It was the first day that it had rained since last spring. Emily Swanson reluctantly flicked on her wipers, their rubber sides slicing the rain into thin waves across the windshield. The asphalt gleamed with water. Her hands were steady and smooth on the wheel as she rounded the final bend and coasted into the parking lot adjacent to the book shop where she worked. Cars sat squished in parallel lines one hundred metres across the usually nearly vacant lot. Emily sighed gently as the realization fell upon her that today was the biggest sale of the year at the store: buy three get the fourth free. The title of the event itself was a simple rhyme for disaster. She was twenty minutes early for her shift, and therefore vowed to treasure all one thousand two hundred ticks of the leather watch on her wrist as she waited for its glass face to strike three.

The rain fell heavily on Emily’s plastic coat as she walked briskly toward the slick glass doors of the shop, the air hovering around her, grainy and metallic against her cheek. Her thin hair clung to her neck, electricity flowing through the damp air in allusion to the thunder that would follow later that day. Once inside, she shook the rain from her skin and breathed in the fresh aroma of arabica from the cafe attached to the book shop. Although the bittersweet scent tickled her nose in temptation, she coaxed herself away from the clink of espresso cups for fear of the terrible shaking the caffeine would bring upon her.

Emily was rather occupied with her appearance, and because the rows of cars in the parking lot meant that plenty of customers would be approaching her for assistance today, she headed to the bathroom to smooth away her imperfections. Standing in front of the wide horizon of glass that covered half of the bathroom’s pale pink tiled walls, she examined herself. Her wheat-yellow hair was matted from the rain and fell in silky damp pieces to her shoulders. Removing a wide toothed comb from her purse, she swept a piece of hair to each side of her head and pinned them securely, feeling the flexible metal tug against her temples. To Emily, hair was simply something to keep her ears warm in the winter, but served no purpose otherwise except to create an unpleasant obstruction in her vision.

Her eyes were her favourite feature. They were wide and round like those of a deer and were a sweet cinnamon brown, complementary to her hair. Their rims were nearly gold when the sun poured into them during long summer days. Raindrops still clung to her eyelashes from the earlier downpour and she absorbed them with a swipe of each finger. She applied a pink gloss to her lips, pinched her cheeks until they flushed, zipped up the black vest of her uniform, and deemed herself presentable to the dozens of judgemental customers she knew waited outside, tucked between the silent aisles of bookshelves.

After putting away her coat in the staff room, Emily walked, avoiding eye contact, up to the oak customer service desk where she would log her breaks for the day. The schedule indicated that she was assigned to the magazine and newspaper section of the shop today. She sighed in disappointment and jotted down her lunch break into the white box next to her name. Magazine and newspaper was the section dreaded most by Emily’s coworkers, mostly because of its disorganization and abundance of disgruntled men and women looking to tuck a glossy booklet under their coat and make for the door. As she made her way to the cluttered section, she was caught by a squeeze on her shoulder and a friendly shout of her name. She spun around to be faced with the permanent smile of Anita Wellington.

“Well look who it is,” said Emily warmly. “It’s been weeks. How is your health?” Anita had been bedridden with pneumonia, much to the dismay of her coworkers who loved her as the mother figure of the shop.

“It’s much better, dear. The first week was the worst, but by the time the second dose of antibiotics could reach my tongue, I was back on my feet and out planting tulip bulbs in the garden. Doctor Greenwall put me off for twenty days, but that was unnecessary. I was out there digging and planting nearly the whole time, not to mention sipping a little brandy when the sun really beat down,” she winked.

“That’s wonderful news. I can speak for everyone when I say that we are so thrilled to have you back.”

“You’re too sweet, Em.” Anita’s cheeks dimpled into a smile as she spoke. Although she was nearly sixty four, her complexion was as soft and smooth as cream. Looking at her, it was obvious that her body was beginning to frail from the arthritis in her freckled hands and the arch in her spine from years of back troubles, yet her face seemed to suggest that she would live forever. Her eyes were set deep in her face and disappeared when she smiled, smiling being the permanent expression of her mouth. She had been raised on a farm in the flat lands of Alberta where she had spent her days in the golden fields shucking corn and tending cattle and digging up potatoes until the damp soil wedged itself so far beneath her nails that they would be black until Christmas. The labour-intense life of the farm had made her petite body solid and graceful, the knobs of her knees attached to faint threads of muscle that ran down her legs. She liked to decorate her wrists with hand-painted bracelets of glass and wooden beads, their watercolours gleaming against the tanned skin of her forearms. Although she had several children and grandchildren of her own, Anita treated the employees at the book shop as though they were her offspring. She kept a small leather notebook in her vest pocket where she noted each employee’s birthday in red ink so to surprise them with a gift on the date. Emily believed that Anita was a saint in the flesh, a confident and kind soul that demonstrated all the qualities she strived to possess herself.

“Did you hear about Joseph?” asked Anita. Emily shook her head. “It’s just awful. Word is that a drunk driver ran a red out on Court Street last week and took him from the side. His car’s a wreck but apparently he survived it. Poor dear will probably spend the next month in a hospital bed hooked up to who-knows-what with not even a window to let the sun shine in.” She looked away as though the tragedy of her story would prevent her from continuing. “I’ve left a card for everyone to sign behind the counter as well as a donation box. You know, to get him a nice basket or something,” she said. The shop manager, Kathleen, motioned for Anita to help her at the cash desk. She left with a smile and a wink.

Joseph was the security officer. He had been put in place when the shop began to expand earlier in the year and robberies became more feared and more frequent. Although the recent months had been uneventful, the light hair on Emily’s arms raised a little at the thought of working without Joseph’s watchful eye on the door during the busiest sale of the year. Reluctantly, she began to make her rounds of the magazine and newspaper displays, walking in a looping figure eight as she had been instructed to do innumerable times by her manager. “Walk with purpose,” Kathleen always said. My purpose is to make it to my dinner break, thought Emily.

She had been working at the shop for two years, and was perhaps more familiar with its workings than those of any other aspect of her life. She was grateful for the job’s familiarity and simplicity, because at eighteen years of age, the world was a maze of opportunity that had yet to reveal a definite path. The book shop, with the exception of today, was a silent sanctuary peppered with pine book cases and wicker chairs with velvet cushions for dedicated readers to spend hours with a book picked freshly off the shelf. The beauty of the shop was that it had the atmosphere of a library, where one could sit comfortably by the fire place with a cup of coffee and indulge in a story that would take them beyond its walls. The air was dry and smelled of sweet dust and lavender that drifted from the display of hand crafted wax soaps wrapped in white squares of cotton. Behind the cash desk were four magnificent rectangular windows that filled the shop with the purple light of the storm outside. On warm days, the sun would pour drops of golden light onto the line of customers waiting to be served at the till, casting them in a cheerful glow and warming their hands as they clutched onto their purchases.

But today was different. Swarms of impatient customers pushed their way past each other, their elbows sharpened at the tip and their eyes focused on a single item that must absolutely be theirs. The purple light fell in streaks upon their emotionless faces, making them look old and sickly. The promise of purchasing a fourth item at no cost pumped the book shop’s customers full of adrenaline, greed, and competition.

Emily observed a man with a stack of magazines in his arms probably thirty thick. “Would you like me to ring those up for you, sir?” she asked.

“I’ve read ‘em all already. I figured I’d give them to you to put away, seeing as I haven’t the faintest idea where half of ‘em go,” he said. The man transferred the heavy stack into Emily’s arms and walked away, only to slump down in a wicker chair beside the newspaper stand.

She let out a long breath, trying to keep her composure. Located around the shop were cardboard signs that read, “Please put back what you take.” Evidently this man had no intention of putting away what he took. She pulled the first magazine from the top and stared at its cover, hoping to match it to the hundreds of other magazines that were displayed on the shelf. Although it would take her at least an hour to put them all back in their proper spaces, she was thankful for the distraction from her regular customer service.

She was flipping through one of the cooking magazines to put away when something exploded. The sound shook Emily’s entire body, causing her to let go of the stack, magazines sliding in every direction on the wooden floor. She froze. She was around the corner from the cash desk, unable to see anyone else but the man still slumped in the wicker chair. Shrill screams broke out in a crescendo, echoing from the walls and piercing Emily’s ears. Another explosion sounded. This time, she heard the word gun cried in the midst of the metallic screams that followed. Emily tried to breathe but choked. Her brain had stopped functioning as if the explosion had erased her capability of thought, but her feet were running, hard and fast toward the coffee shop. She dared not look back until she reached the shelter of the shop’s long counter where she could flatten herself against its walls, unseen from the book shop.

Her back pressed against the cool wood of the counter, she curled her joints into a ball, as though the smaller she made herself, the less visible she would be. There had been screams while she was running, cold and terrified screams, but now it was silent. She had counted six more gunshots, but another had not sounded for nearly three minutes. She sat in silence.

Next to her, someone exhaled. Emily jumped backward as though she had been struck by an electric current, her heart momentarily stopping and restarting. Anita pressed a finger against her lips, her eyes melting in apology. Emily crawled across the coffee-stained carpet and threw her arms around Anita.

“Jesus Christ, Anita,” she whispered. “Are you alright? Oh god, oh god, oh god.” She sobbed inaudibly.


“Quiet, dear. I’m fine, and you look to be as well. Now listen, there’s a man in the shop somewhere. I was behind the counter with Kathleen counting the float when he stepped up to the front of the line and pulled out his gun.” She created an ‘L’ shape with her fingers. “He was shooting at the ceiling and yelling all sorts of profanity.” She lowered her voice further, her breath hot on Emily’s ear, “I thought he would kill us all, Emily. Everyone was running so fast that I lost sight of him. He could be anywhere now.”

“He’s still here?’

“That’s what I figure. Where’s the telephone in this place?”

“Back wall on the right. But you would have to crawl out to use it,” said Emily. “Don’t go, Anita.” Now that she was no longer alone, she panicked at the thought of Anita leaving her and venturing out into potential danger.

“Em, we’ve got to phone the police. I want you to stay here and watch.” She motioned to the counter, “If you see anything at all, simply sit back down and I’ll know. I will walk in reverse so to keep my eyes on you the entire time, dear.” Emily nodded and cupped her cheeks in her hands, feeling their clammy coolness against her skin.

She dragged herself to her knees and brought her head to the counter. Tugging at the overhang of the countertop, she lifted her eyes so that her eyelashes brushed against the granite. The shop appeared empty, and she motioned for Anita to move. Frantic and desperate, Emily shifted her eyes back and forth across the shop, looking for shadows or movements, but the air was still. She glanced sideways at Anita who had already reached the phone and was beginning to punch in the three numbers, her fingertips outstretched and trembling.

Emily brought her gaze back to the shop, and ice shot through her veins. Twenty feet in front of her stood a man dressed completely in black, his eyes shielded by two squares of opaque glass. He was walking slowly toward the counter, his slick black boots sliding heavily over the carpet, and his hands on the left side of his waist, grasping something between them.

She threw herself to the ground and shot looks of panic at Anita, who dropped the phone from the hook and remained motionless, her eyes falling upon the ominous figure. She prepared herself to run, her arthritic knees shaking.

“Stop!” yelled the man. He removed his gloved hands from his waist and pulled a laminated plastic card from his pocket. “Ontario Provincial Police,” he said.