‘Hold on, you’ve gotta just jiggle it a litt–ah, there we go!’
The door burst open, light from the hallway spilling into the gloomy warehouse. The real estate agent held the door open for the young couple to walk in ahead of him, partly because he was a gentleman and partly because he was afraid of the dark.
‘Woah,’ Alexa coughed, batting the dust away from her face with an open palm. ‘How long has this place been abandoned?’
‘Uh, we prefer the term “vacant”,’ the realtor chuckled, fumbling around in the fuse box. He found the right lever and threw it back. The building creaked and protested, then all of the lights flickered on at once.
Wincing at the unexpected glare, James walked next to his wife. ‘Well?’
‘It has potential,’ she mused, squinting away the bright spots from her vision. ‘A great filming location, at the very least.’
‘Oh really?’ James asked, surprised. ‘I thought we’d decided on office space?’
‘Can’t you see it, though?’ she said, stepping away from him and tilting her head like an imaginary camera.
‘I just see a big, empty, concrete room.’
‘Gotta have more vision, James!’ Alexa laughed. ‘We could totally host a marketing video production shoot here.’
‘I assumed you meant like, movies and stuff,’ James frowned. ‘Now we’re doing marketing?’
‘Pffft,’ Alexa snorted. ‘Movies are where the money is, sure. But marketing… that’s where the soul is. The art.’
‘Right… do you even know any of the video production companies around Melbourne?’
‘Oh James,’ Alexa turned around, shaking her head. ‘I know all of them.’
‘Does that mean we have a deal?’ the realtor asked, appearing behind James and making him jump. He held out a clipboard and a contract, flashing them a too-white grin.
Alexa looked around the cavernous space, slowly nodding her head.
‘Yeah,’ she whispered. ‘Yeah, I think we do.’
‘What the hell just happened?!’ James looked between them, confused, as his wife signed on the dotted line.