Safety Blanket

🌿 Chapter Six🌿

"What do you mean he's not in his bed?" Jackie spat the words out, beer noticeably tumbling down her chin with them. She would usually eat lunch at the local bar in town and observe passerbyers without a drink, but she felt today she deserved a little treat. Her higher than normal pay check only solidified that thought.

"I mean, why are you at the bar anyway?! I told you I had errands to run and the tranquilizer was supposed to wear off today!"

"I told you I don't wanna starve!" Jackie snapped at Molly over the phone, pushing her fingers against the sunny bar counter, making a pyramid of sorts. The shadows of her arm stretched far, Castle Rock's weather surprisingly nice for once. All the residents had gotten used to the nearly constant gloom, and many more people would be out and about if it weren't for the prisoners still running rampant a day after the inexplicable fire of Shawshank.

"Well someone needed to watch him! I just got home and he's not here- anywhere! You locked his door, right?! Windows too? He should've been too woozy to even stand let alone break out!"

"Yeah I did! Locked everything!" Jackie threw her legs over each other so they were now crossed, hands flying as if Molly was standing right infront of her to see her frustration. The heavy empty feeling of hunger only worsened as Molly crabbed at her, the hunger pains seeming to deepen with every word. It started to feel like Molly was keeping the food away with every syllable that passed through the phone.

"Then how'd he get out?! Chn! Nevermind-! We need to find him!"

"The cops can find him-! Who gives a shit anymore?!" Jackie's loud complaining and overzealous gestures were starting to attract some eyes, especially when she pointed in the air with her thin middle finger to some unintelligible sentence said from over the line. Until now, an evesdropper might have just assumed that the two were quarreling over a dog or an unruly child grounded for who knows what.

Closer to the front window in the pools of sun sat Dennis, who would have liked to of sat at the bar counter like he usually did if it weren't for Jackie. Dennis's social battery had been running low as of late; he'd barely found the energy to order his drink. He hadn't touched his beer yet either, too immersed with the warmth of the sun on his shoulders and the buzzing of mainly the lively girl at the counter's conversation.

'Let the cops find him..?' Dennis thought to himself, half heartidly tilting his still closed beer bottle on the table. He held it in place with his fingers, watching the dark liquid churn inside the bottle. 'I wonder how much of this is in that girl's system..wish I was a damn cop. Could throw her out..'s too early to be talking like this..' he thought this, even though when he looked up at the clock on the wall it read somewhere about two thirty P.M.

"Fine! Fine! I'll go find him! Let me just DROP everything I'm doing and go look for my responsibility then!" Jackie slammed her phone down on the neatly polished counter, swiftly hitting the hang up button somewhere in that movement, and pushing her head into her hands with a loud irritated groan. She kicked her stool with the toe of her boot as she got up, which might have been either on accident or on purpose, grabbing her phone before storming out the front double doors of the bar. After the buzz of her noise had left, the entire restaurant seemed to be still; waiting to see if she was gone before a soft 'good ridence' was murmered and the usual quiet hum of the atmosphere returned.

With a soft huff Dennis turned his eyes back down to his drink, setting the bottle still for a moment. The sun shone through the side of the bottle; the usually comforting deep brown hue casted by the sun through the beer was nearly sickening to him. The way the amber swam with the light against the wooden table reminded him of dancing fire, or the pools of blood on the cafeteria's floor. He could almost feel the heat on his face in that moment. Before he knew it he could feel his lips tighten together and that heat wasn't just imaginary anymore, the edges of his eyelids starting to feel damp. Swiftly he wiped his hand over his face, sniffled, and lifted the bottle up off the table. He paused, looking out the window he sat next to. It was smudged by time, visitors' palms and baby fingers marked the glass forever. Dust caked about the edges of each pane of glass. Dennis wondered how long the dust had been there, clumped against the edges of the glass. Hidden in the shadows, hidden under the light of eyes until today. Just like that damn kid that had been in that prison.