don't lie to me

Chapter XVI

The walls were panelled with white wooden borders separating them and the one in the very corner of my room slowly moved open with enough force. The "door" was incredibly heavy, but after a few moments of intense pushing, the door was open wide enough for me to slip through. I stepped into a narrow corridor filled with warm yellow lights and the dusty white walls were lined with food, large backpacks and duffles, flashlights, and other random necessities.

It was strange.

Upon closer inspection above a few of the bags was an engraved metal label with a name written. The first I saw with a name read Leonardo G. Caputo then the next Dominic S. Caputo and so on, in confusion I walked to the end of the row of backpacks and- confirming my thoughts- was a label with my own name written on it. Amalia E. Caputo was written in a plain font and shone dully in the light- clearly not three days old as I would have expected. I hesitantly reached for a bag- unable to explain my hesitance beyond that it gave me a bad vibe.

The fact that there was a secret door in my room was creepier than it was cool and the fact that they seemed prepared to leave (with me) at a moment's notice was more than concerning.

When I dropped the bag (which ended up being Vincent's) it let out a quiet thud- quieter than it should have been for a bag so heavy. I opened and pulled out the expected- well as expected as could be in a getaway bag in a hidden passageway- blankets, changes of clothes, multiple forms of identifications I didn't bother to look at, four thick bundles of cash (none of which included a bill under $100), and a few electronics. What sat at the bottom of the bag was not what I expected- it should have been- but in my reckless tossing of things in the bag I had thrown a cold hard metal object into my pile. It sunk into the soft fabric of a sweatshirt as my heart sank at what I had touched.

I had never touched one. I had joked a few times with some friends about going to a range and using them but too much of my neighborhood had been destroyed by the violence they caused for any of us to genuinely consider it.

As fast as I could I threw everything back into the bag, it wasn't organized and folded and whatever else it was before, but I didn't care.

I knew my reaction was a lot and probably ridiculous, but I didn't like guns. I knew they existed and I knew that they were probably all around me (hell, even Greg probably had one), but I didn't like them and I hated even thinking about them most of the time. Some things just freaked me out- like I had some bad memory or something in another life that had to do with them- and I couldn't really explain it. I just didn't like guns.

I started walking quickly down the long corridor, turning randomly whenever I got paranoid for a while. I eventually realised that in my panic about the gun I had forgotten where I had come from, and I didn't even really know if I would be able to get out the way I came even if I found my way back.

I just kept walking, most corridors were bare and the ones that weren't only held bags or doors with an incredible amount of security I didn't even bother looking at.

I screamed but it didn't echo, seeming to just disappear into the walls and floor. With both my first (wandering), and second (calling for help) attempts at escaping failing, I resorted to trying to open anything I walked by and pushing on anything that looked like it could trigger something like what happened when I first got in here.

It must have been an hour- but I also could have been going crazy and losing my sense of reality and it had only really been ten minutes. It was like those experiments that see how long people can last in a pitch black, silent room and I was quickly regretting leaving my phone laying on the bed to go on (what was meant to be) a short adventure.