RUN

First chapter of a story about an incident on a rainy morning street

Cilian looked out of the window of his first floor apartment as the rain lashed down on the street below. Some of last night’s rubbish was piled up by a lamppost, a cluster of white bags causing a kind of dam in the stream of rainwater rushing down the street. It was still early, around 7.05am, but there were already some people around. Umbrellas obscuring their faces, they trudged up and down the sodden street.

Cilian’s gaze moved up to the grubby windows opposite. He rarely saw any movement behind those curtains. He wondered if they were holiday flats, he had occasionally seen tourists with suitcases going in and out of the stairway. But he could scarcely remember ever seeing anyone in the windows before. Today, however, in one of those windows he could see the shadowy figure of a woman moving around the kitchen. She flicked a switch on the kettle, disappeared out of the room for moment and then returned with a cup in her hand. Last night’s tea, Cilian thought.

She stood, waiting for the water to boil, and glanced up. She looked around, before looking directly over the street towards Cilian. When she saw him, she smiled politely. Cilian instinctively jumped back, away from the window. Embarrassed, he busied himself for a moment, going over to his stereo, shuffling a couple of envelopes around before switching on his laptop. Slowly, he returned to the window, careful to try not to get caught again. He looked out, down to the street at first, before slowly looking back up towards the window opposite. She had gone. He breathed out, realising he had been holding his breath.

Strangely disappointed, he looked to the windows on either side of her kitchen, wondering (hoping?) he had been looking at the wrong one. But he looked back to the first window and saw the light on the kettle was still on. He must have scared her off, he thought. He looked at the window to the left, wondering if that was her bedroom and seeing if he might get a glimpse of her there. No movement in there. He glanced to the window on the other side, but he already knew that was part of the shop below, and he could see the empty office with no lights on.

Sighing, he was just about to turn back round to sit at his desk and start the day’s work, when suddenly he saw her re-appear. Very suddenly. This time she ran frantically towards the window where he’d seen her standing just a minute before. Even from across the street, he could tell something was wrong. With a terrified look on her face, she reached the window and pressed something up against it. At first, Cilian didn’t know what to do, but when he saw what she was holding his heart froze.

She was pressing a piece of paper to the window. On the paper, she had written three giant letters in red. It said: ‘RUN’. 

Reviews

[catwoman]

wow..that's a really awesome way to end a chapter..can you write the next chapter already :D