Red September

1. Rain and Rats

August 31st, 1996

(Y/N) and her friend Miranda were going to explore the abandoned warehouses that were downtown. There were two warehouses that were used for concert venues but the rest on the block were abandoned.
Miranda was some what scared but she hid it well, not wanting (Y/N) to know.
(Y/N) on the other hand was curious to see what was left inside the old buildings, not much fear in her.

They walked as quietly as they could, not wanting to alert any possible security that was around.

There wasn't much noise that night, the only things that could be heard was the patter of the slight drizzle hitting the concrete ground and the train horn from a near by railroad.

"Hey this window is broken in, let's check this one out first." (Y/N) gestured for Miranda to follow.

The two girls climbed inside the window and were now stood inside the building.

"I think the only thing we're gonna find here is rats or homeless people trying to sleep." Miranda said.

(Y/N) turned on her flashlight and the two girls started to explore the inside.

Miranda was right, they did find a few rats but nothing very interesting so (Y/N) decided to try the upstairs.

"(Y/N) what are you doing? Don't go up there, you don't know how stable the floor is!" Miranda whisper-yelled.

"It's okay I'll be fine, you can wait down here if you want." (Y/N) said while making her way up the old stairs.

When (Y/N) got to the top she saw that the room was cleared out and empty except for something in the corner on the opposite side of where she stood.

She walked over to investigate and as she got closer she saw a pile of ashes. When she was standing in front of the ashes she noticed that it was paper that was burned because there was still little pieces that didn't burn all the way.
There was ink on the pages, so she just assumed they were old written letters.
A little bit away from where the pages were there was a still lit cigarette just laying on the floor.

(Y/N) put out the cigarette with her shoe, not wanting it to start a fire.

But if the cigarette was still lit, that meant someone was just here.

(Y/N) shined the light around the room and saw nothing so she decided to head back downstairs to Miranda.

The two girls climbed out of the window and were going to start walking to the next warehouse when they heard a scampering noise.
They both turned around quickly and looked at each other.

"What was that?" Miranda whispered.

"It's okay, I'll go look." (Y/N) whispered back and slowly walked over to look around the corner of the building.

She peeked around the corner and saw a large rat about the size of a cat.

She walked back over to Miranda and told her what it was. Miranda wasn't too happy hearing about the rat but she was relieved it wasn't someone or something dangerous.

This part of town wasn't the safest so knowing that it was just a giant rat was relieving to the both of them.

"Any noise we hear tonight is just rain and rats, don't get spooked." (Y/N) told Miranda.

The two girls continued looking through the warehouses and finding nothing interesting until they both decided it was pointless and headed home on the city bus.

When (Y/N) got home she went straight to bed, exhausted from the pointless walking around. Little did she know that this would be the last night her life was normal.