Robbers

thirty - five

// thirty - five //

The dress was made of thin, crimson nylon, and it clung to Ella's hips too tightly. Ella uncomfortably stretched the material downwards against her thighs, wishing the length of the dress was just a few inches longer. She tugged the denim jacket closer around herself and pressed the electronic button on her car key, the sound of the door lock resonating in the empty street.

It was 10:43 p.m., and the night air was frigid.

She turned her eyes upwards, to rest upon the towering building that encased Jackson's apartment. Nerves danced in her throat and adrenaline traced through her veins in liquid embers. To steady herself, Ella dipped one hand into the pocket of her jacket and clutched Ryan's lighter. She had found the silver, rectangular object lying forgotten on the night side table in his bedroom. The metallic hardness of its siding against her trembling fingers was oddly comforting.

There wasn't time to hesitate and wonder if she could really do this. Ella crossed the length of sidewalk beside her parked Honda and started towards the apartment building's entrance. She couldn't look back. She had to do this.

Inside the building's entrance was the locked front door, which Kurt had keyed in easily earlier that morning. Ella reached, with a hand sweaty from nerves, and pressed the worn black button beneath the yellowed tape with 34 written in bold Sharpie.

When the speaker above the apartment numbers crackled, Ella's legs nearly turned her away from the entrance and threatened to race back out of the building's lobby as quickly as she had come. The sound of Jackson's voice made her legs stiffened and freeze into place, despite how warbled and distorted it had become by the cheap speaker.

"Who is it?"

Ella's voice had shrunk down to nothing, and she had to clear her throat to bring forth the sound out of her lungs. Her lips were inches from the speaker, and they only shook slightly as she replied softly, "It's Ella Jane."

Her tone of voice had been disguised with a layer of mystery, a sort of forced sultry note within the words. She masked the terror and anxiety with a low, seductive tone that Ella had no idea she possessed.

There was a slow, painful moment where the grey speaker was silent. She shut her eyes, heavy with kohl liner, and pressed her blood-red lips into a thin line. Jackson could very easily turn her away, and then this would have all been for nothing.

But the speaker before her crackled, and her heart leapt into her throat as the door lock clicked. "Come on up, Ella Jane."

Jackson's tone had been impossible to read.

The staircase that led up to the third floor was sticky with spilt beer. Ella stepped carefully and clung to the rusted railing the entire journey upwards, her legs shaky enough to give out on her. Somewhere on the second floor, a bed squeaked loudly and a baby cried. Ella wiped her sweaty hands against her upper thighs, and her palms slipped against the slick material of the red dress.

Once she reached the third floor, Ella followed the same path down the hallway as Kurt had earlier that morning. The narrow hallway smelt of stale cigarettes and body odor, and Ella wanted to be sick. Her head was spinning as the scratched door embellished with the brass number 34 approached, closer and closer, and she wondered if she would even have the courage to knock.

But when she stood before it, inches from the wooden, whitewash door, Ella's hand reached upwards automatically. She knocked twice, with an amount of forcefulness that disguised just how terrified she truly was.