Bottom Locks

Fiction

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

Corkney thought the noise was like a car driving through a tunnel full of birds with big beaks.

Scraping, squawking, terrible.

Scared him the first time and he dropped his bummed Newport in a puddle.

The noise came from the security gate, the accordion fold metal that Sammy Habi locked in front of the door to his party store.

He locked the gate against a pole.

Three locks.

Bottom, middle, top.

Liquor Carousel Beer Wine Pizza EBT Cash Chekks had a metal door that pulled down over the glass entry doors, but that door was expensive, so Sammy Habi protected that with the accordion fold gate that Corkney thought looked like a sweater on an old comic strip character.