Chapter 1 – Camilla
“How are you doing, Marge?”
“Not too bad. What are you looking for today?”
I shrugged. We both knew what I was there for. Chandral’s only sold dresses, and the ones they carried were the type of dresses that were supposed to make men drool. I was there because I wanted to do the same thing.
“So who is the lucky guy?”
“Someone from work.”
She assumed that I meant a colleague, and when she asked for details I skirted the question. I knew that I couldn’t admit that I was dating a client. That was not okay, and I didn’t even like to admit it to myself. It was unethical at the very least.
“Does he have a friend?”
“I can ask.”
Marge tossed her hair back, and I regretted cutting mine for the third time this week. I still didn’t know what I was thinking when I hacked it off into a bob. It was easier, lightweight, but I missed the simple things like she was doing then.
“Well, come on, Camilla. There are some new ones in the back that just came in. I know that you’ll like them. The blue is really going to make those eyes of your pop out.”
I’d been coming to the store for several years, since moving to the city, and I trusted her opinion. She dressed me better than I dressed myself, and I was more than willing to give up the responsibilities. Following her to the back room where the inventory was, I instantly knew which dress she was talking about.
“What do you think?”
It was beautiful. There were no two ways around it. The light blue material was heavily beaded in the most interesting pattern. The only thing that was hard to deal with – or imagine myself wearing – was the cut itself. It was long, but there were two slits on the side that made me blush. I wasn’t sure how that was going to be managed.
Marge must have seen my look, because she assured me that with my legs, it would be wrong not to wear it.
“It was made for you, Camilla. If I looked the way you do, I would rock this.”
I didn’t know if she was trying to convince me or just sell me something for the commission. It didn’t matter, because we both knew that I was going to try it on. I was still fingering the material because it was so soft.
“I’ll go slip it on. What would I wear underneath it?” I was still looking at the slits and trying to figure it out. Would I be able to pull that off, or was I going to have a major wardrobe malfunction? Both seemed possible.
“You go try it on and I’ll see what we have in the front that would work.”
I thanked her and made my way to the changing room in the back of the store. There was no one else back there, and since there was only one changing room, I was happy that I didn’t have to wait. Even though Chandral’s was in the mall, Marge was still trying to keep it simple. It was located at the end, and it was one of the smaller shops. Her clothes and opinion were worth the wait.
Shutting the door, I moved to look in the mirror and noticed that I had a little darkness under my eyes. The dreams were keeping me up again. I knew in my mind that it was just a dream, but the aftereffects were that I could never get back to sleep, instead staying up watching late night television till my eyes burned.
“I really need to get some sleep.” I didn’t want Jesse to see me like this.
Sighing to myself and the reflection that I was sure was just trying to make me feel worse, I started to undress. If this couldn’t make me feel better, nothing else was going to.
It felt as good as it looked, and Marge was right, like always. It fit me like a glove. The color made my own blue eyes pop, and the darkness underneath them seemed to go away. The smile on my lips was hard to deny. I felt good in this dress, really good. It was the one that I wanted Jesse to see me in. I wanted him to look at me, not as how he knew me, but just as a woman who desired him.
My hands were going to the back zipper to pull it down when I heard a loud sound. It sounded like there was some yelling and then something like a car backfiring, a sickening sounding pop. If that had been the only one, I would have thought that it was something else, but then it became clear that it wasn’t something benign. The sounds were gunfire. When I heard the screams that followed, I was sure that I knew what was going on. Someone was in Chandral’s shooting.
I was in the far back, and each pop that went off seemed to get louder and louder. My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to hear anything over it. I wasn’t going to know when whoever was wielding the gun was back there with me, because my stupid heart was going to explode out of my chest.
Holding my breath, I tried desperately to slow it down, straining to hear what was going on. As I looked at the door, I saw the large gap between it and the floor and I realized that I had to get off of the ground. All I could think about was my feet being seen and me being the target of the next shot that rang out. I stopped counting at eleven. How many bullets did a gun even hold?
It didn’t matter when I heard the footsteps outside of the door. They didn’t stop like I feared, just kept going to the back. I’d jumped up on the small bench, hoping that I could somehow melt into the wall and disappear.
The gunman came back past me and two more shots rang out before I saw the shadow of his feet. The black boots were polished well; there wasn’t a scuff on them. It was all I could see of the gunman, and those boots were burned into my mind. It was only a second or two that I saw them, but it felt like forever. I was waiting for them to stop and then to see the door kicked in. When it didn’t happen, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.
The shots were now less frequent, and so were the screams. An eerie silence went through the place, and it was several heartbeats before I heard another pop. I didn’t know if he was out of bullets, reloading, or running out of victims. I thought the latter when I heard the sound next, further away, like he was going to another part of the mall. The noise continued, getting a little fainter each time. The man was not out of bullets, although the sound did change, like it wasn’t the same gun.
I didn’t care how far away he sounded. There was no way that I was ever going to come out of that little tiny room. I stood there, silent as a mouse, listening for more shots and more shouts of pain. I was never going to leave that spot again. My feet were frozen in place and I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere.