84 Quiet! (1/2)

I'm back again in the mall, back again in Plural Heights. Same scenery. Different style. I feel like I've seen this place before, but the surrounding feels so unfamiliar somehow like it had been the first time I had set foot in it.

I was inside of the Clockwork store once again, and it felt like nothing was amiss until I've realized that, oh yeah, this angry woman is right in front of me. The deep wrinkles creasing between her thick eyebrows made her broad forehead even larger somehow. Her mouth is separated very unnaturally so like she was about to bite two Big Macs at the same time; it's really weird, not gonna lie. The way her mouth is open so exaggeratedly made her cheeks stretch so damn hard that I could almost see it break off like a sheet of paper. Her eyes are burning with so much passion, and I'm sure that it's not at all sexual unless she's actually into hate fucks. Can't blame her, though.

The way her body poses made it evident that he's running towards with as she gripped a really huge knife--like the ones that butchers use--with both her hands, readying herself to lunge towards me with one thing in mind: pierce only once but make it lethal enough to kill me nonetheless. If it wasn't shaped like the knife I used at home, I would have mistaken her weapon as a cleaver.

I also realized that I'm falling. Well, I'm currently not moving for some reason, but based on the position of my body, I can see that I'm about to fall into the floor ass first.

Ah, I see. Time has stopped right at the very moment before this lady could run towards me and inevitably murder me. Somehow, it feels like I have seen same exact scenario before somewhere in the past. I must have been confusing a movie scene and made it subconsciously merge with my experience back in Plural Heights. Nevertheless, this woman is really, really angry, like, I'm sure I've already emphasized her anger enough when I explained the way her expression looks like, but somehow, I could see and feel a thick aura seeping out of her body, making me convinced even more that she's definitely gonna murder me without second thoughts, 0 hesitations. Maybe it's not her first time.

All I know for sure is that the only thing I can move is my eyes. My lips are open a bit, my arms are spread out, and my right foot is hanging in the air. No other indication shows that I'm doing anything other than falling onto the floor, and since I don't have my guard up, the lady could definitely thrust my body with the greatest of ease.

While our bodies are stopped in motion like two figurines facing each other, I could faintly hear the muffled sound of the final 2 minutes of 'Hey, Jude' playing somewhere in the background.

Snap!

Then time moved once again.

I managed to prevent myself from tripping and stand up, leading to reclaim my balance. However, the woman must have seen through what had happened because she swiftly knelt down and meticulously moved her body upward, stabbing me with her knife and making sure that the entire length of the blade went through my guts.

I felt nothing, but I could somehow feel my body heating up as I felt the blood flow out of my stomach. Perhaps it was because I have never been stabbed, so I could not really simulate what it would otherwise feel.

The woman then pulled the knife out of my stomach, making me fall into the ground. I tried to get up as I looked at her, wanting to plead something, but no words came out of my mouth. As I looked at her raising her arm to inflict her second and final strike, I finally couldn't take it anymore and just allowed myself to fall on the floor. The first thing that greeted me when I laid my head on the side was the decaying corpse of a young stag while its antlers fall slowly into the ground. I heaved a deep sigh as I gazed at the flies scurrying around the animal's carcass.

The woman cried almost desperately as if I was the one stabbing her. I could sense that she was about to let her blade sink into my skull somehow, making me close my eyes to accept the inevitability of my doom. However, I heard someone grabbing the woman's clothes, making her stop screaming. I then opened my eyes and moved my head towards the direction of the female employee who had just attacked me weakly.

Behind her was a man, gripping her arms tightly while the lady began to shake like a little kid who was caught by her teacher doing something naughty red-handed. The man was wearing a striped maroon coat, a white jacket underneath, and a pair of brown shoes. I looked up to see who it was, but instead of a human's face, what greeted my slowly fading vision instead was the head of a stag.

The man who has a stag's head whispered to the trembling lady with an apparent annoyance seeping through his voice, ”What have you done to my client!?” I noticed then that the stag-headed man's voice was so deep that it almost sounded like it was edited through some kind of editing software.

The woman then frantically tried to explain herself, but before she could do so, the voice of a woman behind me had stopped her from opening her mouth. The sight of this person who's approaching her made her shake even more.

”What happened here?” A familiar voice of the lady uttered in a commanding tone.