Static Cling

Preface

 

The screen buzzed with static, flakes of black and white vibrating across it. For hours, days, months before today, the video was as clear as water. Now, though, the image was so riddled with black and white pixels that one thing was painfully obvious to the police; the tape had been erased.

How, they didn't know. No one had entered this room but the security guards that worked at the store and the police themselves; above that, the tape of the security room itself was still in perfect order, and it didn't show anyone else entering or leaving the room. Still, the tape was indeed blank, as though it had been pulled directly from it's package just moments before. Even more puzzling was the fact that this wasn't the first time they'd faced a blank tape after a robbery.

Every time the store had been robbed in the last several months, whether it be for trivial things such as granola bars and gum or for somthing as serious as the money from the vault, the guards and police had retreated to the security room only to find a blank tape. With no faces, no fingerprints, and only one lead, the guards and police were frusturated to admit that they were at a dead end.

The store owner was no happier than the police; he had gone as far as to hire extra guards on the night shift, but that, too, had proved to be fruitless. The guards were found after the next robbery, dazed and confused at their posts, claiming that they didn't remember anything from when they arrived on their shift to now.

As all the police stood inside the security room, their heads bowed in shame, a girl stood ouside in the storm that had been raging all day, her eyes flashing brighter than the lighting in the sky.