• Annie sits inside with her back to the door of her favourite old café. This isn’t her usual place to sit but this evening it doesn’t worry her because most of the room before her is visible. The well used tables sit within the room exactly as she remembers them. Midnight blue cloths upon the tables, deep brown wooden chairs, and the happy crowd chorusing together as they relay the night’s events across the room. No one in particular sticks out even though Annie knows each and everyone of them. Any other day, she would sit in this café and thoroughly enjoy the mixed smells of coffee, chocolate, and some other magic she could never put her finger on. Normally the people would interest her, their odd bit of conversation and expressions. Except today. Smells, colours, and unrealised experiences meld into one. Only the thoughts in her head seem to make any kind of sense. Today, at this moment only one thing could draw her attention.

    Why here? Why now? I was almost sure there were a billion other places you could be before you walked in here. Pretty sure there are just as many other spaces within this room as well. Perhaps the rest of the world has gone into silent chaos as I sit in here. No I’m not explicitly hiding, just trying not to been seen. Maybe the reason he decided to enter an area that is decidedly mine is only because every other conceivable area has been taken by enemy forces? That would indeed explain it. He is one of those evil types of people. I could believe that. After everything he has done anything I can imagine now he could surely be capable of.

    She doesn’t know what made her turn; she only knows that she did. With a casual glance to the door turned to frantic panic as she turns back. Her heart rate escalated to well above normal.
    Did he see me? Annie thinks. Before she can answer and give herself up she finds herself quickly gathering her things. Awkwardly pushing between tables and people who throw her a mixture of glares and smiles she reaches the unlocked employee exit. Fumbling with the door handle she starts her thoughts down what she hopes is a different path:
    It isn’t a remarkable door, or even a forgettable one, perhaps something in-between. If the bones in my body were to suddenly disappear would I be able to rush under the door? It’s a fairly large crack, I can almost smell freedom. Once on the other side would I be within a surreal experience as my bones re appeared? Would it just be easier to step through? Like a ghost?

    Annie knows the only way to get away is to disappear before he can identify her. A distraction is to think of other things; even if her thoughts give her away she wouldn’t have done it intentionally. A hand grabs her shoulder; Annie barely manages to contain her scream inside the café before she turns.
    ‘Hey Annie you dropped this,’ A man of about forty is holding her keys. He stands about six foot and is hiding her from the counter remarkably well.
    Breathe, breathe. She tells herself. Somehow she manages a half convincing smile.
    ‘Thanks Mister, I don’t know how far I would have gotten without these,’ His returning smile reminds her how far from normal her own must be. With a quick glance behind this man, she explodes onto the deserted path behind the café.

    ~*~

    Who is that? Think many other the female patrons of Elsie’s Café. Even Miss Elsie herself thinks the attractive man at the counter is worth talking to. She picks herself up from the chair behind the counter to approach him. She finds a warm smile leaking onto her lips, replacing the normal frown. Denise, bound in her coffee shop apron with uncomfortable shoes and armed with her refill container finds herself gaping with shock as she see’s Miss Elsie in her shining smile address the man at the counter. Mentally picking herself up from the floor she luckily doesn’t notice Annie’s conspicuous journey to the employee exit at the back of the café. Later, Denise will wonder what happened to dear Annie but wondering is all she will do. Perhaps if she had done more that wonder, our story and dear Annie would have turned out differently.
    One person who did notice Annie’s not so graceful exit and the fall of her keys was Carl Willims. Carl was an older man in his forties who prided himself on noticing what others did not. Observing what others only saw, we could observe him as a Sherlock Holmes fanatic. Even his dress this night was something dear Homes might have worn in the twenty first century. Carl’s navy blue suit with matching tie hid many secrets. None of which affect our story at this time. When Carl Willims saw the keys fall, he took it upon himself to retrieve them. Only when he returned them did he notice the frantic state Annie was in. Her strained smile unsettled him; it seemed to cool his very soul. He watched as she flew through the door with a frightened aura, and he only pondered her reasons for this behaviour for the remained of the night. Maybe if our dear philanthropist Carl Willims, the man who aspired to be like Sherlock Homes had pondered some other matter of greater importance to him personally, Annie may have reached the main street.

    ~*~

    Andrew is not a man to play with. When he was a small child the other children knew to steer away. Now as an adult he had learned what scares a child never seems to scare an adult. What the children saw as darkness, adults saw mystery mingled with their own curiosity. Perhaps adult Andrew had something to do with this difference? As a person gets older are they not able to control themselves better? Once, child Andrew had fought to fit in, now he was warmly accepted as an adult. How could someone with a smile that warm and charming be anything but good? Children can be cruel and brutally honest; because of the differences between child Andrew and the others around him he was always found the outcast. As a teenager his maturing good looks and careful attitude led the children to slowly see him in a different light. All the teachers agreed that the teenage Andrew was not only a pleasure to look at but was also a good student. Slowly, people around town forgot the child Andrew was, the terror that followed his appearance around their children. No one questioned this change, no one remembered the child Andrew was and the feeling he gave them. Everyone forgot the brutal murder years ago that left little Andrew an orphan, no one remembered the victim his mother Judith, or that dear teenage Andrew was the only suspect.