The sudden storm which came in the wake of the morning was even more notable due to the sound of the rain droplets hitting the roof of the police car, which Arthur was sitting in. The police chief had called for backup after Arthur had told them about the pathway from the fourth floor to the unknown basement of the museum, even after Arthur had shown them the pictures he had taken all the police chief had to say was-
"You could've notified the policemen, kid. No one had ever told you to sneak into a museum in the middle of the night."
Arthur was completely horrified, as the other police officers gave him a background check, the gentlemen found out that - Arthur already had numerous counts of trespassing accumulated, none of them which he had been trialed for. The policemen snatched Arthur's camera and phone, searching through them. Arthur had already taught himself on how to deal with these kinds of scenarios. He nervously asked-
"Excuse me, sir, uhm, do you have a warrant?"
"This ain't the states kid, if we reasonable suspicion such as terrorism - which we have, we don't need a warrant to search through your stuff."
Surprisingly, the police chief was fluent in English, that was probably the reason he was so merciful to Arthur, after all, Arthur was scared sh*tless, all he could do was wait. What was Arthur waiting for? Well, after Arthur ran away from the entity or a "Vampire" as it calls itself, the adrenaline had run out, for that reason Arthur came to his senses - going from infuriated to noticeably close to wetting his pants. He went on his phone to try and contact someone, anyone! When he clicked on the call log, the top phone call quickly fell on Arthur's view, the number being - a missed call from "Sal (Malan) Jackson" - Arthur's closest buddy. The panicking Arthur had quickly called Sal - and Sal picked up groggily (it being the middle of the night that is) the following exchange happened as such-
"Hello, Arthur? I called before but you didn't pick u-"
"S-Sal, Sal…"
Arthur let out a deep sigh, his energy loss finally kicking in. Arthur was shook - teetering on the verge of passing out. Sam picked this up from the other end of the line.
"Hey… Arthur.., You alright man?"
"I'm fine.. C-Can you come to Venice..? I-I'll book you a ticket, please… Sam, don't ask questions, just come. Fast..."
"Venice? All of a sudden? A-alright just give me your location, I'll buy a ticket"
Arthur gave his location to Sal and reluctantly hung up. All he could do was put his faith in Sal - to come to Italy at the right location at the right time. Afterwards Arthur called the police, that's how we got here.
As a police officer walked out of the museum, the young lady said something to the police chief which Arthur couldn't understand, after the young miss finished speaking the chief turned back to Arthur, talking in an amazed tone he said-
"Well.., you're lucky kid, the museum manager turned out to be a kind lady, since you didn't steal anything they are not pressing charges"
The news was music to Arthur's ear. He talked back in an astonished voice.
"R-really? Well I'm probably still under arrest…"
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"Well… all those counts of trespassing, I'm going to go through a trial for it aren't I? I'm broke, I won't even be able to afford a good lawye-"
"HUH? Who said anything about an arrest? All you got is a lifetime ban from the goddamn museum."
"Ahm… I committed a lot of illegal trespassing though… am I not going to get tried for it?"
"Not our business kid, if you really wanna get arrested that bad go to the hq and ask the officers there to press charges."
As the chief said his words, the team that went to look at the "basement" of the museum came back from their expedition, turns out - there isn't anything like a stairwell at the fourth floor of the museum connected to the so-called 'secret basement' therefore, they didn't find anything there. The chief turned his gaze back at Arthur, shoving Arthur's phone and camera back at him before starting to talk again-
"You heard 'em kid, there's nothing like a damn "basement" to the museum, now get out of the car dammit, I need to eat something sweet after such a stupid case."
With that, Arthur was now left in front of the museum - flabbergasted - as he watched the police car drive off. With a weird turn of events, Arthur was now free to go, all thanks to a few lacking officers.
Arthur got a free needed shower as he was now left dripping wet. Arthur looked around for any shelter when his eyes fell on a small cafè down the block. Arthur put his camera and phone away as he held his bag over his head, running down the street to the cafè. Arthur entered the small cafè - drenched with rain water. The bell attached to the door let out a soothing "Ting" sound, catching the attention of the waiters. One of them immediately called out to Arthur in a soft, deep tone-
"Ciao, benvenuti al Cafè Ramma! What can I do for yo- Damn man, you're dripping wet!"
"Ah, yeah, is there like a towel I could use, by any chance?"
"There is yeah, Luca! Portargli un asciugamano." (which roughly translates to- "Luca, can you bring a towel?")
As the man called out to the young kid - Luca - asking him to go find a towel, Luca muttered a soft "Sì, senior." Before running off to the back in search of a napkin, Arthur settled down on a stool, setting his bag on his lap.
…
"Primal Instinct," is a term most are familiar with. It's the term used when humans can tell that someone or something else is looking at it. It has been stated to be developed way back when humans were neanderthals, to locate when a wild animal is nearby, looking at one self or not. It is also what Arthur is currently feeling. Not from the barista looking at him, not from the little kid handing him a towel, and not even from any kind of monster which is weird. The whole entirety of his two days in Venice had been a train wreck. His days had been going well, he was making a living, doing his dream job but suddenly, his world flipped right on top of him.
The weirdness started when he got his plane ticket. Arthur had no money to book it, most planes had been overbooked already and Sal was unsupportive of Arthur going all the way from America to Europe. But everything suddenly fell in its place to help Arthur all of a sudden. The driver of the cab which Arthur was using to come back from a nearby polluted river site had heard him wrong and dropped Arthur off at the airport which had the flights for where Arthur wanted to go. Somehow most if not almost all of the passengers had missed the last flight to Italy and the plane flight had been postponed for over three hours. Because of the obvious underlacking of passengers, heartbeat tickets (tickets given out at the last moment) were getting sold at dirt cheap by the accountants. Arthur still didn't have the money to afford the planes, but when he checked his phone, a four hundred dollar cash in came into his Venmo account, from none other than Sal. Paying him back the exact amount needed for the flight. The money was half of what Arthur had given to Sal to buy himself a laptop. Arthur took the opportunity, he booked the flight to Venice, bought himself a charger and toothbrush with the spare change he had brought with him at the lake site and took an unintended leave from his part-time job.
It was almost out of a novel, everything in his life had been going normally until that day. Well… not everything. He was a child with no parents, he suffered much as a child, living with relative-to-relative up until he met Sal when he was 16. He always thought that it wasn't fair. "Everything was ripped straight out of a book, ripped straight out of fiction." He thought, the thought process which he still carries to this day. Well how could he not? He read way many books and webnovels. Everything around him was average, very average, too average. There were nerds in his school which looked one to one to the movies, the "queen bee female lead" and "new transfer to school male lead" trope followed him around to each school he went to. He was nothing but an out of place background character.
Everything changed in two days, his heart started to beat faster as he thought he might be going insane. He really thought that he might be in a book, in a story of someone else's writing. But wait... That'd mean he's not real. But everything he touched felt real, his still damp hair, his smooth camera lens, the softness of the wallet Sal had bought for him, everything. Maybe all the stuff he experienced was a string of coincidences, maybe he was hallucinating everything he saw. A vampire? He has been reading too many rom-coms. It wouldn't have been weird to have one lifetime out of billions to have these weird circumstances to be happening to. No, it would have been pretty normal for one life to experience it, pretty average for that to happen. Too average.
He looked straight upwards to the cloudy sky. The beautiful rain droplets falling against the sunshed. Arthur said
"Author… show me a sign."
….
"This is too soon." I thought. I couldn't let him ruin my first novel so early on.
Nothing strange happened around Arthur for a long minute, everything went on as normal, cars drove by, the water still softly hummed on the sun shed. A sigh came out of Arthur's mouth. "I really am going crazy aren't I?" Thought Arthur. "I'm quite tired of it to make sense. Mmn, sweet scent of cocoa." Arthur smelt. He started to chat with the barista and ordered a chocolate coffee. The heavy storm and cloudy sky outside continued to rage…
Until it didn't. The clouds vanished, so did the rain, in the blink, yes a literal blink of an eye, the sky cleared and sun shone down, the sight alone made Arthur choke up his coffee onto the barista.
A sign...?