Children in Time
Chapter 3
Elizabeth opened the door to the small tourist office and padded inside, trying to not pay any attention to David. She could hear his brown boots slap against the cement behind her, but she looked anywhere but at him. She stepped inside and let the door close behind her, blocking David out in the world.
She could feel the breeze as the door was flung open and David slid inside, stopping behind her. He tapped her on the shoulder and she turned only her head to look at him.
"Yes," she asked.
"What the fuck? How many times did I try to tell you to quit walking so fast and wait for me? Was the devil on your heels?"
"Maybe," Elizabeth said and moved over to a rack of brochures for some of the various castles in Wales.
"Oh very funny- What the hell? Where is everybody?" David tugged up his jeans and looked around the empty tourist office.
"They heard you were coming?" Elizabeth didn't even turn to look at David, instead she picked up a brochure on Castle Coch and started reading it.
"Excuse me?" She could feel David walk behind her to the far end of the counter. "Although, good one." Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as he leaned over the counter, and picked up a handful of papers, and started to look at them.
Elizabeth darted over to David and grabbed the papers from David's grasp, crinkling them. She tossed them back behind the counter. "Those aren't yours!"
Both of them watched as the papers fell on the lip of the counter, and teetered a moment. Elizabeth went to turn back to David, to continue admonishing him for touching other people's things when they heard the almost-silent slip of papers on a counter. She turned her head back just in time to see the papers cliff themselves over the edge, spilling themselves across the floor behind the counter.
"Good job!" David walked behind the counter and stooped down to pick up the papers.
"You can't do that! It says 'Employees Only.' Get out from there!"
"I'm picking up your mess! Quit flipping out." David said as he looked up at Elizabeth. He went back to the papers, trying to snatch them up quickly from the tile floor.
Elizabeth grunted and then almost dived over the counter, bringing her arm down towards David's head. He ducked and fell back on his ass, some of the papers clenched in his fist as he caught himself with the other hand jammed onto the floor, stopping his head from hitting the wall.
"Missed me! Aha- Ah! That's hot! Son of a bitch!" David scrambled up, brushing at the front of his jeans. "Goddamn it!"
"Are you okay?" Elizabeth pulled herself back, hands up covering her mouth. "Oh my God, I am so sorry. I am really sorry, are you okay?" Elizabeth scurried over to the opening in the counter to go back behind it and check on David when he held up his hand.
"Stop! Don't you even dare. Stay over there, I will take care of it." He threw the scrunched and soggy papers on top of the counter. "I don't need any more of your help thank you very much!"
"What happened?"
"You missed me but knocked over the coffee cup!" David bent down and picked up the now empty cup. "Well, whoever runs this dump can't be gone long, it was still hot."
"I am so sorry."
"Quit saying that. Just quit it." David said.
He dropped the cup onto the counter, a loud crack seeming to echo in the office, the office that continued to feel smaller and smaller, especially with both of them in it. Elizabeth watched the cup as it made small circles, around and around, taking forever to find its final resting place. She swallowed hard and then looked away, at anything but David. She started to speak, but he only grunted at her and held up his hand in her face. Elizabeth stepped back and leaned against the wall between a poster showing the countryside and a poster touting a local production of the Welsh National Opera.
"You can't go back there," Elizabeth started saying as David held open a beaded curtain to his right and peered in.
"I am doing whatever the hell I feel like. First of all, I would like to find some paper towels or something to wipe myself off with so no one thinks I pissed on myself." David ducked inside the curtain and the beads could be heard clacking against each other.
"Fine. Do whatever you want." Elizabeth tucked her chin into her chest and pushed off the wall and started to look at the other brochures, but she wasn't really reading any of them, her mind focused on David.
Suddenly, a door behind her seemed to burst off its hinges. Startled, Elizabeth spun around and a cry snagged itself in her throat. Without warning she was face-to-face with a gray-faced beast of some sort. If it had been human at one time, it no longer was. It snarled at her, and bared all of its ferocious teeth in her direction.
It started advancing, loping at a fast pace, the creature's hands stretched out towards her throat. Elizabeth let out a whimper as it lunged forward.