Zenaida Palafox

She has time to kill looking through the non-fiction selections. Eloise walks from shelf C to D. She has sixty minutes to kill before class. Twenty-one is an odd age for her, old but not old enough. Someone points to the floor next to her and says to her, “You dropped something,” as she picks up her paper in a ridiculous, loud shop, everything suddenly becomes deathly silent. Eloise terrifliy stands straight and gasps at what she doesn’t see. She is not seeing anyone. She doesn’t see the man who helped her. She perceives the once crowded shop as if characters were cut out of a scene. She scurries towards the cashier to purchase her selections, and as she gets to the front, there is no line and no cashiers. The man who said welcome at the door disappeared. How was she going to purchase her books? She hears walking from upstairs, where she came from. She turns and sees the man who helped her pick up her paper waving at her. She, without a second breath, ran out of the store. She runs to her car. She sees no one but empty cars, as if the air is thin, and they slipped right through. She starts her car and drives out. Her campus is twenty minutes away across the other side of town. As she drives, she still sees no one driving, no one walking, not at all. She gets to the part of town where her campus is, and she starts to see students walking around. She gets into the parking structure ready to go to her next class. She picks up the books with the paper that she dropped at the store. She opens the paper and reads, “had fun killing time?”