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A new, updated, version of "A Ninja and an eyewitness", this is bigger and better than ever before. Enjoy.
The inky black shadows rippled as the wisp of a figure slipped out from round the house. He encountered the wall and leapt to its’ peak, like a bird up a tree. The razor Wire tingled expectantly in the November draft. He noiselessly fled through the courtyard and was off into the night, and away.
* * *
"Ok", said Susan exasperatedly into her mobile
"Yes, but....", Susan tried to say
The phone had been placed on its' hook at the other end. "Damn inconsiderate b…", Susan rapped her hand on the taxi window
"Mr. done a runner?", asked the cab driver from the front seat. As bad as Susan felt she smiled, anyone would with those twinkling eyes set into that aged looking face. He looked like the type of person who was always optimistic and even his large brown moustache gave her comfort. The driver smiled back and twisted in his seat to face the road once more. He pulled back onto the motorway from the little pull in. Old fashioned he may be, but he still didn't believe in phones blaring out as he drove.
He waited for his opening, which greeted him in the form of a space between a silver Mazda 2 and a green Vauxhall Corsa. He indicated and turned right onto the motorway. When the motorway finally threaded its’ way back into a 40 mile an hour zone, he noticed the tapping had stopped. He glanced a glance in his wing mirror to discover his passenger asleep. She would be woken later, it happened all the time.
* * *
Susan had just been on a holiday in Corfu with her ex-husband and her three kids. She had been staying at the lovely resort of Paleokastitsa, on the west coast of the island.
They had spent a good three weeks at the warm beaches and marvelling at the traders on donkeys traipse up to the monastery every day. It had been an idyllic holiday that her ex had offered her to get her away from her stressful work at the office.
Little had she known that he was going to propose to her at the end of the holiday, she, being a stubborn woman, had been asked to be taken straight home, ruining her four week vacation.
* * *
Susan shielded her face from the rain as she jogged round to the driver’s side to pay him the three dollars she owed him. Hurriedly she thanked him and shielded her face from the New York down pour as she returned home to her flat on Fifth Avenue. She swung opened the door and sighed as she entered the warmth of the entranceway. She bolted up the stairs to her flat and fumbled with the keys in the lock; in her haste she snapped the end off the key. “F***”, she said, exasperated and longing for a coffee.
“Oh, great”, she thought, off to Ms. Sulises again. Ms. Sulis was the old lady who lived in the flat above hers. She kept Susan’s’ spare keys as she was always there to rely on. Ms. Sulis had ‘adopted’ Susan as her daughter and acted like a motherly figure, this was nice, but tiresome, especially at a time like this. Susan trudged up to the flat of Ms. Sulis, losing the vigour she had just had when the thought of her nice, cosy flat was the reward at the end of a trek. Ms. Sulis’ flat was ‘pokey’ and very dingy. The flat smelt of cats and urine, in a way that Susan almost associated the pensioners in New York with. She rapped on the door, as a doorbell was not a feature of this ancient woodwork; it had intricate patterns that fascinated Susan. The patterns depicted ornate flowers and golden trimmed ram heads. There was even a detailed hunting scene, on the right of the letterbox and on the doorframe.
“Hello, who is it?”, came the shrill voice of Ms Sulis, peering through the eyehole
“It’s me”, said Susan
“Who?”, inquired Ms Sulis, as was her ‘way of checking’
“Susan”, “From number nine”, replied Susan
“Well come on in then, dear”, said the voice of Ms Sulis, in conjunction to the sounds of a lock clicking and a latch being slid across the door.
Susan stepped into the flat and was instantly hit with a barrage of musty damp and cat pee, her eyes watered and she covered her nose. Susan stepped over the threshold and into the, comparative, warmth of the flat. Ms. Sulis never paid much for her heating bills, and so only a paraffin torch and a single radiator was on, this made the flat just warmer than the outside corridor.
“So, dear, what are you here for?” asked Ms. Sulis
“Well…” said Susan hesitantly
“Pardon?” said Ms. Sulis; this was one of her infuriating habits, where she would become mysteriously deaf until she heard a sentence with correct grammar or an agreement to her opinions. The joke was that someone would one day steal her purse but would say something like: “gimme’ yaw money, yer old bag”, she would chide them until they said it properly and then give them her purse!
“ My spare key broke,” replied Susan, ashamed
Ms. Sulis then lectured her on how household appliances needed to ‘be treated with care’; otherwise they would not perform their functions.
Susan eventually left the house hours later and was seething. She had declined tea a little too harshly.
Susan now had the key and she relished the moment when she would be able to drink a cup of coffee. She looked forward to this moment so much that she carried on walking past her house and into the rain. She sighed as she looked into the upper window of her room. Susan had planned to spend at least twenty minutes in the rain, but she fancied that she saw a flicker of a shadow in her upstairs’ window. She hurriedly walked into the entranceway and rubbed her hands to get the blood circulating round them again. Susan wiped the mud of her feet on the novelty hedgehog, wooden, shoe dryer. She now proceeded to her flat, anxious about the shadow she had seen in her’ window.
Susan needed a coffee, badly. She needed a nice strong coffee and a chance to get her head around the events of the last few days. She eventually reached her front door and used the key that opened her front door. She quickly went inside and shut the door, nearly tripping over the pile of mail in the process. Susan picked up some of her mail that blocked the doorway and shifted the rest out of her way. Susan walked through the narrow corridor, taking off her coat and putting it on the rack; the rack was one of her proudest possessions, one of the few things her husband had let her keep after the divorce. Finally Susan reached the cramped (or "cosy" as she called it) kitchen. Because of her worry, she sprinted up the stairs that led to her upstairs bedroom and flung open the door. There was no sound except the rain battering the windows. Susan felt very foolish and tiredly trudged back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Susan then sifted through some of the letters she had randomly scooped from the pile. “Junk. Bill. Another bill", said Susan as she opened the cupboard for some coffee. Putting the letters in her mouth, she filled up her unused with Bosch kettle (with some filtered water from the fridge, her friend had delivered it) and proceeded to boil it.
Susan hit the switch on her answering machine labelled "P a ", thus labelled, because, unfortunately, her’ finger grease and general ‘wear and tear’ had worn away the lettering over the four years she had owned it.
"Hi, darl. Its' Carla here....", said the voice on the tape
"Of course", Susan smacked her head; in sudden ‘enlightenment’, the dog.
"How was your' hols sweetie? Just to say that Sam is here and he’s been no trouble at all.", crooned the voice of Carla on the tape.
That was one more thing that Susan would have to do on her way to work tomorrow. Susan went back into the small corridor and went up to her little cork notice board. She smiled at the happy face of her daughter, four years ago, aged nine. Moving the photo to an angle on its' drawing pin, she adjusted her calendar to the current date, September the 10th.
Susan now poured out her black coffee and gulped great fully at the sought after elixir; without letting it cool down, burning her tongue in the process. She didn't mind; finally she could unwind before a busy day at work. A thought that Susan had dreaded since the holiday, but had shunted to the back of her’ mind.
When the initial effects of the coffee wore off she suddenly felt an incredible yearning to go to her bed. Susan was very tired after a day of travelling and the emotional stress of her’ husbands proposal, she decided to push this out of her mind for at least the next few days.
* * *
Finally, two hours later, Susan headed upstairs to her bathroom (the largest room in her house) and started to run a hot, steamy bath. She stared as the white, metallic, tank began to fill.
About five minutes later the bath was half full and she gratefully lowered herself into the water, using the burnished brass handles. She felt glad to be at her home; home sweet home.
Susan held on to the burnished brass handles and slipped back into the herbal bubbles, Aloe Vera and eucalyptus. The relaxation of Radox soothed her as the smell of eucalyptus entered her nostrils. The floor tiles were white and shiny, as her dog Sam, (a terrier) had not yet entered the bathroom with his muddy paws, since she had last cleaned the bathroom. The sink gleamed and the tiles were actually sparkling, Susan wondered if this was just a trick of the light, as she had never noticed this level of cleanliness before.
* * *
The alarm sounded at 6:00 clock am sharp, for her work. Susan moaned as she reached out to turn off the piercing chime of the clockwork object. (Her Antique alarm clock) Susan respected clocks as they obviously govern peoples lives, only not when they woke her up, even if she had set the timer herself.
In the morning it was windy but the rain had finally cleared up. Susan went into the kitchen and left a message on Carla's answering machine about picking up the dog. (She added a slightly rushed and garbled apology, just for good measure) With that thought in mind she "freshened up", and got "cut short" halfway through the process. Then Susan got dressed into her working jumper, purple. She put on her best denim jeans and pearl earrings. Susan’s jeans were unusual as they were a turquoise colour.
She drove her "last legs" Mazda 323 to the centre of town and through the morning traffic pile up. She switched on the radio and adjusted the dial to the "Classic FM" station. It was playing her favourite American composer, "Porter". She turned off onto Main Street and swore at the traffic as she drove into the usual Central Park traffic fiasco. Susan always played a game; she had done since she was a little girl, where the honking of horns and spluttering engines could be made into a song. Susan clasped her left hand and two cars honked, arced her right hand and there was an obscene conversation drifting from a neighbouring vehicle.
Eventually Susan switched of the radio (as it had started playing the adverts about American airlines) and concentrated on the sights and sounds around her, there was the hotdog vender on the corner of the park, and the smell of cooked wieners wafted up to her through her’ open car window. The smell of exhaust fumes came from the cars around her and some obnoxiously loud music blared into Susan’s right ear, giving her a headache.
Susan waited until the car had travelled onwards through the traffic, but the headache still showed no signs of abating, so she reached into her blue leather and handbag and withdrew a Nurofen tablet. As she slipped the tablet into her mouth the traffic moved on and she was caught slightly unawares. After a few seconds someone loudly honked their horn, and Susan blushed, before angrily shouting,
“I’m goin’ I’m goin’ you maniac”, this had the effect of lifting her spirits up a bit.
Susan indicated down a back street and away from the noise of the traffic. She had to wend her way around a ‘rat trap’ of vast interlinking roads until she reached the turning for her ‘workplace’.
* * *
Susan eventually arrived outside her office at 10:17 am, precisely one hour and seventeen minutes late. Susan cursed the traffic again before hurriedly lifting her handbag and swinging the car door open. She took one look at her reflection in the mirror and then popped in a breath mint. She buffeted her hair to the left and then to the right, this always had the effect of making her feel more business like.
Susan then hurried up to the security guard at the wrought iron gate.
“Hi”, said Susan breathlessly
“Know you know I shouldn’t let you in, but…as you’ve helped me out, hurry in”, said Rigel the security guard, knowingly. Rigel said this with a wink and Susan disappeared in time, missing the wink. Always in a rush, thought Rigel.
* * *
“Freakin’ 2001 traffic, worse than last year”, ranted a man called Mike from across the office room she worked in. He sat three rows back and slightly to the right of Susan’s current position.
“I know what you mean”, sympathised his friend, Susan was yet to learn his name.
Susan stopped eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and opened her red binder. She had to sweep of some old post its into her metallic draw before turning her attention to the folder’s contents. Just after she had read her assignment she had a thought. She took a yellow post it from her draw and wrote clearly on it: “COLLECT SAM, FROM CARLA”.
* **
Today’s assignment was a simple research the RRP of some CD’s and some exercise bikes, before finishing any overdue projects. Susan worked doggedly through the morning and managed to complete quite a few detailed assignments as well as her easy research. Susan had used her payroll to buy Broadband, thus making any Internet related work easier, she didn’t trust the Internet though. She had just explored the prices and found out that a shop named “Special Reserve” had the cheapest available price for her electronic price range research.
Susan dreamily stared across the office from her ninth floor vantage point and noted the decibel level of her co-workers. Susan saw the adjacent tower and remembered she must visit it on Wednesday. This she noted in her little gold leaf bound calendar, a souvenir from Corfu that she was particularly proud of. Her co-workers seemed to be carefree and happy. Like she was when she first married Iain…
* * *
The time had flown by and Susan dreamily looked at her watch and the time was One thirty. The dreaming abruptly ended and she leapt up, with a very audible cry of “$h!t”.
Susan hurried to her bosses’ office on the eleventh floor, leaping stairs on her way up the spiral.
She burst through the door to that of which his office was accessible from and strode purposefully past his horrible, horn rimmed spectacled secretary. She knocked on his door before going in without a reply of confirmation.
Susan saw him with his binoculars to the window before remembering, with a sickening jolt, that this was the bosses’ plane watching time. One of her bosses’ favourite past times. Susan then tried to shuffle slyly out of the door. Unfortunately she had been noticed.
“Susan Berkley”, drilled the boss,
“Yes sir”, she replied, cringing at the use of her full name,
“Why did you just interrupt my plane watching?”, he inquired,
“I…I..”, Susan stuttered, before lamely ending with, “forgot”.
Alan Way was about to craft his response when a plane caught his attention, he lifted his binoculars but made a gesture for Susan to stay and be quiet. “Its’ not on the regular flight path”, he murmured, more to himself than to Susan.
* * *
The plane had then proceeded to veer off straight towards the tower itself, Susan was alarmed and it seemed that others had noticed it too. The engines of the plane were now audible and they roared like a caged tiger. But the plane did not stop there, or at all for that matter. Instead it ploughed its’ way into the side of the tower, at (on Susan’s estimate) roughly the sixth floor. There was a crashing and a shattering sound. The office shook and the Alan’s binoculars tumbled out of the window. The whole room jolted and Alan’s head was jerked into the window ledge, forcefully. Alan was knocked unconscious and then the shaking suddenly stopped. Susan was picking her way around the objects strewn across the floor before reaching Alan. Just as she reached him the room tipped and she slid out of the door as it flung open. Susan tumbled back and through the door she had entered the block through. Susan painfully bumped down the flight of four stairs she had effortlessly jumped before. Then she pushed her heels into the wall on her right, drastically, and then she stopped.
* * *
The building was damaged, badly. Susan’s carefully picked her way around a fallen desk into the spacious office room. Her first impression was that it was completely manic. Files lay scattered on the floor. Computer terminals were offline, rebooting and smashed. The room kept falling prey to violent jerking’s which rattled the room and the window latches juddered on their hinges. As Susan went over the scene of chaos to her desk, she jumped. A pot-plant had just fallen out of the window. Workers were chattering excitedly or gibbering like lunatics. One man desperately punched the keys on his mobile, trying to call his wife and family.
People were rushing to doors and trying to run down the stairs. Susan crept up to the window and peered out over the sill, Susan had vertigo. Distant figures had clustered at a safe distance and dust was diffusing over the streets. By now all of the traffic had stopped and all eyes were on the building. No one noticed Susan, as she was an insignificant blob in comparison to the building and the huge numbers of stricken workers leaning drastically out of windows.
A flowerpot slipped over the ledge, all of a sudden at a 45-degree angle, and Susan leapt away from the edge, terrified. Susan stood up and began to run towards the stairs, when someone called her name. She turned and fell headlong over a protruding chair.
Susan lay dizzy and shaking across the office floor. As Susan regained her senses she realised that her knee was badly bruised and that a television set was blaring out in the corner of the room. CNN news channel was playing as Susan picked her way through the crowd, eager to see what was so fascinating.
“…The terrible victims of a violent terrorist attack”, came the voice of the news reader.
Susan was mystified, until she saw where the indicated attack had been directed at, her office. At this news a ripple of sound went through the observing co-workers.
Again, the building shuddered. The television fell from its’ perch and shattered across the floor, sending glass fragments everywhere. With a stricken scream, Susan dashed towards the stairs once more. Susan ran along the corridor, right to the end, and a possible escape route.
* * *
Susan vigorously pounded the elevators “Down” switch, but it had stopped working. As she descended the stairs she looked out of the window, many people were waving white cloth flags and then she saw one worker leap out of a downstairs window. She averted her eyes and felt sick. Then as she stared at the opposite building she felt a sickening lurch that she only experienced at drops on Roller coaster rides. Then the landmark she had been staring at was mysteriously above her, and ascending all the time. She looked over the stair well and her suspicions were conformed; the building was falling.
Susan opened the window latch and heaved the contraption open. She stood on the ledge and looked at the horrific fall. Then Susan’s mind drifted to thoughts about birds and freedom. She opened her eyes and soared, majestically. Like a bird….
* * *
I have reworked the original. I added some scenes and cut out previous scenes. The overall size and quality should have improved. I have proof read the text. This DID take a long time.
Comments and positive feedback.
The inky black shadows rippled as the wisp of a figure slipped out from round the house. He encountered the wall and leapt to its’ peak, like a bird up a tree. The razor Wire tingled expectantly in the November draft. He noiselessly fled through the courtyard and was off into the night, and away.
* * *
"Ok", said Susan exasperatedly into her mobile
"Yes, but....", Susan tried to say
The phone had been placed on its' hook at the other end. "Damn inconsiderate b…", Susan rapped her hand on the taxi window
"Mr. done a runner?", asked the cab driver from the front seat. As bad as Susan felt she smiled, anyone would with those twinkling eyes set into that aged looking face. He looked like the type of person who was always optimistic and even his large brown moustache gave her comfort. The driver smiled back and twisted in his seat to face the road once more. He pulled back onto the motorway from the little pull in. Old fashioned he may be, but he still didn't believe in phones blaring out as he drove.
He waited for his opening, which greeted him in the form of a space between a silver Mazda 2 and a green Vauxhall Corsa. He indicated and turned right onto the motorway. When the motorway finally threaded its’ way back into a 40 mile an hour zone, he noticed the tapping had stopped. He glanced a glance in his wing mirror to discover his passenger asleep. She would be woken later, it happened all the time.
* * *
Susan had just been on a holiday in Corfu with her ex-husband and her three kids. She had been staying at the lovely resort of Paleokastitsa, on the west coast of the island.
They had spent a good three weeks at the warm beaches and marvelling at the traders on donkeys traipse up to the monastery every day. It had been an idyllic holiday that her ex had offered her to get her away from her stressful work at the office.
Little had she known that he was going to propose to her at the end of the holiday, she, being a stubborn woman, had been asked to be taken straight home, ruining her four week vacation.
* * *
Susan shielded her face from the rain as she jogged round to the driver’s side to pay him the three dollars she owed him. Hurriedly she thanked him and shielded her face from the New York down pour as she returned home to her flat on Fifth Avenue. She swung opened the door and sighed as she entered the warmth of the entranceway. She bolted up the stairs to her flat and fumbled with the keys in the lock; in her haste she snapped the end off the key. “F***”, she said, exasperated and longing for a coffee.
“Oh, great”, she thought, off to Ms. Sulises again. Ms. Sulis was the old lady who lived in the flat above hers. She kept Susan’s’ spare keys as she was always there to rely on. Ms. Sulis had ‘adopted’ Susan as her daughter and acted like a motherly figure, this was nice, but tiresome, especially at a time like this. Susan trudged up to the flat of Ms. Sulis, losing the vigour she had just had when the thought of her nice, cosy flat was the reward at the end of a trek. Ms. Sulis’ flat was ‘pokey’ and very dingy. The flat smelt of cats and urine, in a way that Susan almost associated the pensioners in New York with. She rapped on the door, as a doorbell was not a feature of this ancient woodwork; it had intricate patterns that fascinated Susan. The patterns depicted ornate flowers and golden trimmed ram heads. There was even a detailed hunting scene, on the right of the letterbox and on the doorframe.
“Hello, who is it?”, came the shrill voice of Ms Sulis, peering through the eyehole
“It’s me”, said Susan
“Who?”, inquired Ms Sulis, as was her ‘way of checking’
“Susan”, “From number nine”, replied Susan
“Well come on in then, dear”, said the voice of Ms Sulis, in conjunction to the sounds of a lock clicking and a latch being slid across the door.
Susan stepped into the flat and was instantly hit with a barrage of musty damp and cat pee, her eyes watered and she covered her nose. Susan stepped over the threshold and into the, comparative, warmth of the flat. Ms. Sulis never paid much for her heating bills, and so only a paraffin torch and a single radiator was on, this made the flat just warmer than the outside corridor.
“So, dear, what are you here for?” asked Ms. Sulis
“Well…” said Susan hesitantly
“Pardon?” said Ms. Sulis; this was one of her infuriating habits, where she would become mysteriously deaf until she heard a sentence with correct grammar or an agreement to her opinions. The joke was that someone would one day steal her purse but would say something like: “gimme’ yaw money, yer old bag”, she would chide them until they said it properly and then give them her purse!
“ My spare key broke,” replied Susan, ashamed
Ms. Sulis then lectured her on how household appliances needed to ‘be treated with care’; otherwise they would not perform their functions.
Susan eventually left the house hours later and was seething. She had declined tea a little too harshly.
Susan now had the key and she relished the moment when she would be able to drink a cup of coffee. She looked forward to this moment so much that she carried on walking past her house and into the rain. She sighed as she looked into the upper window of her room. Susan had planned to spend at least twenty minutes in the rain, but she fancied that she saw a flicker of a shadow in her upstairs’ window. She hurriedly walked into the entranceway and rubbed her hands to get the blood circulating round them again. Susan wiped the mud of her feet on the novelty hedgehog, wooden, shoe dryer. She now proceeded to her flat, anxious about the shadow she had seen in her’ window.
Susan needed a coffee, badly. She needed a nice strong coffee and a chance to get her head around the events of the last few days. She eventually reached her front door and used the key that opened her front door. She quickly went inside and shut the door, nearly tripping over the pile of mail in the process. Susan picked up some of her mail that blocked the doorway and shifted the rest out of her way. Susan walked through the narrow corridor, taking off her coat and putting it on the rack; the rack was one of her proudest possessions, one of the few things her husband had let her keep after the divorce. Finally Susan reached the cramped (or "cosy" as she called it) kitchen. Because of her worry, she sprinted up the stairs that led to her upstairs bedroom and flung open the door. There was no sound except the rain battering the windows. Susan felt very foolish and tiredly trudged back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Susan then sifted through some of the letters she had randomly scooped from the pile. “Junk. Bill. Another bill", said Susan as she opened the cupboard for some coffee. Putting the letters in her mouth, she filled up her unused with Bosch kettle (with some filtered water from the fridge, her friend had delivered it) and proceeded to boil it.
Susan hit the switch on her answering machine labelled "P a ", thus labelled, because, unfortunately, her’ finger grease and general ‘wear and tear’ had worn away the lettering over the four years she had owned it.
"Hi, darl. Its' Carla here....", said the voice on the tape
"Of course", Susan smacked her head; in sudden ‘enlightenment’, the dog.
"How was your' hols sweetie? Just to say that Sam is here and he’s been no trouble at all.", crooned the voice of Carla on the tape.
That was one more thing that Susan would have to do on her way to work tomorrow. Susan went back into the small corridor and went up to her little cork notice board. She smiled at the happy face of her daughter, four years ago, aged nine. Moving the photo to an angle on its' drawing pin, she adjusted her calendar to the current date, September the 10th.
Susan now poured out her black coffee and gulped great fully at the sought after elixir; without letting it cool down, burning her tongue in the process. She didn't mind; finally she could unwind before a busy day at work. A thought that Susan had dreaded since the holiday, but had shunted to the back of her’ mind.
When the initial effects of the coffee wore off she suddenly felt an incredible yearning to go to her bed. Susan was very tired after a day of travelling and the emotional stress of her’ husbands proposal, she decided to push this out of her mind for at least the next few days.
* * *
Finally, two hours later, Susan headed upstairs to her bathroom (the largest room in her house) and started to run a hot, steamy bath. She stared as the white, metallic, tank began to fill.
About five minutes later the bath was half full and she gratefully lowered herself into the water, using the burnished brass handles. She felt glad to be at her home; home sweet home.
Susan held on to the burnished brass handles and slipped back into the herbal bubbles, Aloe Vera and eucalyptus. The relaxation of Radox soothed her as the smell of eucalyptus entered her nostrils. The floor tiles were white and shiny, as her dog Sam, (a terrier) had not yet entered the bathroom with his muddy paws, since she had last cleaned the bathroom. The sink gleamed and the tiles were actually sparkling, Susan wondered if this was just a trick of the light, as she had never noticed this level of cleanliness before.
* * *
The alarm sounded at 6:00 clock am sharp, for her work. Susan moaned as she reached out to turn off the piercing chime of the clockwork object. (Her Antique alarm clock) Susan respected clocks as they obviously govern peoples lives, only not when they woke her up, even if she had set the timer herself.
In the morning it was windy but the rain had finally cleared up. Susan went into the kitchen and left a message on Carla's answering machine about picking up the dog. (She added a slightly rushed and garbled apology, just for good measure) With that thought in mind she "freshened up", and got "cut short" halfway through the process. Then Susan got dressed into her working jumper, purple. She put on her best denim jeans and pearl earrings. Susan’s jeans were unusual as they were a turquoise colour.
She drove her "last legs" Mazda 323 to the centre of town and through the morning traffic pile up. She switched on the radio and adjusted the dial to the "Classic FM" station. It was playing her favourite American composer, "Porter". She turned off onto Main Street and swore at the traffic as she drove into the usual Central Park traffic fiasco. Susan always played a game; she had done since she was a little girl, where the honking of horns and spluttering engines could be made into a song. Susan clasped her left hand and two cars honked, arced her right hand and there was an obscene conversation drifting from a neighbouring vehicle.
Eventually Susan switched of the radio (as it had started playing the adverts about American airlines) and concentrated on the sights and sounds around her, there was the hotdog vender on the corner of the park, and the smell of cooked wieners wafted up to her through her’ open car window. The smell of exhaust fumes came from the cars around her and some obnoxiously loud music blared into Susan’s right ear, giving her a headache.
Susan waited until the car had travelled onwards through the traffic, but the headache still showed no signs of abating, so she reached into her blue leather and handbag and withdrew a Nurofen tablet. As she slipped the tablet into her mouth the traffic moved on and she was caught slightly unawares. After a few seconds someone loudly honked their horn, and Susan blushed, before angrily shouting,
“I’m goin’ I’m goin’ you maniac”, this had the effect of lifting her spirits up a bit.
Susan indicated down a back street and away from the noise of the traffic. She had to wend her way around a ‘rat trap’ of vast interlinking roads until she reached the turning for her ‘workplace’.
* * *
Susan eventually arrived outside her office at 10:17 am, precisely one hour and seventeen minutes late. Susan cursed the traffic again before hurriedly lifting her handbag and swinging the car door open. She took one look at her reflection in the mirror and then popped in a breath mint. She buffeted her hair to the left and then to the right, this always had the effect of making her feel more business like.
Susan then hurried up to the security guard at the wrought iron gate.
“Hi”, said Susan breathlessly
“Know you know I shouldn’t let you in, but…as you’ve helped me out, hurry in”, said Rigel the security guard, knowingly. Rigel said this with a wink and Susan disappeared in time, missing the wink. Always in a rush, thought Rigel.
* * *
“Freakin’ 2001 traffic, worse than last year”, ranted a man called Mike from across the office room she worked in. He sat three rows back and slightly to the right of Susan’s current position.
“I know what you mean”, sympathised his friend, Susan was yet to learn his name.
Susan stopped eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and opened her red binder. She had to sweep of some old post its into her metallic draw before turning her attention to the folder’s contents. Just after she had read her assignment she had a thought. She took a yellow post it from her draw and wrote clearly on it: “COLLECT SAM, FROM CARLA”.
* **
Today’s assignment was a simple research the RRP of some CD’s and some exercise bikes, before finishing any overdue projects. Susan worked doggedly through the morning and managed to complete quite a few detailed assignments as well as her easy research. Susan had used her payroll to buy Broadband, thus making any Internet related work easier, she didn’t trust the Internet though. She had just explored the prices and found out that a shop named “Special Reserve” had the cheapest available price for her electronic price range research.
Susan dreamily stared across the office from her ninth floor vantage point and noted the decibel level of her co-workers. Susan saw the adjacent tower and remembered she must visit it on Wednesday. This she noted in her little gold leaf bound calendar, a souvenir from Corfu that she was particularly proud of. Her co-workers seemed to be carefree and happy. Like she was when she first married Iain…
* * *
The time had flown by and Susan dreamily looked at her watch and the time was One thirty. The dreaming abruptly ended and she leapt up, with a very audible cry of “$h!t”.
Susan hurried to her bosses’ office on the eleventh floor, leaping stairs on her way up the spiral.
She burst through the door to that of which his office was accessible from and strode purposefully past his horrible, horn rimmed spectacled secretary. She knocked on his door before going in without a reply of confirmation.
Susan saw him with his binoculars to the window before remembering, with a sickening jolt, that this was the bosses’ plane watching time. One of her bosses’ favourite past times. Susan then tried to shuffle slyly out of the door. Unfortunately she had been noticed.
“Susan Berkley”, drilled the boss,
“Yes sir”, she replied, cringing at the use of her full name,
“Why did you just interrupt my plane watching?”, he inquired,
“I…I..”, Susan stuttered, before lamely ending with, “forgot”.
Alan Way was about to craft his response when a plane caught his attention, he lifted his binoculars but made a gesture for Susan to stay and be quiet. “Its’ not on the regular flight path”, he murmured, more to himself than to Susan.
* * *
The plane had then proceeded to veer off straight towards the tower itself, Susan was alarmed and it seemed that others had noticed it too. The engines of the plane were now audible and they roared like a caged tiger. But the plane did not stop there, or at all for that matter. Instead it ploughed its’ way into the side of the tower, at (on Susan’s estimate) roughly the sixth floor. There was a crashing and a shattering sound. The office shook and the Alan’s binoculars tumbled out of the window. The whole room jolted and Alan’s head was jerked into the window ledge, forcefully. Alan was knocked unconscious and then the shaking suddenly stopped. Susan was picking her way around the objects strewn across the floor before reaching Alan. Just as she reached him the room tipped and she slid out of the door as it flung open. Susan tumbled back and through the door she had entered the block through. Susan painfully bumped down the flight of four stairs she had effortlessly jumped before. Then she pushed her heels into the wall on her right, drastically, and then she stopped.
* * *
The building was damaged, badly. Susan’s carefully picked her way around a fallen desk into the spacious office room. Her first impression was that it was completely manic. Files lay scattered on the floor. Computer terminals were offline, rebooting and smashed. The room kept falling prey to violent jerking’s which rattled the room and the window latches juddered on their hinges. As Susan went over the scene of chaos to her desk, she jumped. A pot-plant had just fallen out of the window. Workers were chattering excitedly or gibbering like lunatics. One man desperately punched the keys on his mobile, trying to call his wife and family.
People were rushing to doors and trying to run down the stairs. Susan crept up to the window and peered out over the sill, Susan had vertigo. Distant figures had clustered at a safe distance and dust was diffusing over the streets. By now all of the traffic had stopped and all eyes were on the building. No one noticed Susan, as she was an insignificant blob in comparison to the building and the huge numbers of stricken workers leaning drastically out of windows.
A flowerpot slipped over the ledge, all of a sudden at a 45-degree angle, and Susan leapt away from the edge, terrified. Susan stood up and began to run towards the stairs, when someone called her name. She turned and fell headlong over a protruding chair.
Susan lay dizzy and shaking across the office floor. As Susan regained her senses she realised that her knee was badly bruised and that a television set was blaring out in the corner of the room. CNN news channel was playing as Susan picked her way through the crowd, eager to see what was so fascinating.
“…The terrible victims of a violent terrorist attack”, came the voice of the news reader.
Susan was mystified, until she saw where the indicated attack had been directed at, her office. At this news a ripple of sound went through the observing co-workers.
Again, the building shuddered. The television fell from its’ perch and shattered across the floor, sending glass fragments everywhere. With a stricken scream, Susan dashed towards the stairs once more. Susan ran along the corridor, right to the end, and a possible escape route.
* * *
Susan vigorously pounded the elevators “Down” switch, but it had stopped working. As she descended the stairs she looked out of the window, many people were waving white cloth flags and then she saw one worker leap out of a downstairs window. She averted her eyes and felt sick. Then as she stared at the opposite building she felt a sickening lurch that she only experienced at drops on Roller coaster rides. Then the landmark she had been staring at was mysteriously above her, and ascending all the time. She looked over the stair well and her suspicions were conformed; the building was falling.
Susan opened the window latch and heaved the contraption open. She stood on the ledge and looked at the horrific fall. Then Susan’s mind drifted to thoughts about birds and freedom. She opened her eyes and soared, majestically. Like a bird….
* * *
I have reworked the original. I added some scenes and cut out previous scenes. The overall size and quality should have improved. I have proof read the text. This DID take a long time.
Comments and positive feedback.
:-D
Fine.
I'll read it when I have a spare hour and a half :-P
I'm about to log off though.
I'm about to log off though.
A new, updated, version of "A Ninja and an eyewitness", this is bigger and better than ever before. Enjoy.
The inky black shadows rippled as the wisp of a figure slipped out from round the house. He encountered the wall and leapt to its’ peak, like a bird up a tree. The razor Wire tingled expectantly in the November draft. He noiselessly fled through the courtyard and was off into the night, and away.
* * *
"Ok", said Susan exasperatedly into her mobile
"Yes, but....", Susan tried to say
The phone had been placed on its' hook at the other end. "Damn inconsiderate b…", Susan rapped her hand on the taxi window
"Mr. done a runner?", asked the cab driver from the front seat. As bad as Susan felt she smiled, anyone would with those twinkling eyes set into that aged looking face. He looked like the type of person who was always optimistic and even his large brown moustache gave her comfort. The driver smiled back and twisted in his seat to face the road once more. He pulled back onto the motorway from the little pull in. Old fashioned he may be, but he still didn't believe in phones blaring out as he drove.
He waited for his opening, which greeted him in the form of a space between a silver Mazda 2 and a green Vauxhall Corsa. He indicated and turned right onto the motorway. When the motorway finally threaded its’ way back into a 40 mile an hour zone, he noticed the tapping had stopped. He glanced a glance in his wing mirror to discover his passenger asleep. She would be woken later, it happened all the time.
* * *
Susan had just been on a holiday in Corfu with her ex-husband and her three kids. She had been staying at the lovely resort of Paleokastitsa, on the west coast of the island.
They had spent a good three weeks at the warm beaches and marvelling at the traders on donkeys traipse up to the monastery every day. It had been an idyllic holiday that her ex had offered her to get her away from her stressful work at the office.
Little had she known that he was going to propose to her at the end of the holiday, she, being a stubborn woman, had been asked to be taken straight home, ruining her four week vacation.
* * *
Susan shielded her face from the rain as she jogged round to the driver’s side to pay him the three dollars she owed him. Hurriedly she thanked him and shielded her face from the New York down pour as she returned home to her flat on Fifth Avenue. She swung opened the door and sighed as she entered the warmth of the entranceway. She bolted up the stairs to her flat and fumbled with the keys in the lock; in her haste she snapped the end off the key. “F***”, she said, exasperated and longing for a coffee.
“Oh, great”, she thought, off to Ms. Sulises again. Ms. Sulis was the old lady who lived in the flat above hers. She kept Susan’s’ spare keys as she was always there to rely on. Ms. Sulis had ‘adopted’ Susan as her daughter and acted like a motherly figure, this was nice, but tiresome, especially at a time like this. Susan trudged up to the flat of Ms. Sulis, losing the vigour she had just had when the thought of her nice, cosy flat was the reward at the end of a trek. Ms. Sulis’ flat was ‘pokey’ and very dingy. The flat smelt of cats and urine, in a way that Susan almost associated the pensioners in New York with. She rapped on the door, as a doorbell was not a feature of this ancient woodwork; it had intricate patterns that fascinated Susan. The patterns depicted ornate flowers and golden trimmed ram heads. There was even a detailed hunting scene, on the right of the letterbox and on the doorframe.
“Hello, who is it?”, came the shrill voice of Ms Sulis, peering through the eyehole
“It’s me”, said Susan
“Who?”, inquired Ms Sulis, as was her ‘way of checking’
“Susan”, “From number nine”, replied Susan
“Well come on in then, dear”, said the voice of Ms Sulis, in conjunction to the sounds of a lock clicking and a latch being slid across the door.
Susan stepped into the flat and was instantly hit with a barrage of musty damp and cat pee, her eyes watered and she covered her nose. Susan stepped over the threshold and into the, comparative, warmth of the flat. Ms. Sulis never paid much for her heating bills, and so only a paraffin torch and a single radiator was on, this made the flat just warmer than the outside corridor.
“So, dear, what are you here for?” asked Ms. Sulis
“Well…” said Susan hesitantly
“Pardon?” said Ms. Sulis; this was one of her infuriating habits, where she would become mysteriously deaf until she heard a sentence with correct grammar or an agreement to her opinions. The joke was that someone would one day steal her purse but would say something like: “gimme’ yaw money, yer old bag”, she would chide them until they said it properly and then give them her purse!
“ My spare key broke,” replied Susan, ashamed
Ms. Sulis then lectured her on how household appliances needed to ‘be treated with care’; otherwise they would not perform their functions.
Susan eventually left the house hours later and was seething. She had declined tea a little too harshly.
Susan now had the key and she relished the moment when she would be able to drink a cup of coffee. She looked forward to this moment so much that she carried on walking past her house and into the rain. She sighed as she looked into the upper window of her room. Susan had planned to spend at least twenty minutes in the rain, but she fancied that she saw a flicker of a shadow in her upstairs’ window. She hurriedly walked into the entranceway and rubbed her hands to get the blood circulating round them again. Susan wiped the mud of her feet on the novelty hedgehog, wooden, shoe dryer. She now proceeded to her flat, anxious about the shadow she had seen in her’ window.
Susan needed a coffee, badly. She needed a nice strong coffee and a chance to get her head around the events of the last few days. She eventually reached her front door and used the key that opened her front door. She quickly went inside and shut the door, nearly tripping over the pile of mail in the process. Susan picked up some of her mail that blocked the doorway and shifted the rest out of her way. Susan walked through the narrow corridor, taking off her coat and putting it on the rack; the rack was one of her proudest possessions, one of the few things her husband had let her keep after the divorce. Finally Susan reached the cramped (or "cosy" as she called it) kitchen. Because of her worry, she sprinted up the stairs that led to her upstairs bedroom and flung open the door. There was no sound except the rain battering the windows. Susan felt very foolish and tiredly trudged back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Susan then sifted through some of the letters she had randomly scooped from the pile. “Junk. Bill. Another bill", said Susan as she opened the cupboard for some coffee. Putting the letters in her mouth, she filled up her unused with Bosch kettle (with some filtered water from the fridge, her friend had delivered it) and proceeded to boil it.
Susan hit the switch on her answering machine labelled "P a ", thus labelled, because, unfortunately, her’ finger grease and general ‘wear and tear’ had worn away the lettering over the four years she had owned it.
"Hi, darl. Its' Carla here....", said the voice on the tape
"Of course", Susan smacked her head; in sudden ‘enlightenment’, the dog.
"How was your' hols sweetie? Just to say that Sam is here and he’s been no trouble at all.", crooned the voice of Carla on the tape.
That was one more thing that Susan would have to do on her way to work tomorrow. Susan went back into the small corridor and went up to her little cork notice board. She smiled at the happy face of her daughter, four years ago, aged nine. Moving the photo to an angle on its' drawing pin, she adjusted her calendar to the current date, September the 10th.
Susan now poured out her black coffee and gulped great fully at the sought after elixir; without letting it cool down, burning her tongue in the process. She didn't mind; finally she could unwind before a busy day at work. A thought that Susan had dreaded since the holiday, but had shunted to the back of her’ mind.
When the initial effects of the coffee wore off she suddenly felt an incredible yearning to go to her bed. Susan was very tired after a day of travelling and the emotional stress of her’ husbands proposal, she decided to push this out of her mind for at least the next few days.
* * *
Finally, two hours later, Susan headed upstairs to her bathroom (the largest room in her house) and started to run a hot, steamy bath. She stared as the white, metallic, tank began to fill.
About five minutes later the bath was half full and she gratefully lowered herself into the water, using the burnished brass handles. She felt glad to be at her home; home sweet home.
Susan held on to the burnished brass handles and slipped back into the herbal bubbles, Aloe Vera and eucalyptus. The relaxation of Radox soothed her as the smell of eucalyptus entered her nostrils. The floor tiles were white and shiny, as her dog Sam, (a terrier) had not yet entered the bathroom with his muddy paws, since she had last cleaned the bathroom. The sink gleamed and the tiles were actually sparkling, Susan wondered if this was just a trick of the light, as she had never noticed this level of cleanliness before.
* * *
The alarm sounded at 6:00 clock am sharp, for her work. Susan moaned as she reached out to turn off the piercing chime of the clockwork object. (Her Antique alarm clock) Susan respected clocks as they obviously govern peoples lives, only not when they woke her up, even if she had set the timer herself.
In the morning it was windy but the rain had finally cleared up. Susan went into the kitchen and left a message on Carla's answering machine about picking up the dog. (She added a slightly rushed and garbled apology, just for good measure) With that thought in mind she "freshened up", and got "cut short" halfway through the process. Then Susan got dressed into her working jumper, purple. She put on her best denim jeans and pearl earrings. Susan’s jeans were unusual as they were a turquoise colour.
She drove her "last legs" Mazda 323 to the centre of town and through the morning traffic pile up. She switched on the radio and adjusted the dial to the "Classic FM" station. It was playing her favourite American composer, "Porter". She turned off onto Main Street and swore at the traffic as she drove into the usual Central Park traffic fiasco. Susan always played a game; she had done since she was a little girl, where the honking of horns and spluttering engines could be made into a song. Susan clasped her left hand and two cars honked, arced her right hand and there was an obscene conversation drifting from a neighbouring vehicle.
Eventually Susan switched of the radio (as it had started playing the adverts about American airlines) and concentrated on the sights and sounds around her, there was the hotdog vender on the corner of the park, and the smell of cooked wieners wafted up to her through her’ open car window. The smell of exhaust fumes came from the cars around her and some obnoxiously loud music blared into Susan’s right ear, giving her a headache.
Susan waited until the car had travelled onwards through the traffic, but the headache still showed no signs of abating, so she reached into her blue leather and handbag and withdrew a Nurofen tablet. As she slipped the tablet into her mouth the traffic moved on and she was caught slightly unawares. After a few seconds someone loudly honked their horn, and Susan blushed, before angrily shouting,
“I’m goin’ I’m goin’ you maniac”, this had the effect of lifting her spirits up a bit.
Susan indicated down a back street and away from the noise of the traffic. She had to wend her way around a ‘rat trap’ of vast interlinking roads until she reached the turning for her ‘workplace’.
* * *
Susan eventually arrived outside her office at 10:17 am, precisely one hour and seventeen minutes late. Susan cursed the traffic again before hurriedly lifting her handbag and swinging the car door open. She took one look at her reflection in the mirror and then popped in a breath mint. She buffeted her hair to the left and then to the right, this always had the effect of making her feel more business like.
Susan then hurried up to the security guard at the wrought iron gate.
“Hi”, said Susan breathlessly
“Know you know I shouldn’t let you in, but…as you’ve helped me out, hurry in”, said Rigel the security guard, knowingly. Rigel said this with a wink and Susan disappeared in time, missing the wink. Always in a rush, thought Rigel.
* * *
“Freakin’ 2001 traffic, worse than last year”, ranted a man called Mike from across the office room she worked in. He sat three rows back and slightly to the right of Susan’s current position.
“I know what you mean”, sympathised his friend, Susan was yet to learn his name.
Susan stopped eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and opened her red binder. She had to sweep of some old post its into her metallic draw before turning her attention to the folder’s contents. Just after she had read her assignment she had a thought. She took a yellow post it from her draw and wrote clearly on it: “COLLECT SAM, FROM CARLA”.
* **
Today’s assignment was a simple research the RRP of some CD’s and some exercise bikes, before finishing any overdue projects. Susan worked doggedly through the morning and managed to complete quite a few detailed assignments as well as her easy research. Susan had used her payroll to buy Broadband, thus making any Internet related work easier, she didn’t trust the Internet though. She had just explored the prices and found out that a shop named “Special Reserve” had the cheapest available price for her electronic price range research.
Susan dreamily stared across the office from her ninth floor vantage point and noted the decibel level of her co-workers. Susan saw the adjacent tower and remembered she must visit it on Wednesday. This she noted in her little gold leaf bound calendar, a souvenir from Corfu that she was particularly proud of. Her co-workers seemed to be carefree and happy. Like she was when she first married Iain…
* * *
The time had flown by and Susan dreamily looked at her watch and the time was One thirty. The dreaming abruptly ended and she leapt up, with a very audible cry of “$h!t”.
Susan hurried to her bosses’ office on the eleventh floor, leaping stairs on her way up the spiral.
She burst through the door to that of which his office was accessible from and strode purposefully past his horrible, horn rimmed spectacled secretary. She knocked on his door before going in without a reply of confirmation.
Susan saw him with his binoculars to the window before remembering, with a sickening jolt, that this was the bosses’ plane watching time. One of her bosses’ favourite past times. Susan then tried to shuffle slyly out of the door. Unfortunately she had been noticed.
“Susan Berkley”, drilled the boss,
“Yes sir”, she replied, cringing at the use of her full name,
“Why did you just interrupt my plane watching?”, he inquired,
“I…I..”, Susan stuttered, before lamely ending with, “forgot”.
Alan Way was about to craft his response when a plane caught his attention, he lifted his binoculars but made a gesture for Susan to stay and be quiet. “Its’ not on the regular flight path”, he murmured, more to himself than to Susan.
* * *
The plane had then proceeded to veer off straight towards the tower itself, Susan was alarmed and it seemed that others had noticed it too. The engines of the plane were now audible and they roared like a caged tiger. But the plane did not stop there, or at all for that matter. Instead it ploughed its’ way into the side of the tower, at (on Susan’s estimate) roughly the sixth floor. There was a crashing and a shattering sound. The office shook and the Alan’s binoculars tumbled out of the window. The whole room jolted and Alan’s head was jerked into the window ledge, forcefully. Alan was knocked unconscious and then the shaking suddenly stopped. Susan was picking her way around the objects strewn across the floor before reaching Alan. Just as she reached him the room tipped and she slid out of the door as it flung open. Susan tumbled back and through the door she had entered the block through. Susan painfully bumped down the flight of four stairs she had effortlessly jumped before. Then she pushed her heels into the wall on her right, drastically, and then she stopped.
* * *
The building was damaged, badly. Susan’s carefully picked her way around a fallen desk into the spacious office room. Her first impression was that it was completely manic. Files lay scattered on the floor. Computer terminals were offline, rebooting and smashed. The room kept falling prey to violent jerking’s which rattled the room and the window latches juddered on their hinges. As Susan went over the scene of chaos to her desk, she jumped. A pot-plant had just fallen out of the window. Workers were chattering excitedly or gibbering like lunatics. One man desperately punched the keys on his mobile, trying to call his wife and family.
People were rushing to doors and trying to run down the stairs. Susan crept up to the window and peered out over the sill, Susan had vertigo. Distant figures had clustered at a safe distance and dust was diffusing over the streets. By now all of the traffic had stopped and all eyes were on the building. No one noticed Susan, as she was an insignificant blob in comparison to the building and the huge numbers of stricken workers leaning drastically out of windows.
A flowerpot slipped over the ledge, all of a sudden at a 45-degree angle, and Susan leapt away from the edge, terrified. Susan stood up and began to run towards the stairs, when someone called her name. She turned and fell headlong over a protruding chair.
Susan lay dizzy and shaking across the office floor. As Susan regained her senses she realised that her knee was badly bruised and that a television set was blaring out in the corner of the room. CNN news channel was playing as Susan picked her way through the crowd, eager to see what was so fascinating.
“…The terrible victims of a violent terrorist attack”, came the voice of the news reader.
Susan was mystified, until she saw where the indicated attack had been directed at, her office. At this news a ripple of sound went through the observing co-workers.
Again, the building shuddered. The television fell from its’ perch and shattered across the floor, sending glass fragments everywhere. With a stricken scream, Susan dashed towards the stairs once more. Susan ran along the corridor, right to the end, and a possible escape route.
* * *
Susan vigorously pounded the elevators “Down” switch, but it had stopped working. As she descended the stairs she looked out of the window, many people were waving white cloth flags and then she saw one worker leap out of a downstairs window. She averted her eyes and felt sick. Then as she stared at the opposite building she felt a sickening lurch that she only experienced at drops on Roller coaster rides. Then the landmark she had been staring at was mysteriously above her, and ascending all the time. She looked over the stair well and her suspicions were conformed; the building was falling.
Susan opened the window latch and heaved the contraption open. She stood on the ledge and looked at the horrific fall. Then Susan’s mind drifted to thoughts about birds and freedom. She opened her eyes and soared, majestically. Like a bird….
* * *
I have reworked the original. I added some scenes and cut out previous scenes. The overall size and quality should have improved. I have proof read the text. This DID take a long time.
Comments and positive feedback.
The inky black shadows rippled as the wisp of a figure slipped out from round the house. He encountered the wall and leapt to its’ peak, like a bird up a tree. The razor Wire tingled expectantly in the November draft. He noiselessly fled through the courtyard and was off into the night, and away.
* * *
"Ok", said Susan exasperatedly into her mobile
"Yes, but....", Susan tried to say
The phone had been placed on its' hook at the other end. "Damn inconsiderate b…", Susan rapped her hand on the taxi window
"Mr. done a runner?", asked the cab driver from the front seat. As bad as Susan felt she smiled, anyone would with those twinkling eyes set into that aged looking face. He looked like the type of person who was always optimistic and even his large brown moustache gave her comfort. The driver smiled back and twisted in his seat to face the road once more. He pulled back onto the motorway from the little pull in. Old fashioned he may be, but he still didn't believe in phones blaring out as he drove.
He waited for his opening, which greeted him in the form of a space between a silver Mazda 2 and a green Vauxhall Corsa. He indicated and turned right onto the motorway. When the motorway finally threaded its’ way back into a 40 mile an hour zone, he noticed the tapping had stopped. He glanced a glance in his wing mirror to discover his passenger asleep. She would be woken later, it happened all the time.
* * *
Susan had just been on a holiday in Corfu with her ex-husband and her three kids. She had been staying at the lovely resort of Paleokastitsa, on the west coast of the island.
They had spent a good three weeks at the warm beaches and marvelling at the traders on donkeys traipse up to the monastery every day. It had been an idyllic holiday that her ex had offered her to get her away from her stressful work at the office.
Little had she known that he was going to propose to her at the end of the holiday, she, being a stubborn woman, had been asked to be taken straight home, ruining her four week vacation.
* * *
Susan shielded her face from the rain as she jogged round to the driver’s side to pay him the three dollars she owed him. Hurriedly she thanked him and shielded her face from the New York down pour as she returned home to her flat on Fifth Avenue. She swung opened the door and sighed as she entered the warmth of the entranceway. She bolted up the stairs to her flat and fumbled with the keys in the lock; in her haste she snapped the end off the key. “F***”, she said, exasperated and longing for a coffee.
“Oh, great”, she thought, off to Ms. Sulises again. Ms. Sulis was the old lady who lived in the flat above hers. She kept Susan’s’ spare keys as she was always there to rely on. Ms. Sulis had ‘adopted’ Susan as her daughter and acted like a motherly figure, this was nice, but tiresome, especially at a time like this. Susan trudged up to the flat of Ms. Sulis, losing the vigour she had just had when the thought of her nice, cosy flat was the reward at the end of a trek. Ms. Sulis’ flat was ‘pokey’ and very dingy. The flat smelt of cats and urine, in a way that Susan almost associated the pensioners in New York with. She rapped on the door, as a doorbell was not a feature of this ancient woodwork; it had intricate patterns that fascinated Susan. The patterns depicted ornate flowers and golden trimmed ram heads. There was even a detailed hunting scene, on the right of the letterbox and on the doorframe.
“Hello, who is it?”, came the shrill voice of Ms Sulis, peering through the eyehole
“It’s me”, said Susan
“Who?”, inquired Ms Sulis, as was her ‘way of checking’
“Susan”, “From number nine”, replied Susan
“Well come on in then, dear”, said the voice of Ms Sulis, in conjunction to the sounds of a lock clicking and a latch being slid across the door.
Susan stepped into the flat and was instantly hit with a barrage of musty damp and cat pee, her eyes watered and she covered her nose. Susan stepped over the threshold and into the, comparative, warmth of the flat. Ms. Sulis never paid much for her heating bills, and so only a paraffin torch and a single radiator was on, this made the flat just warmer than the outside corridor.
“So, dear, what are you here for?” asked Ms. Sulis
“Well…” said Susan hesitantly
“Pardon?” said Ms. Sulis; this was one of her infuriating habits, where she would become mysteriously deaf until she heard a sentence with correct grammar or an agreement to her opinions. The joke was that someone would one day steal her purse but would say something like: “gimme’ yaw money, yer old bag”, she would chide them until they said it properly and then give them her purse!
“ My spare key broke,” replied Susan, ashamed
Ms. Sulis then lectured her on how household appliances needed to ‘be treated with care’; otherwise they would not perform their functions.
Susan eventually left the house hours later and was seething. She had declined tea a little too harshly.
Susan now had the key and she relished the moment when she would be able to drink a cup of coffee. She looked forward to this moment so much that she carried on walking past her house and into the rain. She sighed as she looked into the upper window of her room. Susan had planned to spend at least twenty minutes in the rain, but she fancied that she saw a flicker of a shadow in her upstairs’ window. She hurriedly walked into the entranceway and rubbed her hands to get the blood circulating round them again. Susan wiped the mud of her feet on the novelty hedgehog, wooden, shoe dryer. She now proceeded to her flat, anxious about the shadow she had seen in her’ window.
Susan needed a coffee, badly. She needed a nice strong coffee and a chance to get her head around the events of the last few days. She eventually reached her front door and used the key that opened her front door. She quickly went inside and shut the door, nearly tripping over the pile of mail in the process. Susan picked up some of her mail that blocked the doorway and shifted the rest out of her way. Susan walked through the narrow corridor, taking off her coat and putting it on the rack; the rack was one of her proudest possessions, one of the few things her husband had let her keep after the divorce. Finally Susan reached the cramped (or "cosy" as she called it) kitchen. Because of her worry, she sprinted up the stairs that led to her upstairs bedroom and flung open the door. There was no sound except the rain battering the windows. Susan felt very foolish and tiredly trudged back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Susan then sifted through some of the letters she had randomly scooped from the pile. “Junk. Bill. Another bill", said Susan as she opened the cupboard for some coffee. Putting the letters in her mouth, she filled up her unused with Bosch kettle (with some filtered water from the fridge, her friend had delivered it) and proceeded to boil it.
Susan hit the switch on her answering machine labelled "P a ", thus labelled, because, unfortunately, her’ finger grease and general ‘wear and tear’ had worn away the lettering over the four years she had owned it.
"Hi, darl. Its' Carla here....", said the voice on the tape
"Of course", Susan smacked her head; in sudden ‘enlightenment’, the dog.
"How was your' hols sweetie? Just to say that Sam is here and he’s been no trouble at all.", crooned the voice of Carla on the tape.
That was one more thing that Susan would have to do on her way to work tomorrow. Susan went back into the small corridor and went up to her little cork notice board. She smiled at the happy face of her daughter, four years ago, aged nine. Moving the photo to an angle on its' drawing pin, she adjusted her calendar to the current date, September the 10th.
Susan now poured out her black coffee and gulped great fully at the sought after elixir; without letting it cool down, burning her tongue in the process. She didn't mind; finally she could unwind before a busy day at work. A thought that Susan had dreaded since the holiday, but had shunted to the back of her’ mind.
When the initial effects of the coffee wore off she suddenly felt an incredible yearning to go to her bed. Susan was very tired after a day of travelling and the emotional stress of her’ husbands proposal, she decided to push this out of her mind for at least the next few days.
* * *
Finally, two hours later, Susan headed upstairs to her bathroom (the largest room in her house) and started to run a hot, steamy bath. She stared as the white, metallic, tank began to fill.
About five minutes later the bath was half full and she gratefully lowered herself into the water, using the burnished brass handles. She felt glad to be at her home; home sweet home.
Susan held on to the burnished brass handles and slipped back into the herbal bubbles, Aloe Vera and eucalyptus. The relaxation of Radox soothed her as the smell of eucalyptus entered her nostrils. The floor tiles were white and shiny, as her dog Sam, (a terrier) had not yet entered the bathroom with his muddy paws, since she had last cleaned the bathroom. The sink gleamed and the tiles were actually sparkling, Susan wondered if this was just a trick of the light, as she had never noticed this level of cleanliness before.
* * *
The alarm sounded at 6:00 clock am sharp, for her work. Susan moaned as she reached out to turn off the piercing chime of the clockwork object. (Her Antique alarm clock) Susan respected clocks as they obviously govern peoples lives, only not when they woke her up, even if she had set the timer herself.
In the morning it was windy but the rain had finally cleared up. Susan went into the kitchen and left a message on Carla's answering machine about picking up the dog. (She added a slightly rushed and garbled apology, just for good measure) With that thought in mind she "freshened up", and got "cut short" halfway through the process. Then Susan got dressed into her working jumper, purple. She put on her best denim jeans and pearl earrings. Susan’s jeans were unusual as they were a turquoise colour.
She drove her "last legs" Mazda 323 to the centre of town and through the morning traffic pile up. She switched on the radio and adjusted the dial to the "Classic FM" station. It was playing her favourite American composer, "Porter". She turned off onto Main Street and swore at the traffic as she drove into the usual Central Park traffic fiasco. Susan always played a game; she had done since she was a little girl, where the honking of horns and spluttering engines could be made into a song. Susan clasped her left hand and two cars honked, arced her right hand and there was an obscene conversation drifting from a neighbouring vehicle.
Eventually Susan switched of the radio (as it had started playing the adverts about American airlines) and concentrated on the sights and sounds around her, there was the hotdog vender on the corner of the park, and the smell of cooked wieners wafted up to her through her’ open car window. The smell of exhaust fumes came from the cars around her and some obnoxiously loud music blared into Susan’s right ear, giving her a headache.
Susan waited until the car had travelled onwards through the traffic, but the headache still showed no signs of abating, so she reached into her blue leather and handbag and withdrew a Nurofen tablet. As she slipped the tablet into her mouth the traffic moved on and she was caught slightly unawares. After a few seconds someone loudly honked their horn, and Susan blushed, before angrily shouting,
“I’m goin’ I’m goin’ you maniac”, this had the effect of lifting her spirits up a bit.
Susan indicated down a back street and away from the noise of the traffic. She had to wend her way around a ‘rat trap’ of vast interlinking roads until she reached the turning for her ‘workplace’.
* * *
Susan eventually arrived outside her office at 10:17 am, precisely one hour and seventeen minutes late. Susan cursed the traffic again before hurriedly lifting her handbag and swinging the car door open. She took one look at her reflection in the mirror and then popped in a breath mint. She buffeted her hair to the left and then to the right, this always had the effect of making her feel more business like.
Susan then hurried up to the security guard at the wrought iron gate.
“Hi”, said Susan breathlessly
“Know you know I shouldn’t let you in, but…as you’ve helped me out, hurry in”, said Rigel the security guard, knowingly. Rigel said this with a wink and Susan disappeared in time, missing the wink. Always in a rush, thought Rigel.
* * *
“Freakin’ 2001 traffic, worse than last year”, ranted a man called Mike from across the office room she worked in. He sat three rows back and slightly to the right of Susan’s current position.
“I know what you mean”, sympathised his friend, Susan was yet to learn his name.
Susan stopped eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and opened her red binder. She had to sweep of some old post its into her metallic draw before turning her attention to the folder’s contents. Just after she had read her assignment she had a thought. She took a yellow post it from her draw and wrote clearly on it: “COLLECT SAM, FROM CARLA”.
* **
Today’s assignment was a simple research the RRP of some CD’s and some exercise bikes, before finishing any overdue projects. Susan worked doggedly through the morning and managed to complete quite a few detailed assignments as well as her easy research. Susan had used her payroll to buy Broadband, thus making any Internet related work easier, she didn’t trust the Internet though. She had just explored the prices and found out that a shop named “Special Reserve” had the cheapest available price for her electronic price range research.
Susan dreamily stared across the office from her ninth floor vantage point and noted the decibel level of her co-workers. Susan saw the adjacent tower and remembered she must visit it on Wednesday. This she noted in her little gold leaf bound calendar, a souvenir from Corfu that she was particularly proud of. Her co-workers seemed to be carefree and happy. Like she was when she first married Iain…
* * *
The time had flown by and Susan dreamily looked at her watch and the time was One thirty. The dreaming abruptly ended and she leapt up, with a very audible cry of “$h!t”.
Susan hurried to her bosses’ office on the eleventh floor, leaping stairs on her way up the spiral.
She burst through the door to that of which his office was accessible from and strode purposefully past his horrible, horn rimmed spectacled secretary. She knocked on his door before going in without a reply of confirmation.
Susan saw him with his binoculars to the window before remembering, with a sickening jolt, that this was the bosses’ plane watching time. One of her bosses’ favourite past times. Susan then tried to shuffle slyly out of the door. Unfortunately she had been noticed.
“Susan Berkley”, drilled the boss,
“Yes sir”, she replied, cringing at the use of her full name,
“Why did you just interrupt my plane watching?”, he inquired,
“I…I..”, Susan stuttered, before lamely ending with, “forgot”.
Alan Way was about to craft his response when a plane caught his attention, he lifted his binoculars but made a gesture for Susan to stay and be quiet. “Its’ not on the regular flight path”, he murmured, more to himself than to Susan.
* * *
The plane had then proceeded to veer off straight towards the tower itself, Susan was alarmed and it seemed that others had noticed it too. The engines of the plane were now audible and they roared like a caged tiger. But the plane did not stop there, or at all for that matter. Instead it ploughed its’ way into the side of the tower, at (on Susan’s estimate) roughly the sixth floor. There was a crashing and a shattering sound. The office shook and the Alan’s binoculars tumbled out of the window. The whole room jolted and Alan’s head was jerked into the window ledge, forcefully. Alan was knocked unconscious and then the shaking suddenly stopped. Susan was picking her way around the objects strewn across the floor before reaching Alan. Just as she reached him the room tipped and she slid out of the door as it flung open. Susan tumbled back and through the door she had entered the block through. Susan painfully bumped down the flight of four stairs she had effortlessly jumped before. Then she pushed her heels into the wall on her right, drastically, and then she stopped.
* * *
The building was damaged, badly. Susan’s carefully picked her way around a fallen desk into the spacious office room. Her first impression was that it was completely manic. Files lay scattered on the floor. Computer terminals were offline, rebooting and smashed. The room kept falling prey to violent jerking’s which rattled the room and the window latches juddered on their hinges. As Susan went over the scene of chaos to her desk, she jumped. A pot-plant had just fallen out of the window. Workers were chattering excitedly or gibbering like lunatics. One man desperately punched the keys on his mobile, trying to call his wife and family.
People were rushing to doors and trying to run down the stairs. Susan crept up to the window and peered out over the sill, Susan had vertigo. Distant figures had clustered at a safe distance and dust was diffusing over the streets. By now all of the traffic had stopped and all eyes were on the building. No one noticed Susan, as she was an insignificant blob in comparison to the building and the huge numbers of stricken workers leaning drastically out of windows.
A flowerpot slipped over the ledge, all of a sudden at a 45-degree angle, and Susan leapt away from the edge, terrified. Susan stood up and began to run towards the stairs, when someone called her name. She turned and fell headlong over a protruding chair.
Susan lay dizzy and shaking across the office floor. As Susan regained her senses she realised that her knee was badly bruised and that a television set was blaring out in the corner of the room. CNN news channel was playing as Susan picked her way through the crowd, eager to see what was so fascinating.
“…The terrible victims of a violent terrorist attack”, came the voice of the news reader.
Susan was mystified, until she saw where the indicated attack had been directed at, her office. At this news a ripple of sound went through the observing co-workers.
Again, the building shuddered. The television fell from its’ perch and shattered across the floor, sending glass fragments everywhere. With a stricken scream, Susan dashed towards the stairs once more. Susan ran along the corridor, right to the end, and a possible escape route.
* * *
Susan vigorously pounded the elevators “Down” switch, but it had stopped working. As she descended the stairs she looked out of the window, many people were waving white cloth flags and then she saw one worker leap out of a downstairs window. She averted her eyes and felt sick. Then as she stared at the opposite building she felt a sickening lurch that she only experienced at drops on Roller coaster rides. Then the landmark she had been staring at was mysteriously above her, and ascending all the time. She looked over the stair well and her suspicions were conformed; the building was falling.
Susan opened the window latch and heaved the contraption open. She stood on the ledge and looked at the horrific fall. Then Susan’s mind drifted to thoughts about birds and freedom. She opened her eyes and soared, majestically. Like a bird….
* * *
I have reworked the original. I added some scenes and cut out previous scenes. The overall size and quality should have improved. I have proof read the text. This DID take a long time.
Comments and positive feedback.