When Death Won't Take You

16: Another locked door

A small park sat amid the tall office buildings that stood in downtown San Fransokyo. Four large trees were scattered throughout the park, but other than those four, the whole place was just bushes and grass. In the park, there was a small playground, on which only one small child played in the semi-darkness of twilight. Before long, the child's mother gathered him into her arms, looking warily at a young woman who was sitting at the end of one of the slides.

"Let's go home, Davvy," the woman said, not wanting her baby to play near the strange woman. She looked like the criminal type, with her wild black hair and drooping posture.

Cinna looked up slightly, watching the woman and her son leave. She hadn't stopped running from Damian until she had reached this park. She must have run for miles and had been sitting here for the past hour, worn out. It wasn't like she could do much else, though, since she was lost, a long way away from Moraga Dr.

The last bit of sun dropped from the sky quietly, leaving the park in darkness. Cinna continued to sit, breathing heavily from her run, despite the darkness. When dark clouds covered what part of the sky they hadn't already covered, Cinna felt a wind begin to pick up. She raised her head, smelling the storm in the air.

"Shit," Cinna muttered, looking around for shelter from the rain she knew would come. The park had a small roofed picnic shelter, and she made her way over to it. She tried the door of the bathroom adjacent to the picnic shelter, hoping for an even better shelter. Locked.

"Well, this'll do," Cinna said, looking around at the picnic shelter, which was open except for the wall that made up part of the bathroom. "I don't mind rain, I guess."

She ducked under one of the picnic tables and lay there, on the cold concrete, hoping to sleep. The table was against the bathroom wall on one side, and Cinna pulled herself close to it, shivering in the wind, though it wasn't really very cold.

🛝

Cinna woke up a while later. The rain had started, though it wasn't that heavy, and it hadn't made it under the table Cinna had slept under. The park was still just as empty as before, and it had gotten darker, and, of course, a lot wetter. Cinna sat up, accidentally bumping her head on the underside of the table in the process. She ducked back down and rubbed at the top of her head.

After the pain in her head went away, Cinna crawled out from under the table, and went over to the edge of the shelter, watching the storm.

"That's gonna get worse," Cinna commented. She didn't have a phone, she had lost it since she died, though she didn't know where, she was pretty sure she had had it yesterday, so maybe she left it at the house on Moraga Dr.? Anyway, without her phone, she couldn't check the weather, but she had studied meteorology one summer, and knew enough about storms that she could see this one was just getting started.

A streak of lightning flashed across the sky, and seconds later a loud peal of thunder erupted in the air, making Cinna jump, her heart racing.

"Damn," Cinna said after she had stopped shaking from the thunder's scare, laughing at how terrified she had been. "Guess I haven't been in a storm in a while."

Cinna went back further into the shelter to where the bathroom door was that she had tried before. It was still locked, of course.

"And now I actually need the bathroom," Cinna said, then sighed and took a small screwdriver out of her pocket that was kept in there specifically for situations like this.

Cinna picked the door's lock with the screwdriver easily, as if she had mastered the skill. Her ease had come after years of practice (that she shouldn't have had, but unfortunately couldn't avoid) on her bedroom door. Cinna looked around on entering the bathroom. It was in fairly good shape for a public bathroom in a downtown park and was decently clean.

"This'll be a better shelter than out there," Cinna said.

Cinna used the bathroom, then sat with her legs crisscrossed under a sink. Digging in her pockets, which she always filled with things before going anywhere, she found a deck of cards and set out a game of solitaire.

After a few hours of playing, Cinna got up again to check the weather. She pushed the bathroom door to open it, but it wouldn't open. She became more frantic, her mind trapped in the memory of the last door she tried to go through that wouldn't open.

"No," Cinna whispered, banging on the bathroom door. Then again, louder, "No!" she yelled.