Petrol Wonderland

Eight | Pen Pals

At first, the door handle rattled in a tentative way. It was as if the thing was embarrassed to rattle at all. However, that quickly changed. Soon the thing was rattling with much more vigor. Up and down and up and down like it had a mind of its own.

It seemed Rabbit had figured the door was locked and he was trying to force it.

Cleo's heart thrummed in her ears, somehow even drowning out the shaking metal and the banging and the ticking of a million clocks. The thing felt like it was beating so fast it'd soon rip out of her chest. She whirled around to see the CCTV screens, unable to take the not-knowing any longer. Secretly, she somehow still hoped to catch sight of a black car pulling into the carpark and a squad of police officers with guns storming out onto the tarmac. Their saviors. Yet she didn't want to tease herself just in case worst came to worst.

The sight she saw didn't do anything to calm her nerves. Rather, it set them alight.

Knelt on top of the office chair she'd previously jammed against the staff door was the rabbit. A large rabbit with a torn-up suit, giant blackened gloves, and a bulbous paper mache head. Right outside their door. Right outside. So close that if all was quiet you could probably hear his raspy breath through the suits' head. The top of his ear was practically an inch from touching the security camera. She recoiled from the screen as if she was somehow connected to the security camera and the proximity was too much for her.

She wasn't sure whether she had the urge to bite her tongue or scream. It probably wouldn't make a difference. Either way, the stranger knew they were in there and he was determined to get in. But he had no way to, right? Unless he could force the door. Or break the lock. Or whack it with something. Maybe he had something tucked inside his suit. Another hammer? A bat? An axe?

Movement drew her eye to another screen. There was no telling how long she'd been staring at the rabbit by the time she shifted her attention. Maybe a minute or maybe more. Time felt like it had stretched and stretched until it encompassed every last withering drop of her consciousness.

The pixelated scene represented the main floor of the petrol station. The old woman was no longer lying on the floor in a puddle of her own blood. She'd vanished into thin air. Instead, a new character replaced her.

A man.

The man strolled into the store over the heap of jagged glass shards as if he owned the place, swinging his arms about extravagantly as he went. Freakishly lanky, he was dressed head to toe in an oversized, burgundy suit with vertical, red stripes. A long mass of curly, ginger hair fastened into a loose ponytail peaked out from beneath his pine-coloured top hat. There was a ring of almost-convincing plastic flowers intertwined around the brim and a confident, toothy smile on his pasty white face which was so wide and beaming that she could make it out even amongst the shockingly low resolution.

The door rattled on.

"Is that him?" she rushed out to Blake, no longer caring if anyone heard. What would they do if they did, exactly? Find her? They'd already done that.

The other girl shifted her tight hold on the bare skin of Cleo's arms making her realize she'd forgotten they were even touching. "Oh my Lord..." the girl replied, and Cleo took that as a yes.

That must've been him. The man from earlier. The Hatter.

She watched in a mixture of fear and confused awe as the man continued to prance around the store with ill-suiting confidence. Frozen like a rabbit in the headlights. He practically danced along the isles, between every single one like a child playing a game and plucking several items from the shelves which he bundled into his arms. A fizzy drink here. Some instant noodles there. Biscuits.