Thread: Night Shift (SevenxDream)

Carousel Theatres had been open in Miami for nearly two decades when it had first started, it had been the most up-to-date movie theatre in the city with the best lighting, the best screens, and a prime downtown location. However, the cinema had passed through the hands of several property owners and managers since its opening twenty years prior, and Miami had evolved and changed around it. Where the theatre had once been in a classy, sedate neighbourhood, it was now surrounded by broken down old buildings with chipping, pastel-hued facades, in an area that had become known for loud and illegal rave parties, where drug trafficking tended to take place. In an effort to bring more attention to the theatre, the third property owner had used a large portion of the buildings finances to purchase new screens and to change the lighting fixtures, but had run out of money mid-way and abandoned it, leaving it a dusty, rundown cinema painted in the irritating shades of red and yellow that one would normally associate with a circus tent. The walls inside the place were covered in cracks, blemished with the half-hearted attempts at repair, and the floor - originally blue tiles - was now permanently stained with dirt and popcorn grease. Realizing it was a lost cause, the third owner had then passed it off to a disturbingly optimistic fourth owner, Pedro Mendez, a Miami native who saw potential in the rundown old cinema, and had every intention of restoring it to it's former glory - if only he could rake in a bit of cash. With few coming into the place - given that there were cleaner and more up-to-date theatres all over Miami - Mendez had been forced to cut back, and had let go of five staff members, leaving only five for the afternoon shift, and two for the midnight shift, when only one or two customers came into the place. One of those night shift workers had formerly been on the day shift - she was good enough that Mendez felt compelled to keep her on his staff, in the hopes that one day, when the place picked up, he could give her back her original shift. The other night shift worker was Peter Wexler - he had been working with Carousel Theatres for nearly fifteen years, so he had met every single property owner and manager that had passed through the place, and every one of them had relayed that Wexler was a reliable, fastidious and hard-working employee, not to mention that he was the only one who had never actually complained about working the midnight shift. Usually he worked by himself, but on the rare occasion in the past, some in-training employees had spent a shift with him, and while they all said he was a nice guy, there was a general consensus that there was something - off - about him. Like how he never seemed to blink, for instance. And Mendez couldn't disagree with them Wexler had initially given him the willies with his twitchy, neurotic behaviour and his general appearance. Because of his astounding height of six-foot-six, Wexler tended to tower over everyone he met, and he had wide, lamplight blue eyes, long limbs, and dirty blonde hair that stuck out at wild angles the over all effect was that he looked like a mildly retarded scarecrow. Not to mention the fact that Mendez couldn't figure out how old the guy actually was - in order to have worked there for fifteen years, he had to be at least thirty-three, but he didn't look a day over twenty. But eventually Wexler had grown on him, and he was too reliable to let go of just because he was a little eerie - so Mendez had kept him on, and had assured the new night-shift worker that, really, she just had to get to know Peter. And so it was on a Sunday night when Carousel theatres was particularly quiet that the two had been assigned to start their first shift together. The entire building was silent except for the bass rhythm coming from one of the wild parties outside, and Wexler stood behind the convenience counter looking astounded by a box of Junior Mints that he was holding in his hand.