It’s time for another installment of Fiction Friday!
A signal is misinterpreted…….
Days off were routine by this point. They had passed by this little shop earlier in the week on the way to a job and now that they had a moment, they decided to check it out. They kind of wanted some new games anyway.
Two sixteen year olds, a boy and a girl, walked into the store. It was a game shop, shelves filled with all sorts of games and consoles along the wall behind the counter. All sorts of things. Mario. Sonic. Whatever else was available at that time. There should be a list somewhere that I can draw on. But it was a lovely game store that these two teenagers walked into, their eyes scanning the merchandise and the sales clerks, who themselves were preoccupied with their own banter.
The teens conferred in glances, the boy flicking his eyes up to the racks, then back at her before heading over to the two behind the counter. He leaned against it, looking around impatiently as the two clerks came to notice he was there. One seemed more annoyed that he’d interrupted their conversation while the other one smiled, eager to help.
“Hello, how can I help you?” the smiling clerk asked.
“I’m doing a little research,” the boy said. “School project. What kind of security do you have installed in a place like this?”
“We aren’t telling you that,” the annoyed one said.
“It’ll be fine,” the boy said, his hand waving away the concern. “So, police button? I see you have cameras set up, any blind spots?”
“No,” the annoyed one said. “We have the cameras, but they haven’t had tape in them since they were first installed. They’re just to scare people into thinking we do. There’s nothing else except the alarms at the front and they just warn us about shoplifters.”
“Oh,” said the boy, interested. “So if I were to do this,” he pulled out a gun and pointed it nonchalantly at the pair of them, “there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it?”
The two clerks backed up immediately, hands in the air and eyes on the barrel of the gun.
“The latest Nintendo system,” he said, not changing the tone in his voice. Obediently, the formerly smiling clerk got it down. “In a bag.” The kid put it all in a bag. The boy picked it up and walked out the door, setting off the alarm, followed by the girl, both of them grinning.
As soon as they walked out of the store, they were no longer the two teens, having gone back to being regular nine year old children strolling unsupervised down the street.
“Did you get it?” the boy asked the girl, looking down at his new Nintendo. The girl withdrew the games she’d walked out with, Mario and several others. The boy was a little sad.
“Aw, I said Ninja Turtles!”
Tags: syndicate, writing prompt