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Lori Jordan was almost literally counting the seconds until her lunch break. It had been a particularly dull day working at the library. Checking her watch for the fourth time in five minutes, Lori had not the least idea that today would be the scariest day of her life so far, and an extremely significant one.
“Betty, I’m gone now. I’m off to pick my car up. I will be back in an hour”– Lori spoke as she lifted the fold up part of the desk in front of her. And she headed out of the library.
Betty merely glanced up from the book, offering no verbal response.
Lori went to the small office of the car mechanics that she had left her car with. Nobody was inside, only a note telling prospective customers to check around the back if they wanted to speak to someone. Not being sure exactly where he meant by ‘around back’, Lori started wandering. A row of warehouses backed onto the mechanics’ place so Lori walked to them in her search for the mechanic and ultimately to her car. No sign of any mechanic, just as she was about to turn back and start wandering in another direction Lori heard voices in one of the warehouses. She followed the voices to investigate. When she got closer it was clear they weren’t discussing fixing cars and indeed they weren’t mechanics. What she found herself overhearing sent fear shaking through Lori’s body. For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to move despite knowing she wanted to be away from there as soon as possible. Heart pounding, palms starting to sweat, short sharp breathes, legs feeling weak and mouth getting very dry. Just as Lori mustered the bodily control to start to walk away, there was a bang, crash, clatter. A cat had jumped off a skip onto some steel trash cans. She couldn’t help but produce a small gasp of shock but Lori quickly covered her mouth and tried to minimize the noise as much as possible. There was no way she wanted the people in that warehouse to be aware of her presence. Suspicious of the noise outside the leader of the group in the warehouse sent one of the men out to investigate. Lori overheard this order and it more than got her out of her still partially paralyzed state. She turned and ran, heading for the nearest high street. Catching sight of Lori running off, the investigating guy gave pursuit. Lori was only twenty-three years old and at this point she couldn’t be happier that she’d done all these runs around the local park, and frequent gym visits. It meant that despite suffering from asthma she was still in good physical condition. Her chaser was considerably older and not in such a good shape. And in reality he never looked like catching up with Lori. But to her it still felt like he was gaining on her all the time. And that fear speeded her up. By the time he got to the high street, he was out of breath and all he could see was a lot of people walking around. And the road was full of these distinctive New York taxi cabs. He went back to the warehouse and not wishing to tell them of his failures he told them that all the noise was made by a cat.
Lori had jumped into one of those cabs, got driven straight home, locked all the doors, closed the curtains, phoned at work telling them she wouldn’t be coming in that afternoon and sat on her sofa watching television with a big blanket wrapped around her. Flicking through the channels for anything the take her mind off that warehouse her several hours of television watching included watching a knock out Football World Cup match between Argentina and England. The South Americans won after a penalty shoot out in a match that saw David Beckham get sent off for England. Commentator said at one point that nobody would want to swap places with David Beckham now. Despite understanding the heart breaking capabilities of sport and the vindictiveness of the English tabloid press, Lori would gladly have swapped right then.
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