... in which Valya becomes the best and only employee of the month, sits under the table, and eats a treat.
Valya sat huddled under the counter, as quiet as water beneath the grass, tightly clutching the plastic handle of an electroshock weapon in her thin, long fingers. She couldn't see the stranger, only hear his confident and unhurried footsteps echoing through the mobile phone salon's premises. However, "salon" was too grandiose a name for the typical elongated glass box no larger than 50 square meters, rented on the second floor of a shopping center in a residential area.
The unknown slowly walked along the display cases, as all customers usually do, seemingly selecting something. Valya, trying not to make a sound, carefully tucked her leg underneath herself and peered through the gap between the counters. The calm, confident clicking of heels on the floor ceased somewhere in the far corner, then began approaching again. The stranger stopped directly in front of where the girl was hiding. Remaining motionless and barely breathing, she saw from her hiding place a pair of greenish-brown designer shoes with pointed toes and the hem of a black woolen coat.
A sound of breaking glass rang out; Valya tensed up and even closed her eyes, trying not to scream. The stranger calmly and silently took what he wanted, then walked just as decisively and monotonously toward the exit. Soon it became quiet again.
"You can come out of the storeroom now, Mr. Cruz," the girl thought to herself, finally gathering the courage to climb out from under the table. And once she did, she whispered to herself, "It seems everything is alright."
However, the atmosphere in the mobile phone salon could hardly be described as "orderly" at the moment. Three display cases, including the one the stranger had just searched, were shattered into pieces.
"What did you steal—just junk?" Valentina assessed the losses matter-of-factly.
The stranger had only robbed the display case containing used phones, old models, and various spare parts, such as replacement batteries. More valuable goods remained untouched, although some of them lay scattered on the floor in pools of blood.
At least half of that blood belonged to Kirill, Valentina's colleague, whom she remembered killing yesterday by repeatedly stabbing him in the abdomen with a large kitchen knife from the pantry, and then strangling him with a long extension cord. However, neither Kirill himself was present either in the pantry or in the sales area, where their struggle had ended.
"He probably survived after all...—the girl thought hopefully.—In any case, it was self-defense. He attacked me first! And he was screaming like a madman. Probably wanted to rape me..."
All this, however, didn't explain the rest of the chaos around her. The shopping center was completely empty, although yesterday it seemed to be littered with dead bodies. Bloody footprints stretched across the large milky-beige tiles. Similar smeared crimson stains were visible on the glass windows, walls, and stair railings.
"But where did the corpses go? Did someone remove them while I was hiding in the pantry?!—the girl pondered, staggering past the bloodstained booths.—"Stupid... Idiot... Why didn't I go home?! Why did I decide I had to come to work? Hyper-responsible fool..."
Continuing her thoughts in this vein, and logically concluding that she was losing her mind, the girl descended to the ground floor and stopped near the small café "Tea & Coffee." The sight of cute pastries in the display case and the rumbling in her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten properly for more than a day. The remnants of bread and cheese in the pantry didn't count, because during the stress following Kirill's murder, she almost didn't notice swallowing them.
Valya went behind the counter, turned on the electric kettle with trembling hands, and took a dessert from the glass-fronted refrigerator.
"What am I doing? This is theft. Or after killing a person, won't it be considered a serious crime? No. Definitely not. It's all in my head. God, how I want to eat..."
Not waiting for the kettle to boil, she poured warm water into a tea bag she found nearby, sat down at the nearest table, and began devouring the dessert with large spoonfuls. Valentina always loved sweets, but now this accidentally discovered pastry literally caused a gustatory orgasm in her exhausted body. She became so engrossed in the delicious dessert that she even forgot about her electroshock weapon, left on the counter next to the refrigerator.
Meanwhile, behind her back, the door to the staff room suddenly slammed open with a loud bang. A dark and heavy mass fell upon the girl from behind, and teeth sank into her shoulder, causing intense pain.