The Seventh Crisis - NaNo 2015: Day 2

Right. The clock had just gone four fifteen when an old lady walked in to the bank.

As in, walked in to the bank. Well, more sort of though it really. Right through it. 
 
Brian glanced up at the sight of the old lady entering, the branch at that time devoid of any other customers, patrons, bankers or anyone else apart from him, Big Glen over at the business banking counter and Dara at the desk two down from Brian. The both of them were doing as much work as Brian was it seemed. Dara was messing about on her new phone (a highly expensive black slab of high-tech wizardry that quite frankly scared the bejesus out of Brian) and Big Glen looked very much like he was sleeping. Standing up. With his eyes open. Either that or he was dead.

Was Glen dead?

Brian wasn't sure. He was just about to get up, walk over and prod Glen with a yellow biro (with the banks logo and name taking up 95% of it's cheap surface area) when the old lady walked in. The shush of the automatic doors caused Brian to sit his sweet arse back down on the stool that he had just vacated and with an inward groan he noticed that the sweet old dear was making her way over to his service point, even though Dara's was closer. He tried to look busy, keeping his head low and scribbling frantically on his pad with a pen in each hand. he quickly glanced up. No use. She had passed by Dara who was still glued to her phone and was fixed on Brian, her lips puckered into something resembling a dogs bottom. Brian appraised her quickly:

Short grey perm type hairstyle – Check

Light blue anorak that had seen better days – Check

Shopper – Unknown, possibly left outside but doubtful, for the youths that frequented the high street on a Tuesday afternoon would be off with it before anyone could say “this steak is very much not cooked to my liking, please inform the kitchen”.

Battered handbag brimming with useless paper, lists, lottery tickets and bingo cards – Check

Glazed eyes oblivious to the fraught and stressful days of the present, proving only to be windows of a brain firmly planted in yesteryear when you could buy a car for a chewed hammer and you were allowed to shoot dogs with a crossbow – Check

Textbook old lady. Inbound. Four seconds and three, two, one...

Then she went through his service point – the desk bisecting her in two momentarily - onward straight past his face and through the solid and very much closed doors of the elevator. Her expression never changed and she made no sound. She did smell of slightly sour strawberries however. 
 
Then she was gone.

“Eh?” Brian said aloud. Silence filled the bank. 
 
Dara played with her phone.

Big Glen still looked dead.

“Eh?” Brian said again.

Dara still played with her phone.

Big Glen blinked – really slowly – and twitched the corners of his mouth slightly.

Brian got up from his stool once more and walked over to the elevator. It was about five paces away and the doors were still shut. he placed his hand upon the cool surface of the door. A surface that was covered with yellow vinyl and the name of the bank which took up 95% of the surface area. Even then whoever fitted it didn't manage to get the whole name in. It read:

The Royal National Scotland Bank of Banking and General Fin

Which quite often would make Brian inwardly chuckle to himself as he imagined a massive fish smoking a cigar, wearing a uniform emblazoned with medals from a million battles filling out a deposit form at the front counter. General Fin, the hero of the War of Aquaria, decorated veteran of the Filter Insurgency and all round nice fish. 
 
Brian wasn't chuckling as he gingerly bent forward and sniffed the door. Looking back at this later that night, thinking the incident over as he lay in bed next to a very loudly snoring Stacy, he wondered why exactly he had sniffed the door. He never did find out why, just that it felt like the right thing to do.

Strawberries. Slightly sour.

“Huh.” Brian said.

Dara cooed with delight as her phone made a rather irritating noise.

Big Glen was still blinking.

Brian pressed the button of the lift. The doors remained shut but a loud deep whirring sound told him the lift had acknowledged it's summons and was currently descending towards his position. He couldn't have missed her opening the doors then. The lift wasn't even on this level. What if she was a ghost? Could she have been a ghost? Had he just seen a ghost? Lets see:

Old lady – Check

Going through stuff – Check

Brian decided that he might just have seen a ghost.

The doors clunked open noisily and Brian took one step back, mouth agape. The lift was empty, but that wasn't why his mouth was agape. He was yawning. He was tired. That explains it, he decided, he had fallen asleep. A small micronap with a little lucid dream. But still, he was pretty sure he hadn't been, because while he was bored, he wasn't aware of being tired. Until now that is. Well, until a few moments ago. He decided that this could do with a little more of an investigation and went into the lift, sniffing away. No smell inside however. A faint smell of lift, but no strawberries, sour or otherwise could be detected with his ever so slightly larger than normal nostrils (I didn't mention that before). Should he go up? Could the old lady have gone up?

What old lady?

Of course there hadn't been an old lady. He'd just had a bit of a brainwrong. He'd read about it somewhere. Or perhaps not.

Brian went back over to the service points, standing before Dara who either had failed to notice him engrossed as she was in her phone, or was choosing to ignore him.

“Dara,” Brian said. He didn't like Dara. She was four years older than him with four children and a fat husband who smelled of coal. Dara wasn't fat, not that it made him like her any more. She had a way about her that was just annoying. She looked down on him, he could feel it. She was condescending every time she spoke to him and she complained about everything. Oddly Stacy didn't mind her, and occasionally Dara would bring her coal-smelling husband around to Brian and Stacy's house of an evening. Brian would be nice to them both and complain like hell afterwards. He was convinced that Dara's husband had once blocked his toilet by putting a ham-filled roll in cling film down there one day, but he couldn't prove it. Stacy had asked him what possible reason would Dara's husband have to put a whole ham-filled roll wrapped in cling film down the toilet. Brian couldn't give a good enough reason but he knew that it wasn't him. He couldn't ever remember Dara's husband's name. Was it Stephen? He looked like a Stephen. Or a Jabba. He looked like he could be a Jabba as well.

“Dara.” Brian said again, a little more loudly this time, taking the pen on her desk out from it's docking plinth and throwing it in front of her.

Dara looked up and fixed Brian with a glare that instantly filled him with a great clarity. Dara didn't like him either. Suddenly he felt weird. Suddenly he wanted Dara to like him. He still didn't like her but he wanted to be the one that did all the disliking. Now he realised that she disliked him, her subconsciously wanted to move to the other side of the liking sphere and like her. That's how much he disliked her. He would like her out of spite.

“What is it?” She said coldly. Had she always spoken to him coldly? He wasn't sure. He was now thinking that perhaps she had. Had she always disliked him?

“Did you see an old lady?” 
 
“I've see lots of old ladies Brian. There are old ladies everywhere. Most of them come into this bloody bank. I probably serve more old ladies than you masturbate in a week. I reckon you masterbate a lot Brian. I don't see dead people. I see near dead people. All. The. Time.”

Had she always been this cutting towards him? She totally disliked him. Damn. He could have spent much more time liking her. If he'd liked her and made it obvious all those years and months, she might have hated him more. Then he would have won.

Won what exactly?

“Okay, you know there's no need to be like that. Did you see an old lady just now I mean. One particular old lady. She came in here about five minutes ago, went straight thro...eh, straight past my desk.” Brian said. He was losing her. She was glazing over in that

dead

disinterested way that people do when Brian normally speaks to them. “Just minutes ago Dara.” he prompted.

“Nah, I didn't. Was playing Candy Crumble wasn't I?” She replied, holding up her phone that was just far too large to be of use to anyone. Brian thought that over years all those tech companies had been trying to make things smaller. Why the hell were things getting bigger again? Who was asking for bigger things? Not him. He was just starting to get used to smaller things. Now it was bigger things. 
 
“Yeah right. Never mind.” he said, and began to walk away, but something in his tone must have piqued the curiosity of Dara the Despiser (a name which Brian decided that would fit quite well from now on) and she momentarily forgot all about her phone as she leaned forward on her desk, large yet sparse face craned towards him.

“How come?” She asked, the icyness suddenly melting like an ice lolly left on a sunlounger. In the sun. In a hot country.

Brian had decided that if he told Dara, then she would either despise him more, forcing him to like her even more, or she would think him a sausage short of a hotdog. He instead mumbled something and angled his head towards his desk, grinning obtusely. A strange tactic but one that seemed to work and moments later Dara was bent over her phone, continuing those strange cooing noises. Brian decided to ask the big man himself, and quickly sidled over to Business Banking. Big Glen had been staring right at her. He must have seen her. If not, Brian decided he would just forget the whole thing. Even though it had seemed so real, it obviously wasn't.

Obviously.

Old ladies do not go through things. It's a known (but not often discussed) fact.