The Rooftop

Continued from “Couldn’t Sleep”

A dark figure moved across the top of the stairway at the top of the building. It paused at the corner of the roof and then drifted back into the darkness.

Gonga’s eyes moved back and forth. He let his eyes lose focus, concentrating on his peripheral vision, searching for light, for movement, for anything that would give him a clue as to the identity of the unknown roof walker.

Who in their right mind would be out at this time of night? Gonga wondered. It had to be a trap of some sort.

Cautiously, he removed his hand from the railing and stepped back, off the metal ladder.

He stood perfectly still, letting his ears filter through the crickets and other night sounds. He was searching for something. Anything.

After an agonizing coffee buzzing fifteen minutes, he finally heard something other than the sound of his racing pulse. Footsteps. Muffled, going along the roof-top.

Once again, the figure moved across the top of the stairway and paused at the roof corner.

A light-bulb flashed in his brain and Gonga paused, momentarily blinded by his own brilliance. A security guard. That’s who this was. A security guard assigned to patrol the rooftop of the engineering building.

Hopefully he wasn’t carrying textbooks in his backpack to hurl down at trespassers.

Gonga searched fruitlessly for a “Keep Off” sign or a chain, or any other signal that would tell him to slowly back away from the stairway and exit the premises.

He stepped softly onto the first metal step. He was glad that red shows as black at night. He had taken the precaution of turning his bright red T-shirt with white “The Textbook Game” letters inside-out before leaving the house. And now he blended into the night.

To be continued…