The Robbery: A Tale Inspired by Asimov Magazine's Restrictive Guidelines

The Robbery

By, Ashton Macaulay

5:20PM Friday

     “Put the goods in the bag! We’re running out of time.” I yelled to my partners. The vault hung open, perfectly exposed. The riches inside were ripe for the taking. “We’ve got fifteen seconds until we’re all going back to the kennel.” We had all been there before; the big house was a scary place, not one I wanted to go back to. Hundreds of us crammed in like animals, I could still here the screaming. I knew I should’ve recruited better than these two. Never could stick to a timetable.

The two of them were certainly not the best for the job. Jimmy, the peg leg, so aptly named as one of his legs was missing, may have looked slow, but could run just as well without it. Problem was he had a bit of a problem with ‘The Stuff’. Didn’t really have a street name for it, but one sniff was enough to take him off his ass for hours at a time. He had to be carefully watched during these delicate operations or his habit threatened to blow the whole thing.

     

    Snuffles was a strange one. It was a name that he had picked up somewhere right out of the orphanage. It fit him well. The guy constantly sounded like he had a cold, couldn’t stop sniffing. His problem wasn’t so much drugs, as it was attention to detail. He would get hung up on the tiny pieces of a bigger operation and it tended to slow him down.

Unfortunately for me they were my only options. Most of the others in the neighborhood had gone legit, obeying orders, working for a broken system. They were content to shuck and jive for the occasional pat on the head. Not me, I wasn’t going to be a part of that hierarchy. The heist was going to take me above all of that.

     “We just have a few more bags in here!”

     “There’s no time! Get what you have now and let’s go!” It had never been about the endgame for me. One or two bags would have been enough to make it worth it. Breaking into the biggest vault of them all and stealing what they didn’t want me to have would have been enough. Of course, when it comes to splitting shares, it’s never that easy. People get greedy, and the heist just keeps getting bigger.

     “Alright, alright, get the last bag Jimmy, we’re out of here.” It was too late. We had spent too much time at the vault and now from far away I could hear the authorities coming. They were coming fast too. It was not in their nature to show mercy to common criminals like us. We had to move, and we had to move fast.

     “Oh no man, we’re done for. Game over!” Snuffles was both a coward, and had watched one too many movies. He didn’t do well under pressure. Each minute that passed I regretted my choice in accomplices even more.

     “Shut up and get the bags. We’re out of here.” I could see them rounding the corner, charging toward us. Their guns were out, there was no time left. We had an out, but it required time. Stashed just on the other side of the vault was a toxic gas, nothing deadly, but enough to distract The Authorities while we made our escape.  

     “We’ve got five seconds, get the gas! Move it!” Jimmy and Snuffles were running now, both had two bags each, clenched tight in their grip. I picked up a bag and ran after them. Shots rang out. I continued running, nothing was going to keep me from the prize. Too long had I labored on this plan for it to go south now, there was no way out other than the gas. It was either that, or back to the kennel.

     To my right there was a thump as Snuffles hit the ground hard. He screamed, writhing in pain. Just the sound of it made my hairs stand on end. I might have been able to save him, but nothing else mattered in that moment. There was no choice but to keep running. If I stopped moving then I would fall as well. I picked up one of his bags and continued forward.

     “Wait! You can’t just leave me here! We were partners remember?” Jimmy looked at him for a second, looked at me, and followed suit. He may have mouthed the word ‘sorry’, but I can’t be sure. The whole thing is so blurry. “You can’t do this! You’ll never take me alive!” His last sentence is cut short as another shot rings out. There was silence, followed by the pounding of boots running after us.

     “Come on Jimmy, forget him! He’s gone.” Jimmy picked up the pace. In no time we were behind the vault and I was scrambling to pull out the escape plan. My arms were trembling. Unable to move them I turned around and pulled the package out with my legs. My kicking was frantic. I may not have liked Jimmy, but I didn’t wish any harm on him either. Death always takes its toll, whether we want it to or not.

     “Boss?”

     “Open the package and let’s get the hell out of here.” Jimmy slices open the package. The smell makes my hair ruffle. “Let’s go!” The side of the vault rings as a shot hits it inches from my head. The guard had rounded the corner. There was a moment where I stared at him and he stared right back. In our eyes there was mutual hatred. The strength was overpowering, moving almost, but it did not last long.

     He leveled his gun again. His blonde hair moved slightly in the breeze revealing cold, blue eyes. That man was a killer, we both knew it. In that instant I took a chance, dodged left, and ran as fast as I could away from him. The ping came to my right, barely missing me. Jimmy and I were around the corner, bags gripped tight. From behind I could hear the guard reeling at the smell, and shortly after, vomiting.

     We ran until our legs grew sore and we could carry the bags no more. When we stopped we were in back of an apartment complex, hidden in the alleyway. The authorities had long since stopped their pursuit. We were free. “Did we do it boss? Are they gone?”

     “Yes, I think so. Let us see what our hard work has bought us.” I reached down and tore open one of the bags. From inside spilled the sweetest thing I have ever smelled. Apples, old takeout boxes, empty coffee cups, and cans of aged tuna fell onto the ground before us. The score was great, it was everything I had ever dreamed of. “A moment of silence for our fallen companion before we feast on this bounty.”

     Jimmy bowed his head and lowers his tail in a sign of somber solidarity. I did the same and we sat for a moment. Emotions ran wild within me. The greatest score I could have ever dreamed of was over. There was nothing to do but enjoy, and yet, I felt empty. I still feel it to this day. Late at night I howl with the memory, but in the end there was nothing to do about it. “Dig in Jimmy. 9 lives don’t last like they used to…”

5:20PM Friday (The Perspective of The Authorities)

     “God Damnit! Your cats are in the dumpster again! They’re spilling trash all over the sidewalk. Take care of it Rick!” The woman was old, crotchety, and waving a broom in front of her.

     “Alright Mrs. Kenway I’ll get them out. Sorry.” Rick walked back into his house and grabbed a spray bottle filled with water and lemon juice. They said cats would be easier than having a dog…

     Rick stepped out into the street and saw the dumpster at the end of the cul de sac. Inside, three cats were rolling around in garbage, trying to pull the bags out. “Hey! Get away from there!” He ran toward them, shooting water furiously. He was fast, but the cats were faster. They were grabbing the bags in their mouths and making a break for it.

     “Oh no you don’t.” Rick had experience with these particular cats. They were always tipping over garbage cans and causing general unrest. For a while the other cats had followed suit, but for the most part they had grown out of the bad behavior. There were only three that continued to misbehave. Rick was ten feet from the dumpster. Two of the cats were his: Jimmy and Snuffles. Jimmy was a wild card, but could usually be reined in with catnip. Snuffles was slow, and wouldn’t be too hard to take down.  

     Snuffles slowed down as he ran out of the dumpster, recognizing Rick and the spray bottle in his hand. Rick leveled the bottle and fired. He hit him on the first try. Wretched meowing erupted from the street, and he sprayed him again to stop it. The other two rounded the dumpster, trying to escape. “Get back here!”

     Rick came around the dumpster and saw the two cats, bags in mouths pawing at a cardboard box behind the dumpster. He shot haphazardly and missed. Once again he leveled the spray bottle, but for a moment locked eyes with the unknown tabby. They were intense, giving him pause about his actions. Come on man. For Christ’s sake, it’s a cat… He squeezed to fire and the box before him tore open. Inside was a five week old halibut that had been decomposing, forgotten beneath the dumpster. The smell was unbelievably horrid.

     “Oh God.” He squeezed the bottle but missed and hit the dumpster. Rick fell to his knees and vomited all across the warm pavement. Shame was all around him, swirling. By the time his eyes had stopped watering the cats were long gone, and so was the garbage. Morose at his lack of cat parenting ability Rick grabbed Snuffles and tromped back to his house.

End

Afterword:

     I would like to state that I wrote this purely because Asimov magazine said they would not accept any stories about talking cats. Well I wrote it anyway!!

The Spoon

The Spoon

     I can recall my long days sitting at the office, The humming of the pneumatic tubes, shooting in all directions around me, trying desperately to find their place as I firmly sat in mine. Papers would whistle past my head at speeds beyond my wildest imagination, but for the most part I was content to sit at my desk and read stacks of papers. In these papers were numbers of great importance. The accounts for the entire western division of Poly-Corp resided between their carefully manicured, carbon-copy pages.

     Every day was the same routine. I would walk in at approximately 8:07 AM, twenty-three minutes before my shift started, but a full seven minutes later than being a half hour early. It was the perfect time so as not to appear too eager, but just eager enough. I would walk over to the grey filing cabinet to my right and pull a large red lever. From above a tube would open and drop a fresh stack of papers into the first row of filing cabinets. The noise was horrendous, but I didn’t mind it so much.

     The room itself looked a tad like the layer of an evil scientist. Nothing all that exciting went on in there, but it looked as though it might. Every corner was filled with a series of clear, twisting tubes which delivered mail to rooms around the office. Carefully nestled in the middle of them was a drop slot. This was where my mail came. After pulling the big lever I would walk to the tube, check for mail, and usually find a small white card.

     On this day it read: Thanks Pete for whatever it is you do down there. Keep up the mediocrity! –Sincerely, The Management.

     Gingerly, I would pick up the note, grab a red pushpin from the right drawer of my desk, and stick the note to the wall. After the first year I had filled all of the cracks on one wall with tiny white notecards. No one came in to see them, but if they had, I can only imagine that they would have been impressed. Some said: You are adequate. or, Today is Wednesday. Beauty was to be found everywhere in that office. Each corner was full of wonderful surprises for the passerby.

     The file machine wooshed and clanked like a giant metal beast from the corner. “Oh hush now, it’s only a thousand leaflets, nothing to worry about.” I said to the machine. It might have looked odd that I was talking to myself, but only the tiny black camera in the far right corner of the room would have seen it. I gave it a smile and a knowing wink, and continued to talk to the machines around me. “Alright boys, another long day ahead of us! Who’s ready to balance some budgets and cook some books.” The angry filing machine belched a cloud of black smoke, signaling that it was finished receiving the day’s load of papers.

     When the clock struck 8:25AM it was time for coffee. In a small, brown cupboard sandwiched between two wastepaper bins was an equally small, pristine, white coffee cup. After heaving the stack of papers from the filing cabinets to my desk I grabbed the cup and walked out into the hallway. The walls were a sort of drab grey that reminded me of cold, Russian soup. Why the soup had to be Russian I really haven’t a clue, but the point was that they were drab, and for the most part when I picture borscht that’s what I think of.

     The break room was and is approximately twenty five and a half steps from my office. I have counted these steps often as I have had quite some time to do so. The sound that squishes up from the both hard and soft carpet is a fond memory that still brings muted excitement to my tired heart. The door to the break room was brown oak, or imitation oak, and glorious to the point of envy. I opened the door with a gold handle that was almost certainly not gold and entered the break room.

     That morning there was two other people in line for coffee. The machine took notoriously long to finish, but usually spat out its contents by around 8:27AM.  “Morning.” Sniveled Pierre, a crotchety old caricature of an old French stereotype. His mind had never managed to leave the late 1940s though his body had continued to travel unabated through the waves of time. Where his spine might have once been close to straight there was the beginning of a dowagers hump. That morning he wore a tattered black coat over a soiled, black and white stripe T-Shirt. “Is this coffee going to be ready sometime within the next century?! If I do not have it soon my bowels will seize and rust, only to leave behind the frayed shell of a man who can no longer excrete their contents, and breathes only to become closer to that old friend the God of death.”

     He grimaces at the thought of his own statement, revealing a set of teeth more crooked than the streets of San Francisco. “Really Pierre, is that necessary?”

     “I’m sorry that I haven’t yet resigned myself to a system which neither provides nor contemplates my basic human rights!” He pointed his finger at the little black bulb on the ceiling and began to curse wildly in French, his accent dripping like maple syrup from a tree. 

     “Ooh, I wish you wouldn’t do that Pierre.” Said the mousy man in front of him. His name was Jim. He had been there for even longer than me. All I can say about him is that he was unassuming, his shirts never fit quite right, and the hair atop his head more clearly resembled a shrubbery than it had any right to.

     “Shut up and make the coffee pig! I know my rights.” I stayed out of the fight, not wanting to interrupt my schedule. It was 8:26 in the morning. We were seconds away from the coffee coming out of the machine when BAM! The door burst open and two men in grey suits with dark glasses burst through the door. Each wore a large earpiece with a plethora of blinking lights on it.

     “Get away from me!” Yelled Pierre, dropping his coffee mug and backing against the counter, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. The two men nodded unemotionally to each other and grabbed one of Pierre’s arms each. They dragged him into the hallway. Neither Jim nor I said a word. When they had taken Pierre out I moved a step closer to the coffee machine, taking his place in line.

     His fault for not waiting. From the hallway there was a quick gunshot and then the coffee was done.

     “Ah, yes, finally. Here you go Pete, made it a little stronger this morning. Busy day ahead eh?”

     “Those files aren’t going to organize themselves!” We laughed for approximately ten point five seconds, quickly poured the black liquid into our cups and shuffled back into the hallway. As I stepped into the hallway I noticed two things. One, I had no spoon for my coffee to stir in the powdered milk packets back at my office, and Two, Pierre was lying dead on the floor. Luckily for me, clutched in his hand was a most marginal spoon. I reached down, plucked it up, and continued on my way.

     There was a spot of red on the spoon and I cleaned it off with the handkerchief I kept in my pocket at all times. It was pure white like the cup I held in my hand, only afterward it became an off pink. I shoved it back into my pocket and walked back into the office.

     The powdered milk fell into my drink, clumping around the top. The spoon served nicely to mix it in and made for quite a pleasant taste. As I sipped my coffee I looked up to one of my white notes which said Business as usual.

Written By,

Ashton Macaulay