Loretta of the Lamp

Urban exploration

Loretta gave him a look of disgust, "Let's hope they didn't hear that over the engine."

"They won't." Stan was confident.

She straightened up and folded her arms as she looked around her, "I thought you said this was abandoned."

"It is," Peter insisted.

They were standing in a corridor, lit with a dim row of emergency lighting.

"This is not an abandoned building. That lock was not an abandoned lock."

"Come on. You said it yourself only a day ago, that 'it's old, a five pin tumbler, easy if it's not too rusty'," Stan pointed out, quoting a statement that seemed rather cocky in hindsight.

Loretta rolled her eyes.

"Old and rusty doesn't mean abandoned," Peter said, in a half distracted voice as he lowered his DSLR camera and looked both ways down the hall. He'd clearly been expecting something else.

"Well look, we've only just started," Stan argued.

"Maybe we should go," Jess suggested, observing the empty hall in both directions, "this is going to be like The Shining or something, isn't it?"

"You should never have come," Stan stuck a finger in her face.

"You wouldn't be in here if I hadn't introduced you to her," Jess jabbed her thumb at Loretta.

Loretta had wandered off down the hall.

"Loretta? We didn't need all that fuss! A drill or a good kick would have done it."

Loretta turned, "A drill would have made enough noise to alert the entire neighbourhood and would have given you, oh, maybe five minutes before the security guard raised the alarm, especially seeing as this warehouse is clearly not abandoned, Stan. So why are we here? Why did you drag me, Peter, and his lovely girlfriend Jess—who does not have a juvenile record—out here in the middle of the night?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"Stan, look, I've known you for what, two months now? And I already know you well enough to tell that you blink twice as many times as normal when you are lying. If I can tell that, surely you either lie too often, or are very bad at doing it."

"Pfff, what are you talking about?"

"She's calling you a liar," Jess articulated the word 'liar' as clearly as she could.

"Let's just leave." Peter dropped his shoulders and went to put his ear to the door to see if the guard was gone.

"Okay okay. It used to be a storage annex of the British Museum," Stan admitted with defeat.

"What?" Peter pulled away from the door and took a step toward Stan in anger.

"I swear the public records say this place has been empty for fifty years."

"But you knew better." Peter suggested.

"I always do, bruv," Stan laughed.

"You idiot. Stan, this is supposed to be urban exploration, and you've just turned it into breaking and entering."

"Urban exploration." Jess smirked. She didn't think much of her boyfriend's hobbies, despite choosing to accompany him tonight.

"I hate to break it to you, but 'Urban exploration' is breaking and entering." Loretta pointed out.

The topic clearly irked Peter. "Look, so long as we are breaking into abandoned buildings for the sole purpose of taking photos–"

"And getting a sweet kick." Stan reminded him.