Sam’s Journey, Week Three: Prisha (1/2)

(Author Note: I had to split this episode into 2 parts due to Tapas' length limits for short story episodes! This is part 1 of 2)

~ Three Weeks since Day 0 ~

CW: Violence against women, robbery at gunpoint, blood

During the summer road trips when Sam and her parents would stop for snacks at the gas stations, it was almost always during the day. Uncomfortable and a bit sticky inside, sure, but at 3 AM in the morning it was a different experience all together. Between the clusters of insects swarming at exposed flickering fluorescent lights, the thin layer of oily grime that coated every surface in sight, and the lack of sound, save for the occasional car passing by, this was the last place that Sam wanted to be. Still, this 24 hour gas station boasted a shower and the teenage tigress desperately longed to be clean.

She snuck up to the windows and peered inside between the posters covering the glass: there was a lone clerk, idly scrolling on her phone. She heard pre-recorded laughter that must have belonged to a late-night talk show. The signs said that the public bathrooms were outside around the back, and Sam figured that if she was careful enough she could break in without being noticed and just lock the door behind her. It wouldn’t take too long to get clean; Ten minutes, tops, she guessed. In and out, no harm no foul. The clerk wouldn’t call the cops for someone taking a 10 minute stolen shower...she hoped, anyway. It was worth it to avoid taking a bath in the creek again. Last time she narrowly avoided a snake bite (it was the first time she was grateful to be covered in fur) but she still managed to cut her foot on a piece of glass in the creekbed.

Sam looked over her shoulder before she carefully snuck to the back of the building, opened the bathroom door and slid inside. The automatic lights flickered to life, and she locked the door behind her before letting out a long sigh of relief. Inside the grimy ladies room there were two toilet stalls, both doors slightly ajar. In the far corner was what looked like a closet but had the word “shower” scrawled on a piece of notebook paper inside of a plastic covering. Pushing open the door revealed a closet-sized shower that reeked of mildew and contained a patio chair, but no curtain. The shower was 25 cents per 5 minutes of water. She grunted in frustration; It looked like she had been sneaking around and getting stressed out for nothing. Thankfully, there were still a few coins left in her hoodie pocket. The coins clunked into the slot and Sam’s tension eased.

Stripping down, she realized how much nature junk had made its way into her clothes and fur. She plucked off several leaves, some seed pods, a couple of dead bugs, more pine needles than she cared to count, and several burrs tangled in her leg fur. There was some soap in her backpack but that was all she had to wash herself with. No shampoo or conditioner like she was used to at home but still, it was better than nothing.

She could feel her muscles relaxing under the warm water. After running through the forests and following the highways for three weeks, the sound of water hitting the floor tiles was music to her ears. Camping out and dealing with nature was never something she particularly enjoyed, but the circumstances made staying hidden a necessity. Early on, some men in uniforms had tracked and attempted to capture her.  Luckily, she had been able to avoid them. “I might be new to all this runaway stuff”, she thought to herself, “But damn, I guess I’m pretty good at it.” she chuckled as she remembered the shocked look on one of the uniformed man’s face as she tripped him and ran away. She didn’t know if they were with the government or not, but either way she knew there was no way she was going with them. There were always stories, growing up, of Augmented variants who were captured and used as experiments by the government. Plenty of movies and TV shows about it too. It was enough to make her distrustful of anyone in uniform at this point. Like hell was she going to be some science experiment.

The shower sputtered to a halt, marking the end of her 10 minutes.  Sam sighed contentedly as she exited the shower. She grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and used them to dry herself off as best she could before putting on her dirty clothes once more. A pair of torn up jeans, a ratty sweat-stained pale red short-sleeved shirt that was once white, and her dark maroon hoodie that had stood up surprisingly well over the past few weeks. She regarded herself in the mirror, but scowled as she realized that all of her clothes were coated in a thin layer of loose fur. “Great,” she muttered, “I’m worse than a housecat.”

As she picked up her hoodie and tried to swipe the fur off of it, she heard a sharp yelp of pain followed by a man’s yell coming from inside the gas station. Without thinking, she dropped her hoodie and ran out of the bathroom towards the front of the building. Carefully peering through the window, she saw a scene straight out of a crime show. A man wearing a black hoodie and a ski mask held the clerk by her hair. Her nose was bleeding and there was a red welt forming on her cheek. The man raised his other hand to the clerk’s face, he was holding a gun.

“GIVE ME THE GODDAMN CASH, BITCH!” The man yelled through his ski mask. “I’LL SHOOT YOU IN YOUR FREAKING FACE! HURRY UP!”

He shoved her to the ground and she let out a cry of pain that turned into a hysterical sob. The man looked around anxiously for anyone that might interrupt his robbery. The woman’s terrified cries pierced Sam’s ears. Her heart was racing, there was no way she could stand by and let this happen. She started toward the door, crouched down so the man couldn’t see her. As she reached for the handle she stopped, her judgement pleading with her emotions to think things through. She would be seen after all, she had left her hoodie in the bathroom. Maybe she could just go back, call the cops, and bail; It wasn’t her problem anyway, and maybe he wouldn’t kill the woman. Maybe everything would be okay. Videos like these pop up on the internet all the time. On the news and social media...

The woman wailed again. Sam growled, shook her head, and grabbed the door handle. The door flew open, smashing into the wall and sending shards of glass all over the store. The man, startled by the crash, raised his gun towards Sam and without thinking opened fire three times. Sam’s reflexes kicked in much faster than she’d ever known them to do. Each bullet missed her, one just barely brushed her fur.

“SHIT!” The man, panicking, scrambled to grab at the clerk but she had already crawled outside of his grasp. “F*&#!!” He pointed his gun at Sam, who was charging at him like a fiery, enraged bull. He fired two more times at her and one of the bullets grazed her leg. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop her from vaulting across the counter. She hit his chest with a thud and heard the air escape his lungs with a loud “OOF” before they crashed to the ground.

She straddled his chest, balled her hands into tight fists, and began swinging at his face. She expected her knuckles to sting, but it felt more like hitting a rag doll. His head bounced around back and forth as she pummeled him with punch after punch. Blood was soaking through the mask and splattering onto the ground. A part of her knew she should stop, but something desperate and frantic had taken over. Sam was sobbing, yelling, her throat swollen and her heart pounding so loud she couldn’t hear the clerk pleading nearby...

“Stop! STOP!” Sam felt a hand urgently grab her shoulder. She turned and looked up into the face of the clerk. The woman was bruised and crying, clearly frightened. “P-please stop! He’s not a threat any longer...You don’t have to kill him!” She pleaded. Sam stopped and fell backwards on her rear, her knuckles and fur glimmering with the man’s blood. Had she been trying to kill him? The thought made her shiver. Her bottom lip was quivering and the fur on the back of her neck was standing on end. A moment passed where they both stood frozen in time, catching their breath. Sam calmed down enough to bring her attention to the woman she had just saved. The clerk, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, met Sam’s gaze and gave a small gasp. “Y-you...you’re just a child…”

“I’m 16, actually…” Sam replied, indignantly in a raspy tone of voice. She was still shaking, hot tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Thank you for saving me….” The clerk took a deep breath and wiped her own tears off her face. “I’m going to call the police to come get him.”

Sam stood to her feet and frowned. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw me.” She dried her tears with her forearm and sniffled.

“Where are you going?” The clerk frowned. “Are you in trouble with the police?”

“No...I mean...I don’t know...It’s just…” She shook her head. “Please don’t tell them!” Her hands emphasized her words.

The clerk paused for a moment and inspected Sam carefully. The tigress had dark wrinkles under her eyes, her clothes were too baggy for her frame, and there were a few missing patches of fur that revealed sickly pale skin.. “Listen...I want you to go into the back storage room and hide there until the police have left. Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve been robbed here. The police never stay for very long…” She explained, “I won’t tell them about you. I promise.”

Sam watched her carefully, calculating if her help was worth the risk. “How are you going to explain him?” Sam gestured to the bleeding man who, Sam observed with relief, was unconscious but still breathing.

“I’ll...tell them that he was attacked by a powerful variant who ran off...It’s the truth, afterall….” The clerk took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Go on and hide, it’s through the back room.” She gestured behind the counter towards a door labelled “Employees Only”.

Sam frowned, wary of trusting a stranger, but something about this woman reminded her of her mother. Nodding once, Sam obediently jogged into the back room of the station, shut the door and waited quietly.  She heard the clerk dial three buttons and say a few words. 15 minutes later, Sam heard the sound of a police siren that grew louder and louder before suddenly stopping. She held her breath. Did she make a mistake, trusting a stranger? She looked around the storage room she was in, there was a door in the back for deliveries. Sam quickly pieced together an escape plan in her mind in case things went south.

After the first 15 minutes had passed, Sam started to relax a little. Fatigue was beginning to set in, she sat down and leaned against the shelf. An hour had passed before the door suddenly swung open, Sam nearly jumped out of her skin. “...Miss?” the clerk ducked into the storage room. 

Sam looked up, her face having been buried in her knees for the past 45 minutes. “Yes?”

The clerk walked into the room. “Are...are you hungry?”

“...” Sam’s face crumpled and fresh tears streamed down her face. “Y-yes…” she croaked.

The woman smiled and moved aside, gesturing for Sam to exit the room.

Sam retrieved her backpack and hoodie from the bathroom, and waited in the parking lot  while the clerk shut down the store. “This one’s me.” The clerk gestured to the only car in the parking lot, an older sedan with mismatched doors. The drive to the clerk’s apartment was peacefully quiet. Sam watched the trees pass by as they drove past the highway forests that Sam had called home for the past few weeks.