Far-Off Things, Part One

Writer's Note: This is part of a first-draft. The final draft is viewable here: https://vocal.media/fiction/far-off-things

Monday, October 24, 2019

Beams of sunlight cascaded into the grungy living room windows of a small Missouri house, a reminder that a new day was here, for new opportunities. The nearby clock on the wall ticked every second, as clocks are wont to do. The ticking was not unheard, however, as a young brunette woman lay passed out on the living room couch, an open laptop next to her on the coffee table as it auto-played videos from a playlist titled “ASMR”.

Annabeth, or “Annie” as she often called herself, opened her eyes and brushed her hair back as she looked at the time on her laptop. To her, the rays of sun brushing past the curtains were indicative of a bright, blissful morning, but reality hit her when she realized they were coming from the opposite side of the room. It was 5:07 in the evening.

“Great,” Annie muttered to herself as she stood up and walked over to the nearby kitchen. She took a glass out of her cupboard and filled it with water from the sink, downing it alongside two acetaminophen pills to curb the pulsing headache she had. Opening her smartphone with the touch of her fingerprint, she looked on the calendar to see if she had any events planned for that day, the one whose daylight hours were waning on the horizon. Luckily, she did not have any events planned for that day, the major highlight of being a work-from-home freelance journalist.

Still, not wanting the day to be a complete waste, Annie opened her contact list on her phone as she sat back down on the couch, looking for her part-time boss' number and opening text messages.

“Got any news for me to report on, Kiki?”

She waited for a few moments while checking other news articles and loading up her practically barren SocialNet page. Annie had spent her whole life avoiding as many people as she can. This was in part due to her social anxiety, the love of being completely alone, and partly because she wanted to keep the slightly-but ever-so-present burn scars across her entire body from as many prying eyes as possible.

“Not much to do an article on tonight, Katie. I will keep you posted. Try calling Steve tomorrow morning.”

Annie looked at the text message and then gave it a second glance as she re-read the name sent to her. “Katie? What? Who's Katie?” She was about to reply to the message with her specific query when she noticed the message again at the bottom of her phone.

“Not much to do an article on tonight, Annie. I will keep you posted. Try calling Steve tomorrow morning.”

Annie shook her head and rubbed her eyes, wondering if she either was going crazy or was already at the destination. Still, with no news to write on she had free reign the evening. She could go out, have fun, visit people, maybe even see a movie, or go to the bar!

Forty minutes later, her Hawaiian pizza arrived. She opened the door and grabbed the food, handing her cash to the delivery woman and giving her a few extra dollars as a tip. Annie walked over and put the food next to the laptop, loading up some videos on it through ViewMe. Her favorite channel had just released a new video, talking about the strange conspiracies in the government, alien ships spotted in the sky, and unearthing mysterious bunkers in Ireland. She stayed on the couch for a few hours, eating pizza and watching videos, before turning on the television to watch the evening news before drifting off to sleep again.

----

“Isn't this house gorgeous? And it's all ours!”

The next morning, and this time she did check to see if it was morning, Annie made herself some breakfast before sitting down on the couch to check the police blotter on her laptop. The blotter was barren aside from some fender bender downtown, a tractor breaking down on the side of the road, some DUI arrest reports, nothing of note that would give her a big paycheck if she did a story on. The only thing that really piqued her interest was a report of a jewelry store theft the next town over, but by the time she got there it would have been picked clean by the vultures of local media journalism.

Annie worked freelance for a small-town newspaper, one that was slowly and slowly having its life choked out by the very internet she was using and the vultures she despised. Still, the paper, the Star Review did have dedicated fans, some of which were very well-off farmers in the area as well as local businesses that sponsored them, so she was not in danger of losing her job. Annie WAS however, in danger of losing her pay for the week because of the lack of stories she could get to in any conceivable amount of time. She sent another message to her boss Kiki, this time through a SocialNet message.

“Please tell me something happened today. Anything. A CRUMB! Your favorite Miss Paige is DYING here, haha.”

Kiki responded, “I do have a story on a local pumpkin carving contest I need a reporter for, maybe you can go there? It's on main street next to the restaurant at 3:00 PM today.”

Annie squeaked with joy, then responded with a few emojis of smiling faces and thumbs up. She stood up and walked to the closet in her bedroom, a room that was barely used, and put on a turtleneck sweater to and long pants. The scars across her body were present on her face, but they were subtle enough there to look like a birthmark if she swept her hair to the side, especially when against her light brown skin. The ones on the rest of her body were not as faded. Annie looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, the bags under her chestnut eyes a prominent indicator that her sleep schedule was as screwed up as her love of creepy conspiracy videos.

“I need an energy drink.” she muttered to herself, resigning to herself the need to go to the grocery store to get said drink and a few essentials as well. Turning off the bathroom light, Annie grabbed her jacket, her keys, and left the house for her car. She unlocked the silver car with her key fob and climbed into the passenger seat, inspecting herself in the mirror before going out to unfortunately adult. Before reaching to put her key in, however, she froze. A sudden realization dawned on her regarding how many people were probably going to be at a store, around noon, on a Tuesday, this close to Halloween.

Thoughts flew through her head. “It’s just people. It is just people. It is just people. I can do this. In and out, then back home to recuperate before the contest.” With her internal pep talk flowing through her brain, Annie started the car and drove down the road and across the street to the corner market. As expected, the parking lot was full, so she had to park at the fast-food restaurant next door. Taking advantage of this unexpected opportunity, she ordered a malt and walked over to the side yard to look at the store’s parking lot.

As the workers made her malt, the parking lot across the way had a slightly lower number of cars. Annie internally smiled, knowing this meant fewer people in the store, meaning fewer probable instances of anxiety or embarrassment. Steeling herself for the trip, she quickly downed her malt and walked forward down the sidewalk towards the corner store.

The automatic doors creaked open as she approached the building, the sounds of retail screaming in her ears. As she passed the cash registers, a man standing in line caught her eye. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, had brown hair and, from what she could see, hazel eyes. No matter what Annie did, she could not escape the belief that she had seen this man before. He was familiar to her despite having never once met him, as far as she knew to her own recollection.

Shaking off the feeling of unaccustomed familiarity, Annie decided to go into the back of the store where she had not seen many people while walking in. Most of the group had moved their way to the registers, giving her an ample opportunity to go to a back corner and internally scream. To her dismay, she found herself staring at another man in the back of the store. Instead of familiarity, she was staring this time out of worry. He was wearing all black and had the feel of people she had read about in stories where criminal deviance followed them like a deranged shadow. The man moved away from the corner of the store when he noticed Annie staring at him. Annie moved to where he was standing and noticed the stench of smoke permeating the air. It was not a type of cigarette smoke or even cannabis, but rather that of someone who had been in a house fire and then went around smelling like barbeque. Just as she was about to take out her phone to call her boss to ask what to do, she heard a shrill, raspy voice from the other end of the store.

“Open the safe, give me the money,” the voice said, a mix of anger and desperation in his voice. “Give me all the money out of the till or so help me, I will burn this place to the damn ground!”

Annie snuck around to the side of the aisle close to one of the registers to get a look at the man. It was indeed the suspicious gentlemen she had seen in the back of the store. From her point of view, he was waving around what looked to be a pistol while also holding a glass bottle with a dirty rag hanging out of the opening in his other hand. Annie turned back out of view of the criminal and crouched to the ground, trying her best to not hyperventilate in the process.

“At least I got a good story now, if I survive to tell it,” she thought to herself. Using the reflective part of her phone screen, Annie watched as the cashiers opened the drawers and started putting the money into a plastic store bag. The criminal was so preoccupied with his take, however, that he had not noticed the other man Annie had seen earlier emerge from behind a grocery stack. Within seconds, the man in the brown jacket knocked the gun out of the criminal’s hand, wrestled the unlit Molotov out of his other hand, shattered the bottle against the counter, and let the liquid spill all over the floor. Taking this opportunity, the hero of the hour tripped up the criminal with a powerful leg sweep, knocking him to the ground with the finesse of a trained soldier.

Within twenty-six seconds of the criminal demanding the cashiers do his bidding, he was lying on broken glass bleeding from his back, not to mention completely discombobulated. The man in the brown jacket pushed his hair back looked at the startled cashiers for a few moments before dropping his intended items on the register’s conveyor belt.

“I’ll just take this food, please,” the man said with a slight smile, as though taking down a deranged, armed arsonist was just another day at the job for him. Annie admired his sense of humor, and in half-shock from the situation, had to stifle a chuckle as to avoid attention from a potentially embarrassing situation. The would-be robber lay sprawled across the floor in front of one of the cash registers, as the other customers quickly approached the door to get out of the situation before it escalated more than it already had. One of the cashiers, wearing a white button-up shirt, stayed inside and directed everyone else to the exit, reassuring everyone the situation was under control. The man who took the criminal down looked around for a few moments before turning towards the door himself.

Annie, finally freed from her frozen shock, stepped out from her hiding place, and walked towards the door to follow everyone else. Outside, one of the patrons of the store was already on the phone with the local sheriff’s office, relaying the events of what had happened to the deputy on the other end. Still somewhat dazed from what had happened, Annie walked over to her car and sat in the driver’s seat, her legs immediately buckling under the weight as she climbed in. She did not quite know how long she’d sat in the car, but eventually she was startled out of her mental daze by a policeman’s flashlight.

“You alright ma’am?” the policeman asked. Annie looked at her smartphone and determined that she was dazed for quite some time, seeing as it was already four in the afternoon. Looking over at the policeman, she smiled and nodded her head, turning the car on and rolling down the power window.

“I am all right, yeah.” Annie looked at him as he turned off the flashlight. The sky overhead warranted the use of the flashlight as it was growing dark with both the slowly setting sun as well as the rampant cloud cover that signified incoming rain.

“I was just sitting here after… what happened in the grocery store over there.” Realizing she’d have to take a witness statement to the robbery and knowing her brain was not in the right space, she quickly corrected herself. “After hearing about what happened there. It shook me up and I guess I passed out here.”

“Then maybe you should head home. Do you live nearby?”

“Yes, over on, uh, Phelps Street, it’s just down the road from here. Wait, it’s not on Phelps, it’s on Washington Street.” Annie shook her head to clear her head from the daze and shock. “I don’t know why I said Phelps. My brain is all out there tonight.”

“Understandable considering the circumstances,” The officer said, “Have a good evening, ma’am.”

Annie nodded politely and turned her key all the way over to the start position. With no more words, she pulled out of the parking lot and drove over to her house. She climbed out of the car and walked towards the building itself, every step feeling like gravity was altering itself around her in a variety of ways. One step was an eternal struggle to stay up, the next was a lightheaded stumble forward. Eventually, to her own admitted surprise, she got into the house and closed the door behind her. Finally in her own personal comfort zone, Annie half-sauntered over to the couch and faceplanted into the cushions without even taking off her jacket or shoes.

“I love you.”

Weakened eyes opened to the sight of a clock on the end table, the digital numbers and letters saying “5:00 AM” on its face. Annie moved on the couch to lay on her back, taking the jacket off and dropping it on the floor next to her in the process. She checked her phone, reading a line of SocialNet messages from Kiki going from dismay over her lack of appearance at the pumpkin carving contest to worry when she found out about the attempted robbery at the grocery store. The last one made her chuckle, however, when she opened it and locked her eyes on a picture of her own car from the night before; the attached message with it saying, “I saw you planking on the couch like a wooden board and decided you were safe. Text me back when you wake up.”

Annie opened the text and replied. “I am safe, yeah, just a bit shook up. Thanks for friend-stalking me, I know it was done with love.” She sat the phone on the table and opened her laptop, typing in the name of her town on a news webpage checking if anyone had reported on the attempted robbery the afternoon before. It was on the first page. “ATTEMPTED ARSON AND BURGLARY REPORTED AT LOCAL GROCER” Opening the page and scanning the text, she was mildly disappointed when she discovered there was no information about the man who’d stopped the crime, simply saying he was a “Good Samaritan”.

“Good Samaritan?” Annie asked aloud, “what kind of random person has the ability to take down an armed criminal in thirty seconds?” The confusion grew in her as she read the text saying no one wanted to talk about the Samaritan. Her reporter instincts kicked in and she came to realize he did not want to be identified. This was puzzling to her: why wouldn’t a man want to be identified when he was a hero to everyone in that store?

Determined, Annie turned her laptop off and stood up confidently. “I am going to get to the bottom of this.”

To be continued.