Parking Lot

"It was the third time she was counting down from ten to zero, but it was impossible to chill out. Do people usually lock up parking lots like that, without checking if anybody was still there? Because they didn’t this time, or else poor Clara wouldn’t be there in the first place. A better question to ask is: do people from this supermarket actually check if things are all right before going home?

Yes, she wasn’t supposed to have fallen asleep inside her car when there were only twenty minutes left for the store to be closed. However, that doesn’t mean they should have left her to die inside that enormous place, full of awful groceries and no actual food available. Not to count with the completely lack of light and internet or phone connection. Also, the air-conditioning was turned off. For obvious reasons, of course, but it was so damn hot inside...

She had already tried going downstairs and try leaving through some window inside the supermarket, as there was no exits escape from inside the parking lot. Unfortunately, there were no apparent exits inside the shop either – the emergency ones were locked as well!! Of course, the people working here should and must leave this place impossible to be infiltrated by the outside, but not from the inside. They really should rethink their freaking architecture. 

Clara’s flashlight stopped working. And she was out of new batteries. All that was left for her was to crouch, hug her head to her knees and start sobbing. She had no vision, no clean bathroom, no good place for sleeping, and no good food available for dinner. Or breakfast, whatever. Wait, what breakfast was she thinking about?

Turning on her cell phone (what’s the point of keeping it on if it had no use inside that place?), she realized it was almost six in the morning. And the store opens at 7AM!! Wow, she must have slept a lot…

Well, if there was only an hour left for waiting, it was useless and too tiresome to try a way out. It would be better to go back to the car and wait there. Relax a little, breath calmly, and get out as soon as the gates from the parking lot open. Well, only if the supermarket does as well…

It was Sunday morning. That place opens on Sundays, doesn’t it?

DOESN’T IT??"

---

I wrote this tiny piece of fiction based on a childhood terror - mother loves to tell the story about how five-year-old me freaked out when we were at a supermarket and the gates started being closed. I really believed they would keep us there till the morning...