The Floral Scarf

"Come on," he said as he gripped my right arm. The pain was immediate, and I tried to pull away.

His grasp was too tight. I felt my arm explode into a million grains of electrified sand.

"What?" I managed to ask. "Who the hell are you?"

"Doesn't matter now," he hissed. "Come on!"

I had no choice as he dragged me up from the ground where I'd fallen the second I heard the first shot. I pulled against him. I wanted to stay, to hide there, behind the Chevy Malibu someone had deserted in the alley.

“No. No. Leave me here.”

I noticed his hands were filthy, and wondered how my brain could possibly be thinking of anything other than my own safety.

“We can’t stay here. They’re coming,” he warned.

I could hear voices, then another shot pierced the air just in front of the abandoned car. More voices.

“I don’t know what’s happening.” I’d begun a silent Novena to St. Christopher, though he’s the patron saint for safe travel. It was close enough.

“You’re a witness,” was his response.

Despite my feigned bravado, I started to cry.

Then the real shock finally hit me: I’d just witnessed a bank robbery. One of the three men had grabbed me by the hair and held a gun to the back of my head. I’d seen so many bank robberies in movies that end with the hostage being set free so I’d hoped it possible he wouldn’t actually shoot. Unless he were trigger happy.

As he pulled me out through the front door of the bank, I felt his grasp loosen. Before I could even think, I remembered something I’d seen in a cop show and thrust my right arm up and into his throat. In the split second after I’d made contact, my hand caught the side of the mask and exposed the right side of his face. I knew I had to escape, and my brain was screaming, “Run!” I didn’t have time to question its authority, so managed to jerk myself away and run, crouching, around the back of the bank building into the alley way.

I heard a shot, and felt the bullet whiz by me. When I got to the car, I immediately ducked down behind it. I didn’t know whether to stay there, or to keep running. Neither was a good plan.

I could feel the presence of the gunman as he entered the alleyway, and was now walking slowly towards me.

What to do? Should I run?

That’s when the filthy hands yanked me to my feet and pointed to a doorway about 50 feet ahead. The back door of the bank?

I didn’t care. I was terrified. I’d always thought that, in a life or death panic, my legs would turn to mush and I’d freeze. Instead, a rush of adrenalin roared through me and, before I realized what I was doing, I was running, the man who had yanked me up in front of me.

How could he know the door was open? Thoughts ran amok in my mind as I imagined myself standing, helpless, pounding on a locked door. Nowhere else to run.

The door was suddenly open, and the man was gesturing to me frantically to get inside.

The voices were quickly getting nearer, and a volley of two shots flew past me, one nicking the fabric of my jacket’s left shoulder. I practically hurled myself through the door opening and into the dark of a storage room.

As I squinted in the faint light, the man bolted the entry the door and ran towards me, directing me to a door that led to a brightly-lit hallway.I had barely made it through when he slammed it shut, then pulled over a lone chair and jammed it under the door knob.

“Come on,” he whispered, as he pointed towards the end of the hallway. I followed him a foot or two behind. Just before we reached what was likely the rear delivery bay, he quickly turned left and motioned behind his back for me to follow him. I immediately obeyed.

He stopped and pointed at a rancid, rotting wood panel across an opening in the wall.

“Down through there,” he directed.

My imagination leaped into overdrive. Where was he taking me? Was this some kind of a set up? My mind raced through kidnappers, serial killers and human traffickers and, for a moment, I froze. He gently pushed me forward and down. Though not in any way convinced, I hoped this was truly an escape route.

When my eyes got used to the darkness, I saw we were in what seemed to be a boiler room. Against the back wall was a sad- and dirty-looking mattress with newspapers, food wrappers and a large lantern on top of it. There was a distinct and unpleasant smell I couldn’t quite place. The smell of the unwashed. A small armchair with the springs sticking out one side was positioned near the mattress. To the left were several liquor and beer bottles and untouched cans of food. A few unopened water bottles and hardcover books lay to the right side of the chair. What looked like a couple of women’s floral scarves languished on the floor.

“You’re safe here. It’s safe,” he said. “Sit down if you want.”

“But what’s happening out there. Can’t they find us?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it’s pretty damned unlikely. I’ve been here for years. No one’s found me,” he answered, removing his Yankees baseball cap and smoothing back his long, greasy hair from his forehead.

“Forgive the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.” He attempted a reassuring smile, but failed to quell the new fear building inside of me.

“Now what?” I finally asked.

“You wait it out. They won’t be out there long. They’ll find the door locked and give up. The cops are sure to pin them in.”

With that, a series of shots, different timbres, sounded back and forth. “Sounds like they’re fucked.” He laughed mostly to himself.

“I can get out of here, right?” I asked, more nervous than I had been when the shooting began.

“Of course you can. Same as you came in. Reversed.”

This struck me as funny and in spite of the situation, I felt myself smile. This was not where I’d thought my afternoon would have unraveled.

I’d been afraid to look at him too closely in case he was some new criminal that I could identify. Another witness debacle was unthinkable. His face was only lightly lined, which surprised me. I’d expected a beard, something older and unshaven. He was wearing a brown faux leather bomber jacket at least two sizes too big and what looked to be stained work pants, though it was hard to tell with all the holes and rips. I thought it strange that, despite the deplorable state of his wardrobe, there were gaudy-looking rings on most of his fingers.

Not knowing what else to say, nor what to do, I ventured, “Thank you…for this,” I waved my hand about the room.

“No thanks needed. But,” he said in what sounded like a low growl, “you can’t tell anyone about it…this place.”

“But the police must have seen me run into the alleyway,” I protested. “They’ll know I had to go somewhere.”

“Nah,” he said, slowly. “They’re a bunch of lazy idiots. You’d be surprised how many people – criminals most of them – make their way down this alleyway. There’s another way out, but you’d passed it by the time I saw you.”

Though I knew what he had said was meant to reassure me, I was anything but calm.

“Sit. Sit,” he said, his voice clipped. It sounded like a command.

“No. Thank you. I’m fine. I just want to get out of here now,” I replied.

“Should be pretty soon,” he said, peeking out the opening in the boiler room wall. “Nothin’ out there. Don’t hear anything.” He hesitated, then asked, “Can you hear anything?”

Other than the chaotic pounding of my heart, I told him I heard nothing.

He turned to look at me. “I’m going to sneak out…check around the hallway and outside. Make sure your way out is clear.”

“I’m coming with you,” I nearly screamed.

“No. Nope. Too dangerous,” he said, without looking at me. “I’ll be right back.”

I stood for a moment, and looked around me. I wondered again what could possibly be causing the foul smell. It was worse than body odor, no matter how long a body had been left unwashed. I looked down and saw one of my shoelaces was untied. Shit, I could have tripped over that I thought. I needed to sit down to do a proper job of re-tying it so, though the chair looked every bit as putrid as the mattress, I sat on the very edge of it, perching as I tied.

The floral scarves looked to be expensive. The patterns were bright and would have been perfect with my mother’s new coat. I reached down to pick them up, but saw how soiled and oily they looked, so left them where they lay. The smell seemed much worse at chair level. It reminded me of the stench that escaped from my bedroom wall when mice had somehow become trapped and died. Decomposition. Though there were undertones of milk gone off and a subtle smell of rancid cologne, the smell was mostly that of decomposition. If I were correct, I mused, there were likely some mice or rats living in here. They had to die somewhere.

If skin could legitimately crawl, mine certainly did. “Gross,” I thought. “Disgusting”. But the guy must live here. He was probably used to the smell, though it was vile. There was enough light to make out what looked like another wood panel, blocking one part of the cramped space from the other. I told myself that it was likely where the mice and rats lived and he was trying to keep them at very long arm’s length. It was longer than it was high, and I noticed it was leaning slightly against the wall, unsecured. It looked as if it were about to fall and, though my entire body recoiled at the thought of touching it, I decided my not wanting it to fall and reveal what was behind it was greater than my disgust at touching it.

I reached out until I felt the wood touch my fingers, then took the top right corner in my hand. It was less stable than it seemed and, as I tried to push it closer to the wall, my movement was enough to jar it into falling forward, towards me. I think I screamed. I know I jumped up from the chair and was afraid to look at whatever the guy might have socked away in there. All I could make out was what looked to be an army-issue canvas backpack. There were a few decals visible at the front of it and, for some reason, I walked a bit closer to see if it had any clues to this man’s identity. It was a bit collapsed over itself, and hard to make out the biggest of the images stitched into the fabric. There was absolutely no way I wanted to move it closer to me but, without considering the result, I reached out and curled a finger inside the opening closest to me to uncover the large decal.

As I did, the knapsack tumbled forward and I was slapped in the face with a stink unlike any I’d ever encountered. I quickly turned my head in an attempt to escape the worst of it and, as I did, I saw it. Saw them. A wave of nausea strangled my chest and I bent over, knowing I was going to vomit.

There were two of them that I could see. Arms severed at the elbow, with frozen fingers, each adorned with a ring. I thought of the rings I had noticed on this man I had hoped would be a savior. My body jerked uncontrollably as I vomited onto the chair beside me. I had to get out.

I rushed towards the opening, crouching as I slipped under the wood panel into the hallway. There was no sign of him. The air was cloying, and I felt like my torso had detached from my legs as I watched my feet tiptoe along the way towards the corner where we’d entered. The chair he’d used to block the door had been moved aside. I’d been holding my breath since I first entered the hallway and, before looking through the door to the stock room, I had to exhale. Too loudly.

I was nearly frozen with fear, but knew I couldn’t stay in one place. I had to chance it. I stuck my head into the doorway and surveyed the stock room where we’d entered as best I could. It was hard to see anything in the room’s meager lighting. Where was he? WHERE WAS HE?

Silently praying to anyone who would listen, I moved into the stock room as quietly and slowly as possible. I wanted to run, but there was still the exterior doorway to clear. The door looked to be unlatched. In a ragged corner of my brain, I told myself he must have gone outside. I could run into him in the alleyway. A war was raging inside me. Should I run for the door? What if he were out there? But I couldn’t just stay frozen in place.

I don’t remember running to the door and pushing it open. I can only remember the smell of a soiled and oily floral scarf as it tightened around my neck.