“Jurassic Park”
A micro memoir by Anonymous (9).
“ATTENTI- CO-DE RE-” a screeching roar loomed over the loudspeaker only interrupted by the blas-BRRR BRRR as the usually invisible lights placed six feet apart lining the top of the stores began to appear, shrieking in perfect harmony as the speaker. It was the only thing perfect that night. As I frantically peer around the lingerie, my life flashes before my eyes. Not just the alarm lights, but a plastic door scraping the tracks as it gracefully sweeps to the other side.
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
Dropping everything on a nearby display counter I booked it towards the voice I recognized, barely squeezing out of the plastic door snapping behind me.
“What’s code red?”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“Why are they closing the stores?”
A flood of questions danced around the walls and in my mind as more and more plastic doors bolted shut around me. All I knew was we had to go.
My mom stopped to talk to one of the Bath and Body works employees who was seconds away from locking everyone inside, “Hey… if you don’t mind me askin-”
“Do you know what code red is?” my sister interrupted. My mom retreated mentally, trying to grasp onto the situation.
At this point, I began clasping my ears firming with my fists, trying to ease the sounds of the blaring alarm that rang above so much so that I didn’t pick up on any response from the worker. Thankfully, I didn’t need to.
My sister grabbed my hand and we began scrambling towards the department store. It was familiar, easy to navigate, and the car was parked outside there anyway. As an added bonus, my mom would complain less about being trapped somewhere. It was her favorite store.
My video was interrupted by a beckoning voice behind me.
“Hey!” she laughed. “Look at what I got for Addison. I got it just before the alarm started. We were mid transaction when the alarm went off but I insisted on gettin- aww, isn’t it cute.” Every sentence was another song and dance with her. A kid trying to reach the word count on an essay. Each thought embellished into a paragraph like food transformed into a meal. To be fair, it was pretty cute.
I always wondered how she found it, picked the right size, and bought it all within the time it took my sister to get not nearly halfway through her bra fitting. Also wondered how she wasn’t more panicked at the blaring alarm, and barely looked behind her to see if I was there.
My sister said audibly my thoughts exactly, “Why don’t the employees know what code red is?”
“Yeah… I don’t know.”
“I think it’s for anything bad.” A voice behind me echoed, slipping underneath the angry fists that engulfed my ears. I grabbed my phone from my jean pocket again, nearly dropping it while walking with my shaking hands. Code red in a mall. I had typed into google. “A condition of heightened alertness or preparedness, especially to guard against imminent danger.” I read through biased eyes. Well I guess they're right. I thought while peering behind me, sizing up who it might be. What if it was a shooter?