept in two days and so as soon as the turtles had left, she went straight to bed, without bothering to take her clothes off. Her alarm woke her at six-thirty and she lay in bed for several minutes wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing. She crawled out of bed and staggered to the kitchen for some juice. Her scabby leg was throbbing - there was a bit of blood on her jeans, but she couldn’t figure out if it was hers or Mike’s.
She took her juice into the bathroom and turned on the light. Her hair was a mess, she stank, and her clothes were filthy. She turned on the shower and yanked off her shirt and bra. She peeled her pants off much more slowly - they were stuck to her leg in places. She stepped into the shower and watched as the dried blood turned the water momentarily pink before it went down the drain.
Charlotte quickly washed her very greasy hair and climbed out of the shower. She towelled herself off, being very careful of her bad leg, and went into her bedroom to find some clothes. She settled on a green blouse and a long brown skirt to hide the scrapes. She pulled her wet hair back in a loose bun and stuck some pins in it, before grabbing her purse and jacket. Every Thursday, the courier guy came to the store at eight, and if she wasn’t there, he’d leave the boxes on the doorstep where anyone could get to them. He never went out of his way for a customer, but he was cheap.
She walked as quickly as she could when she came to the place where Mikey had been hit by the van. She hoped he was ok.
She got to the store at ten to eight, unlocked the door, and flipped the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’. She chucked her purse in the back room and snapped on the lights. Charlotte liked to arrive and check everything out before her employees turned up at eighty-thirty. She loved her store and it made her happy to walk through the aisles of books with a cup of coffee and think of ways to improve the place.
***
Thursday was always a busy day and today was no exception. Charlotte’s three employees, Dave, Lisa, and Mark were on their feet all day dealing with the flood of customers, while Charlotte spent several hours answering the phone, taking orders for rare and specialty books.
When seven o’clock finally rolled around, and everyone went home, Charlotte flipped the sign back to ‘closed’ and went into the back to shut the computer off and get her purse. The silence in the store was suddenly interrupted by the familiar ‘ding-a-ling-a-ling’ sound of the bell above the door. “Sorry, we’re closed!” she called, heading out to see who it was.
A very big man stood in the doorway wearing a trench coat and fedora. He walked toward her, looking nervously around.
“You alone?” he asked, reaching for the belt around his waist.
Charlotte started backing up. She grabbed the cordless phone and started punching in 9-1-1. “I’m calling the cops. Get out!”
The man stopped where he was, and finished untying his belt.