That Demon Life

 

“This is a robbery! Everybody on the floor!”

It was nothing like the movies. The moment you realize you could die simply because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, something inside you changes. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid. Not even when they took me hostage.

The van door slammed shut. Speed twisted my stomach, and the stale reek of cigarettes clung to the air so thickly I could barely breathe. None of it mattered.

She pulled off her mask, and her blue eyes spread a soft, gentle light..

I barely heard what she was saying until the pistol cracked against my skull. Then she ordered me to count the money. It took time, my hands unsteady at first, but eventually I finished.

Three hundred thousand six hundred euros.

They divided the cash into smaller bags and slipped their masks back on. The van disappeared into a parking garage. Once it was locked away, we climbed into another vehicle. They peeled off their coveralls; underneath, all of them wore jerseys from the same football club.

“What do we do with him? He saw your face.”

The dark-haired woman leaned toward me.

“You’re going to be a good, quiet boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am."

"Because otherwise, you'll wake up with your balls in your mouth and your tongue up your ass."

They laughed.

“What do you think? Will he behave?”

She looked at me with playful cruelty in her eyes. Slowly, deliberately, she dragged her tongue across her upper lip and winked.

“He’ll be a quiet little thing.”

They shoved me into the back of the van and dumped me somewhere off the highway. I made it home six hours later.

I showered. Ate whatever I could find.

Then I tore through every drawer in the apartment until I found a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Half full. Lucky me.

I’d quit five months ago.

I wasn’t smoking to calm my nerves. I smoked to tame the fever her memory ignited inside me. Those blue eyes had sprayed burning graffiti across the narrow alleys of my cells.

The first drag cleared my head. The second silenced everything else.

I opened my bag looking for my phone. I found it beside two thick bundles of cash.

Ten thousand euros.

Not bad.

Two cubes of ice. Whiskey. Cola.

I stepped onto the balcony while Mick Jagger rasped through the speakers.

How the hell was I supposed to see her again?

*  *  *

The black van rolled into the garage. They climbed out and headed downstairs into the basement. Jerseys came off and landed on the table in a heap. The tall one tossed the match tickets over them—their alibi. The old man placed the bags of money beneath the table.

 All three of them sat down. The dark-haired woman set three shot glasses on the table and filled them with vodka. Three rounds went down fast.

“And now?”

“Nothing. Fifteen days off. Same routine.”

“The money?”

“It stays here.”

“Your place?”

The old man eyed the tall one.

“It always goes like this. Why change it now?”

The tall man frowned, stood up, pulled on his jacket, and left.

The old man poured another shot.

The dark-haired woman stayed quiet, thinking.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Probably in debt again.”

“To who?”

“Whoever’s still breathing. Drop it. Where are we?”

“Still three hundred thousand short of early retirement.”

The old man rubbed his beard, uneasy.

“That’s a lot.”

“I know.”

“We can’t hit again soon.”

“I know.”

“So?”

“Let me think.”

She picked up a school backpack and headed for the door.

“Why’d you put two bundles in his bag?”

She smiled, sliding on her glasses.

“Generosity has its merits.”

A faint smirk from the old man.

He cleared the table, locked everything in a metal cabinet. Took the cash bags, lifted a floor slab, hid them underneath.

Upstairs, he opened a beer and sank into the couch.

The news was already on.

He was drifting off when the anchor said the robbers had gotten away with twenty thousand euros…