Acting Like A Professional

Mela Emily

K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies Weekend keeps rolling with Gerry Rafferty's sweet saxophone hit, Baker Street
Winding your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well, another crazy day
You'll drink the night away
And forget about everything

  Mela Emily woozily walked down the alleyways, trying to get back home. She didn't often leave the house, but she had ran out of cigarettes and didn't have any friends or family to borrow from. She did care that it was illegal for minors to smoke, she wasn't so jaded yet that she stopped caring, but that didn't stop the escapism that it brought her. She needed that escapism now more than ever.

Her mother used to be a heavy smoker too, but that addiction was eventually replaced (with the help of nicotine gum) by casino games and lottery tickets, which ate up their money. What little cash they did have have toward's her sister's education, because Mela's teachings weren't really as important to the family. Marianna, the eldest, was a golden child. She made straight A's both in her normal high school classes and at her fancy art school, taking extra summer courses and advanced placement classes on the side. Even with this stellar academic record, Mari somehow has a great social life, talent in instruments and visual arts, was very athletic, "beautiful," "mature," and an amazingly "hard worker." Mela was the burnout, with several skin conditions, no friends, struggling grades and home sick constantly, so she got stuck inside and hardly able to participate in physical or social activities.

As she paused to rest against a brick wall, Mela prayed for a moment that her folks weren't home. Their mother took obvious favor to Marianna, but their father had a closer bond with Mela. Despite that, the younger daughter had trouble trying to talk to him due to his distance he kept. Mr. Emily possessed a low sense of self worth and some volatile mood swings, leading to several holes in their walls from when he kicked and punched over the years. It was hard enough that her immediate family was so broken, but even her grandfather, her greatest idol in life, had been more distant than ever due to Mela's grandmother dying of cancer a few months before.

With all these family problems on her mind, plus constant migraines, nausea, fatigue, asthma, and what she jokingly described as a "colorful array of mental illnesses," (really just different misdiagnosis) what Mela really needed at that moment was a friend. Of which she didn't have, so the cigarettes would have to do. That, and the occasional drink, if she could get her hands on one. She used to read books to provide a disconnection from the outside world, but soon enough she had read all the literature they owned multiple times, and was banned from the library after she had a bit of a meltdown and screamed for a solid minute during a meeting of the knitting club.

This city desert makes you feel so cold
It's got so many people, but got no soul
And it's taken you so long
To find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything

As the sun rose higher in the sky, and noon approached, she was getting increasingly dizzier, and as her vision grew fuzzy, it took all her energy not to trip and fall. Her fragile condition made her overly sensitive to the heat, not to mention she'd barely remembered to eat in the past few days. Mela passed her neighbor's small townhouse and he called out to her from the front porch. She couldn't hear Mr. Rich's voice very well over the pounding in her head.

"Be careful walking around outside, young lady! There was a robbery at Karina's Diamonds about 10 minutes ago, and they're warning folks on the news to be careful, 'cause they started emptyin' out their guns." Even though she understood what the man said, she payed no attention. She just didn't find the energy to worry. But as she turned another corner and found herself in another dank alleyway, a sight was waiting for her that chilled her to the bone.

Mela had passed this alleyway a about million times, because it was right around the side of her house. And in that alleyway, hidden by the tall weeds growing between the cracks in the pavement, there was a ground-level window leading to a basement that was apparently sealed off, because she'd never found an entrance to it from within the house. She had tried on multiple occasions to open the window, but she didn't own a screwdriver, she didn't have anyone to borrow one from, nor did she want to just break it open, for fear some feral animals would take that as an invite to build a nest inside. Mela hadn't told anyone about this secret basement, and from what she could tell, it had been abandoned for years. But now, the weeds in front of it were torn and pushed to the side, and the window itself was smashed in enough for someone to get through. 

Mela got down on all fours and peered in, trying to get a good look as to whether someone were inside. Someone was. A man in a suit was anxiously rummaging around what she could see now was furnished like a regular room. He had turned the place upside down, looking for something. He eventually moved an end table, and slid away the rug that was underneath it, revealing a trap door to a secret small space further down.

While the man seems to have found what he was looking for, Mela had stealthily slid in through the now open window, trying to let her feet touch the floor as gently as possible. She had barely moved two steps before the man spun around and Mela found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.