Bzzzz

Zzzz

Zzzz

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand, slowly making its way towards the precipice, a great cliff before a two foot drop to the swirling abyss of a shag carpet nightmare. Teetering on the edge, it's face illuminated with blocked numbers, one more buzz closer and then - a hand from beneath the duvet slapped down over it and withdrew it into the darkened, down cavern.

Sebastian hadn't bothered to check the caller ID, nor to open her eyes, she knew it was work - who else would call her at ... whatever hour this absolutely dared to be.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Crown Alarm Company. Can you please confirm your name and store number?"

"Sebastian Deland, 237."

"Good morning Sebastian, we received an alert from your store at 2:45 this morning. Are you open for the day?"

With great effort she removed herself from bed, throwing back the embrace of night in a haphazard heap of folds and wrinkles. She didn't bother to even lie that she might come back later tonight and make up her bed. It just wasn't happening. It never did.

"No," she replied on a stiff stretch of body.

"Alright, ma'am, we will send an officer down to meet you."

The line clicked over to silence.

"Shit," Sebastian hissed on an exhaled yawn.

She gathered her things at no urgency of matter. These things never were all too much anyway - not that they were common occurrences at all, simply put
- she didn't care.

Sebastian tilted her gaze up to the rear view mirror, the light of passing cars glancing over her rose tinted glasses. Her hair was a rockstar mess, long bangs swept to the side, the short bits twisted and knotted from the toss and turn of a less than fitful night sleep. She brushed a hand over them as if doing so might be enough to manage the tangles, only succeeding in catching her fingers in a rather vicious knot. She scrunched her nose as she pulled it free and returned her attention the road as Deland's quickly drew into sight beyond the glow of a blinking yellow light.

The shop boasted a small sign which was completely unreadable by the amount of paint that had chipped off, the telephone number was only three numbers long {now} and the cheerful dog mascot had lost half of its face to a battle with the elements and graffiti artists. Who were, quite obviously, the true villains of this story.

The lot itself was overgrown with weeds, coming up through the cracks in the pavement, camouflaging potholes that might as well be graves for shocks and tires. Broken bottles and empty nips collected in the corners of unpainted wheelstops with half smoked cigarettes, and off-ramp dreams. An Officer stood by the doors of Deland's, illuminated by the headlights of his own vehicle. In his hand he held another - hand that is. Not severed, but attached to a whole other man, who seemed to be nodding along in some familiarity of greeting, gesturing along in story.

Their attention turned up as Sebastian's own lights crossed over them. They parted in their handshake, the Officer now placing one hand to his belt, boasting some semblance of professionalism as he waved to the approaching vehicle.

She pulled into the spot just two stops to the left, the hum of her engine dying down with the turn of key and a banjo's last breath of song. She pulled her wind chime of a key ring from the ignition, sliding it into her pocket as she opened the door to a brisk fall night.

"Morning."
Morning. Whatever.

The Officer gave her a nod with greeting, one she returned a little less enthusiastically as the warmth of her bed still beckoned from five minutes passed.

"Officer Noble," he introduced, holding out a hand to shake. To which, once more, Sebastian obliged bored pleasantries.

"Sebastian, this is my place," she said with a nod of her chin, and didn't bother to get the second man's name, "so, what's going on?"

"Hi, Sebastian," the second man stepped forward, nervousness twinged on his voice, a young man in a neat suit. Neat of course meaning clean and well pressed, not to be confused with impressed - which Sebastian was not. "I'm Agent John Myers with the Crown Alarm Company-"

She shook his hand, cutting him off amidst his speech, "Yeah, yeah. What happened to Cole?"

"Ah, transferred last year."

"That's too bad," Sebastian said, "I liked him."

Agent Myers quirked a brow, started to say something. Stopped. Frowned some more. Looked to the parking lot beside them for answer. Looked back to Sebastian and added "Aren't you the one that threatened to run him over with your car?"

"That doesn't sound like me."

{It is important to note, that out of the three individuals participating in this tale, only one had been honest, and that would be Officer Noble; who truth be told, quietly wished he had become a veterinarian instead. Agent Myers wasn't from the Crown Alarm Company and Sebastian had most assuredly threatened to hit his predecessor with her car. Which, of course, was directly related to his reason for transfer.}

Agent Myers offered up a very incredulous look, trying to find some break in that impassive face of hers. But found none, accepted it, and moved on, albeit a bit more carefully.

"Officer Noble and I did a preliminary sweep of the establishment,"
Such that Delands was.
"- and it doesn't look like anything was broken or stolen. The till is still closed, the safe beneath the counter is still locked, nothing was really out of place. Of course, without an inventory report, we have no solid proof. It's very likely someone got in and stole a couple of packs of cigarettes. However..."

Sebastian moved between the men, splitting their comforts to either side of herself as she made her way into the store, Agent Myers collapsing on into her wake and following behind with the Officer.

"It looks like someone forced open this door here to the basement," Myers pointed over her shoulder, as if she'd forgotten the whereabouts of her own store - which had never once changed in the past 30 years."I don't know if you have anything valuable downstairs besides paperwork," he posed this as a question, fishing for an answer on a dot-dot-dot and never getting one.

So, he pressed further.

"The report I have on file from Agent Cole says that you declined investigations into the basement during previous follow-up calls. If there's something we should be looking for - or know about."

Sebastian stopped at the top of the old basement steps, the din of an old free hanging bulb offering a soft halo of light to the bottom. "My father converted this place to a store front a long time ago. Before that I think he used it as an office. Far as I know it's just a bunch of paperwork. If anything's missing, I honestly wouldn't know."

"Then why keep it locked?"

"Because it's my father's things and I don't want people poking through them," she said rather bluntly.

This seemed more than fair in response, and Agent Myers dropped the point.
He nodded.

Sebastian stepped down those first few steps, feeling an unresolved weight gain within her as she descended further and further into that den.

Agent Myers made an effort in his mind to stop her, that it would be O.K to leave the answers to him and Officer Noble, but did nothing instead. This, he figured, was a necessary risk of mental well being that she see for herself the state in which her father's affairs had been left.

The basement was one book and over a thousand loose pieces of papers stitched together with different color threads and pushpins. Chaos blushed to the pages strewn about this lost office, a mess no toddler could match on their worst days. If there was any order to be found, it was at the end of disorder. Certainly, no one in their right mind would take the time to search this mess, as it were that no one in their right mind could create such a mess - so it became glaringly clear that Officer Noble, Agent Myers and Sebastian were not looking for someone in any kind of right mind.

Which said a lot about them as people.

Whatever they found, and Sebastian was quite sure they had, must have been so incredibly, greatly important to not dissuade them from such an absurdly futile task. But she had never known her father to keep any secret so great. And if that were the truth, he had never once hinted to her what it might be.

Outside of her own being that is.
But this was not anything she was about to tell Officer Noble and Agent Myers.

"Sorry, I really can't tell you what someone might be looking for down here," she reiterated, idly sifting through papers as if she had any clue to what she might be looking for.

"Well," Officer Noble said from the landing, "I can write up a report tonight and I can follow up with you later in the afternoon. This looks like it's going to be a lot to sift through."

Sebastian's eyes slowly moved over the desk and letter box cabinets, as if by some miracle of chance she'd recognize a small sliver of evidence to the supposed intention of crime.

"No."

"What?" Officer Noble didn't mean for it to come off as sharp a request as it had, but from the top of the stairs he just couldn't hear her.

"I don't want to file a report. Whatever's gone is gone. I'm not going to waste anyone's time over some old, crumpled up pieces of paper."

Officer Noble shrugged, at least the paperwork wouldn't be too bad. Which was ironic, given the circumstances of the call. "I'll leave my card on the counter. Give me a call if you change your mind."

Sebastian nodded.
Which was a very poor note to leave a man's life on, for when Officer Noble turned to leave said card on said counter, he was introduced rather unexpectedly, to the very peculiar sensation of decapitation.

It was at that moment that Officer Noble, between figuring out just which way his head was falling and just how dead he should be,had decided very much, that he did not want to work today.

And it was when Officer Noble's head hit the floor that both Sebastian and Agent John Myers, had the very same thought - for very different reasons.

Agent Myers threw an arm across Sebastian's chest in a chivalrous gesture of goodwill, already searching the holster tucked beneath his jacket for the gun he was completely unfamiliar with.

At the top of the stairs, Officer Noble's body slumped over in a sad, $11.00 an hour heap.

"Σας έψαχνα, Κέρβερος."

From their angle it was impossible to read the figure's concept of form, only a dark shadow, silhouetted in blood: broad shoulders, long tangled hair, tattoos barely legible in the shadows of a stairwell - and his voice - his voice like the grave, calling out to the study of a dead man.

Still, Agent Myers trained his sights on what he could see, and replied quite seriously {he would later claim to do so with great bravado, but Sebastian assures me, his voice cracked "like a little boy's," and proceeded to laugh so hard she nearly vomited upon herself}, "Don't take another step."

Which, the figure ignored completely.

"Do alarm companies usually hand out guns?" Sebastian asked in a hushed voice.

"Not really the time," Agent Myers retorted through grit teeth.

The man took another step down. Each heavier than the last, resonating in that dusty tomb as he slowly closed off the world above with no other escape between them and it.

"Ελάτε παιδί, ο πατέρας σας σας περιμένει."

"Well, do you know how to use it?" Sebastian asked.

In response, Agent Myers fired - and missed completely.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sebastian declared. She grabbed Agent Myers by the arm and
-Left?

{It has yet to be clarified how exactly Sebastian and Agent John Myers made their escape from the basement of Deland's Quick Stop. As I have come to understand, and as has been recorded here, there was only one exit, which was blocked by a dead man, and a murderer. If any fight had occurred, there was no indication at the scene (besides a single bullet hole), nor upon their persons. I am led to believe that such fortuitous events for these two (not including Officer Noble as he had already been presumed, and rightly so, dead) was due to the uniqueness of Sebastian Deland...or the forgetfulness of Agent John Myers.

"I was there. And then I wasn't. Like a dream when the parts just skip around. That's what it was like." - John Myers, 12.

"So, you're going to write down everything we say?" - Sebastian Deland
"Penis." - Sebastian Deland
"Did you actually write it? Oh that's fantastic!" - Sebastian Deland }