Serval and Sheep (Chapter 9)
Elevators always get stuck at the worst possible times.
Desmond believes his aversion to Mondays is criminally unoriginal. But alas, he is a high school student, so it's virtually a legal obligation to mourn the death of a weekend and curse the birth of yet another week of schoolwork. But recently, he finds a strange comfort in Mondays. At least he doesn't have student council meetings on Mondays.
He holds no shame over this thought. After all, anyone would fear spending an hour confined in a room with the animal who nearly ate you as an afternoon snack. Doing paperwork.
Their conversations since that day have been quick, dry and out of absolute necessity. Two bake sales have come and gone with only a few sentences exchanged between the two regarding the preparations. To that extent, they work marvelously together.
Desmond is almost content with this relationship. His body might enter into fight or flight mode every time he sees the serval, but he prefers that over her vapid smalltalk and fake smiles. He already sees enough of that whenever she speaks to the caracal or the pigeon.
Plus, being a member of the student council has its perks. The other students seem to respect him more, and he is viewed as more of an authority. That's the whole reason why he joined, after all. He is sometimes excused from classes early to prepare for events, and he is given priority in lunch lines during meeting days. Plus, the faculty elevator, however old and rickety, is his to use, which eliminates time-consuming treks up the winding staircases.
Right now, he decides to flex this right. With five minutes to get from the second floor to the seventh all the way to his Animal Linguistics class, a relaxing elevator ride would save him from potential tardiness and a sweaty undershirt. A little bit of decadence to spruce up his Monday.
Desmond presses the "up" button and waits. He watches students bustle up the stairs in a hurry, chatting and hoping they won't be late. He can't help but feel a little burst of schadenfreude.
Ding!
The quaint sound heralds the elevator's arrival. Desmond returns his attention to the grated door, which shakily hobbles open. Revealing a surprised serval inside.
"Hi, Desmond."
"I'll walk." The sheep prepares to take off, but glances at his watch. Three minutes left... there's no way he can go up five flights of stairs, even sprinting, in three minutes. He groans, and dejectedly rubs his eyes. Hafsa moves aside, leaning again the right wall of the elevator, while Desmond takes his place against the left wall. He smacks the button for the seventh floor but notices it has already been pressed. Of course. They're in the same class.
The clanging door shakily creeps shut. It seems to be mockingly slow today, dragging out every second.
Stay cool. Obviously she won't try anything. I just need to make it to the seventh floor.
Ding.
The beep signals they passed by the third floor.
See? We're zooming by. It's hot in here.
Ding.
Fourth floor. Should I sneak a look at her? She's not even looking this way. Good.
Ding.
Fifth floor. I shouldn't say anything. Just don't move. Why am I sweating so bad? Hurry up, elevator!
Ding.
Sixth floor. Almost there. Just one more--
A deafening screech shatters his thoughts. The floor trembles and bucks, forcing the two animals to grab the wall for balance. Desmond is blinded by the flickering of the lights.
Suddenly, it all stops. The screeching, the trembling, the flickering. The elevator is as still as the dawn. They're left all alone.
"You've gotta be kidding me..." Desmond growls, lunging towards the buttons. He furiously slams every button, dragging his hand across the knobs, but the elevator shows no response to his input.
"Is there an emergency button?" Hafsa's leveled voice suggests from the corner. It's clear she's trying to avoid approaching him. Is that her own form of consideration?
"This elevator's been here since the school was founded. It barely has a belt." Desmond huffs.
She scrambles for something in her bag, finally whipping out her smartphone. Telling by her furrowed face, it doesn't seem like the solution.
"No reception. I can't phone for help."
The sheep paces. "Surely they'll realize we're missing, right? We're not the type to cut class."
"If both of us are absent, it's likely the teacher will assume we had student council business. I don't think she'll look for us. At this rate, we'll be here all fifth period until someone from the staff tries to use it."
"God damn it!" Desmond slams a clenched fist against the old wooden wall. The vibrations reverberate throughout the box and fade away, leaving only a tense mood.
Hafsa speaks after a while.
"So I guess we're stuck until somebody notices it's busted."
The sheep chokes down a dry swallow. "I guess so."
You win this round, Monday.
Being trapped with your nemesis in an old tiny elevator for an indeterminate amount of time is not fun. The serval and sheep have huddled into opposite corners in the back of the box, facing away from each other. Desmond's watch states they have been trapped for ten minutes, but he suspects it must be about three years slow.
They haven't spoken a word to each other since retreating to their corners. Desmond prays Hafsa has the common sense to keep it that way.
He sneaks a glance at her. Hugging her knees against her chest, she blankly swipes at her phone, her dispirited eyes clearly looking at nothing in particular. Her tail languidly flops up and down, creating a rhythmic patting sound.
The sheep decides to follow her lead, and reaches for his bag. He rummages around looking for his phone, when a rumbling stops his hand dead in its tracks.
Hafsa's stomach growled.
She squeezes her legs tighter, desperate to silence her gut, and buries her reddened face against her kneecaps. Maybe if she curls up tight enough, she would just disappear right off the face of the earth.
She expected her classmate to enter full panic mode. That's what she would do in his shoes. The rumbling of a predator's belly is a song of death for a herbie.
But the sheep remains silent. Suspiciously so. Hafsa's ears swivel to try to discern what's going on, but only picks up rustling. Suddenly, the noise stops altogether, and she hears something slide across the floor, coming straight for her. The item lightly impacts against her thigh with a slight crinkle. Did he cobble together some sort of makeshift grenade?
She lifts her head from her knees and looks down. An energy bar.
Hafsa's ears flatten. Flashbacks of that gruesome first interaction bombard her mind.
"Are you mocking me?"
"Am I really in a position to do that right now?" He retorts. "Just eat it."
She reaches for it and holds it up close to her face, inspecting it. It's a standard carnie energy bar. The plastic wrapping is covered in creases, suggesting it's been smushed in his bag for quite some time now. She notices it's chocolate flavored.
"You can have it back." She slides it back to the sheep.
"Are you really going to be coy about this? This is sort of a life or death--"
"Calm down already. I'll just eat my own snack. I always carry one with me." She reaches into her bag and pulls out a fresh energy bar. "See?"
Desmond stares at her in mild indignation. "What, do you think I poisoned the one I gave you?"
"No. I just don't like sweet things." She turns to look at him nervously. "Um, maybe you should look away while I eat."
"I think we're well beyond that point. Table manners usually loosen after the first predation attempt."
"There's gonna be a second one real soon if you don't pipe down." She grumbles. Hesitantly, she unwraps the bar.
"Well, excuse me." She mutters, and takes a tentative bite.
Even though she's trying to behave, it's clear she appreciates the food. Desmond briefly recalls the old saying: "Carnies chew with their hearts". A meal really means the world to them. The look of pure rapture on the serval's face, even when biting into a cheap energy bar, is more expressive than any herbie's dining on a five star dinner. It borders on fascinating.
"What flavor?" Desmond blurts.
What the hell am I doing? That came out of nowhere!
Hafsa looks at him. The eyes of a predator mid-meal are petrifying.
"This is peanut chili. It's really good."
"I can see that."
"Do you want a bite?" She offers, too enveloped in her snack to realize the awkwardness of her proposal.
"No, uh, you probably need every bite." He sniffs. "Besides, if we're stuck here all night I still have this beast." He waves his energy bar unenthusiastically, emphasizing its heftiness.
"Why do you even have that? You know that's for carnies, right?"
"Obviously!" Desmond bleats. "It's just a stupid thing they taught us in Species Awareness Day. Y'know, keep a carnie bar on you if you're confronted by a hungry predator."
Hafsa snorts. "Is that seriously what they taught you? What, are you supposed to throw it across the room and say 'go fetch'?"
"It's more like you're supposed to offer it to them. It defuses tension. The carnie eats the bar instead of you, I guess." he shrugs.
"That's so stupid!" Hafsa cackles. "Well, I guess it would work right now. I am in fact eating an energy bar instead of you. Too bad your bar is sweet. And probably expired."
"It's not expir--" he squints at the label's crumpled fine print. "Okay, it's expired. To be fair, I've had this since middle school. But I seem to recall you eating a sweet bar. After the first student council meeting."
Hafsa's ears perk up. "Well, it was strawberry flavored. Those are exceptions."
"How so?"
She stares at the ceiling, pensive.
"Felines can't really taste sweet things, you know. It just tastes bland to us. But strawberries are kind of sour, and we can taste that really well. It's like if you bit down into lemon."
Desmond grimaces. "That doesn't sound nice either."
"It's not. But it wakes you up. Makes you feel pumped, like splashing your face with cold water. I don't know, I like that feeling. Puts the 'energy' in energy bar."
Hafsa gives a sheepish pause.
"Plus, it's pink. And that's really cute."
"That was the sort of answer I was expecting."
Hafsa grins, a full-mouthed, tongue-biting, teeth-baring grin. A grin so different from the meek, artificial, closed-mouthed smiles Desmond had seen before. A pearly, razor-sharp grin. A warm, amused, genuine grin, that makes you want to smile just by seeing it. A carnivore's grin. It petrifies him.
Ding.
The elevator's archaic whirring rises from the dead. The two animals are knocked back by the sudden ambush, struggling to maintain balance during the quake. The sliding door shambles open, revealing the seventh floor of the academy.
Hafsa and Desmond stare at the bright freedom blankly, unbelieving. Then, they look at each other.
I really hate Mondays.