The large clock on the wall insisted that I had only been at work for twenty-five minutes, but it felt like it had been hours already. I stifled a yawn and leaned backwards in my chair.

If one was inclined to trust the clock, and I'm not sure I was, then I was only a fraction of the way through what had to be the most pointless day of work ever. I mean, who goes outside during a freaking tropical storm, let alone to a pet shop?

Employees of said pet shop, that's who. "I don't care if it was Hurricane David," my boss snapped. "If a little girl wants to buy a puppy, then you two will be there to sell it to her!"

I almost told him where he could stick his puppies, but the unfortunate mental image as well as the thought of losing my job stopped me. I thought that I needed this job. I was saving up for a new video game system, a car that didn't break down every other week, and a million other stupid things.

You may have noticed that my boss said 'you two'. He was referring to me and my other half, Bernice. When I say other half, I mean fellow pet shop slave, not – you know. The extent of our bond at this point was that we both had to deal with a boss who seemed to have come straight out of a bad sitcom.

I never knew why she didn't tell him to shove it. I didn't bother to ask.

So that is how we both came to be inside of the pet shop on Saturday, trying to withstand the wrath of Mother Nature. Tropical Storm David unrelentingly hurled rain at the roof of our little shelter, and shook the walls with sixty miles plus winds. The lights flickered annoyingly, threatening to go off at any moment.

Even though we (obviously) didn't have any customers, the shop was anything but quiet. Did you know that animals, really, really don't like storms? Especially dogs?

"Nat, are you going to help me or what?" Bernice demanded from the floor. In one hand she was holding a squirming cat, and in the other a few days old Labrador puppy that looked like he was going to pee all over the floor from fright.

"Help you do what, exactly?" I asked.

"Calm down the animals – hey!" Bernice said, as the Labrador squirmed out her grasp. He scampered across the floor and made a beeline for a dish that was catching water from a leak in the ceiling.

With an exaggerated sigh, I leapt to my feet and strode across the room.

"That water is not good for you, pal," I said, scooping the puppy into my arms, "and I'm cutting you off. It may taste good now but you'd regret it in the morning."

The puppy whined and nestled his head disappointedly into the crook of my arm. I patted him consolingly and walked him back towards his cage. The ten or so other dogs stopped yowling in their cages for a brief moment and gazed at me quizzically.

"That's perfect, guys," I told them, and placed the Labrador back into his cage. "If we can just stay this quiet, or at least use our inside voices-"

I was interrupted by a crash of thunder, and the dogs resumed their manic barking. I threw my hands into the air.

"Bernice, this is pointless," I declared. "We can't walk them and we can't let them run around in here, so they're all just going to keep making their respective barking noises."

"I know," Bernice sighed. She straightened herself up, and sat back on her heels. "It's just that if these animals don't shut up, I'm going to go crazy."

"Barking mad?" I suggested. She rolled her eyes at me, then lifted the fussing cat into air and stood up. She walked over to the cat's cage and bent down to open it. As she bent over, I couldn't help but notice how nicely the regulation pet shop khakis complimented the curve of her rear end.

Eight hours alone with nothing to do? Maybe it's time to get to know Bernice better,a small but extremely persuasive part of my brain whispered.

But no, I reasoned, that was just a knee-jerk hormonal male teenager reaction. Realizing that I was staring, I forced my gaze to wander around the room.

That was probably the wisest choice that I have ever made. I'd hate to die knowing that it was because I couldn't stop staring at some girl's butt.

Maybe it was luck, or maybe I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but at that moment I decided to look out of the window. Through the rain-drenched panes, I saw the silhouette of a person. That silhouette was holding a dull metal object, pointing straight at me.

The shape of the object wasn't exactly right, but that didn't matter to whatever part of my brain responded first. I grew up in the not-so-good-bordering-on-terrible part of town, and the first thought that went through my head was: Gun.

I dropped to the floor milliseconds before the window panes exploded inwards.

Glass shards and splinters flew inwards. Most of the splinters disintegrated in midair, and the glass shards melted and fused together from the intense heat before crashing to the ground. Oh, and the chair I was sitting in was hit by a laser beam.

A laser beam.

An inch-wide hole appeared where my chest would have been. The hole was cleanly burned straight through. Except for the singed fabric on the edges, the hole was a perfect semi-circle.

There was a pause of complete silence. For a second, even the pounding rain seemed to hesitate.

Then the moment ended, and the dogs started barking and the cats started yowling and the rodents were squealing at an impossible frequency and even the snakes were making some sort of freaky snake noise. Bernice screamed at the top of her lungs.

Something inside of me had kicked into gear, and my thoughts began moving at a thousand miles per hour.

Someone just shot a laser beam at me. Fact. I accepted this and moved on.

I do not know someone with a laser gun. I was almost certain of this. That meant that the person was not shooting at me specifically, they were, for some reason, shooting at anyone inside of the store.

Bernice was about to be shot.

I lunged forward from my awkward position on the floor towards her, and managed to wrap my hand around her ankle. With a sharp yank, I pulled her leg out from underneath her, and she crashed onto the ground next to me. The side of her head slammed into the corner of a fish tank, and a nasty gash was sliced into it.

"What are you-" she screamed at me, an instant before another laser beam flew directly overhead. A shorthair cat yowled and took the laser along its spine. It hissed and spat, somehow injured and pissed off rather than dead.

"Behind the counter!" I yelled, and without waiting for a response hauled her backwards. She flailed, struggling, not fully comprehending that we were being shot at yet.

I did not have time for this. I grabbed her under the armpits and scooted us both towards the counter with my feet. As we slid backwards, I chanced a glance towards the window. The man was aiming his laser gun again, a look of cold detachment on his face.

I gave a final shove, and Bernice and I were completely behind the counter. The man fired again, but the counter did not yield. Bernice was trying to yell something at me, but I don't think she realized that she was speaking in gibberish.

"Bernice, shut up!" I yelled, shaking her as hard as I could. Her glasses had come off when I knocked her to the floor, and a steady stream of blood was sliding down the side of her face. The expression on her face was pure terror.

"I can't see – what's going on? What's happening?" she said, her voice on the verge of hysterics. Another laser beam flew overhead, and a fish tank behind us exploded. Hot water and charbroiled goldfish corpses rained down on top of us.

I clamped a hand over Bernice's mouth, and felt her scream into my palm. I didn't really know why I was stopping her from screaming, because the laser gun guy obviously knew where they were. But if she kept screaming, then I might start screaming too. And then laser gun guy would come back here and shoot us and we'd be dead.

"Bernice, I need you to do something for me," I whispered, and found that my voice was cracking. "Okay? Okay, right, listen. I don't need you to listen to me, or trust me, or anything like that. I just need you to shut the fuck up so I can think, okay?"

The vulgarity seemed to penetrate through her hysteria. She nodded quickly, and her screaming devolved into panicked breathing.

"Police! Cellphone!" I exclaimed, yanking it out of my pocket. An instant later it went sailing across the room, after the display kindly informed me that I had zero bars. A laser beam intercepted it in midair and it exploded.

Bernice held out her cellphone, but she had no service either. I slammed it to the floor in frustration.

"How are the police supposed to help anyway?" Bernice demanded shrilly. "They'd never get here before we get killed!"

"Aren't you supposed to be shutting up?" I snapped, and yanked the store's phone off of the counter and onto the floor. I jammed the receiver to my ear, and thanked God as the sweet sound of a dial tone hit my ear.

I punched 9-1-1, and the other side picked up immediately. "What's your emerg-"

"We're being shot at by a guy with a laser!" I yelled, and immediately regretted it.

"Are you now? A laser?" the tone on the other side of the phone sounded skeptical.

"Okay, okay, I know that sounds crazy or like a prank," I said desperately, "but you have to believe me. We're at the pet shop on 7th!"

Maybe it was the terrified sound of my voice that did it. "Okay, I'll send someone to check it out. This better not be a-"

There was another blast of laser, and the phone line went dead. I dropped the receiver and ducked lower next to Bernice. It was only a matter of time before laser gun guy decided to come inside and put an end to this.

He did, in fact, come inside a second later, but not in the way I was expecting. He came in flying through the air, tumbling heels over head, and slammed into the wall right next to the desk. He groaned once, then collapsed into a heap on the ground. The laser gun dropped from his limp right hand, as did a shiny blue box from his left.