I remember the taste of adrenaline on my tongue, the sour flavor coating it in metallic scum as if I’d been sucking on a mouthful of pennies. Crouching silently in the darkness of my apartment, Quinn’s hand warm on my back, we waited to be found out. And when that didn’t happen, I tried to go on with my life, I did, but every time he touched me, I swear I could smell blood. That thick coppery scent that hits the back of your throat, triggering your most primitive fight or flight instincts. We split before the week was out but that’s jumping to the end of the story.

I moved around quite a bit when I was young. Due to my wonderful upbringing in the foster care system, I was on my own by the ripe old age of sixteen. As you might imagine, things did not get miraculously better after that. Still, I managed to scrape along and by the time I was twenty five, I lived in a cheap apartment complex next to a run-down strip mall. Nearly all the stores had been abandoned but there were a few fast food restaurants still limping along within it. Needless to say, it wasn’t one of the better sections of town.

I’d been there a few years when I caught wind of a rumor a few of my neighbors had been talking about. They told me that some friends of theirs had recently been caught stealing copper wiring from inside the walls of one of the vacant stores, but before they got caught, they'd been bragging about how much money they had already made selling the things they had stolen. Apparently one store in particular had shut down with all the merchandise still inside. The descriptions they gave to my inexperienced ears made it sound like easy money. Me and my friends began to form a plan, watching the store and the surrounding area, and after a few days of that we deemed ourselves ready. In hindsight we should have watched longer and planned better but most of us were in our mid-twenties. We were full of piss and vinegar and thought, as most young people do, that we were invincible. We were also mostly broke, and looking for extra beer money after work or class was something we embraced wholeheartedly. There was a trail that ran behind the store, between our apartment and the closest fast food places and we began using it to continue our surveillance. There were two rollup doors at the back of the store previously used for the delivery of merchandise. Usually, they were tightly closed and locked with intimidating padlocks, but on a cold clear morning in October, we saw that one of them had been left open, the lock dangling from the hasp. Seeing this, we excitedly made our plans to come back after dark.

We knew there was only one security guard for the whole place. We thought if we kept a lookout posted and timed it right, we could clean the place out. We waited until after dark, dressing ourselves all in black like cat burglars and snuck down to the site on foot, giggling and cutting up until we got close, and then we all stole quietly around to the back of the store. The mood was still charged, it was fun, an adventure. I remember having to suppress my laughter and feeling it bubbling up inside me like carbonation. The darkness was intermittent, with street lights and neon flickering randomly along the strip. The smell of honeysuckle was in the air, blowing to us from further up the street. Short hairs escaping my ponytail tickled my face and I tucked them behind my ears as I followed the nearly silent shadow in front of me. Quinn went first, having won the vote to be in charge, and led us all around the fence to the split the other thieves had told us about. One by one we filed in, Quinn holding the fence up and touching us all as we went through as if to count heads and make sure no one was lagging.

The smell blowing from the building to us on the breeze had undertones of something dead, making us all cover our noses, and I remember not wanting to go inside. I kept thinking something had made a kill and had gone in there to hide and eat it. All my hairs were standing at attention, cautioning me with that not so subtle warning. I picked up my pace, and pushing through to the front, I grabbed Quinn's shirt to get his attention. He whispered for the others to go on and wait for him at the doors and grabbing a handful of my shirt in his fist, he kept me there at the fence with him. I told him about my reservations and he nodded, slipped his hand into the warmth of my bra for a brief fondle, and then towed me over to the rest of the group. After hearing my best owl, he told me to hoot if the guard came and they all disappeared into the darkness, leaving me alone.

It was quiet, with the muted sounds of the street behind me and the empty loading dock in front of me. The breeze picked up, making me shiver as I sat still on the concrete. I had been warm while we were moving but now the chill crept out of the cement and invaded my personal spaces. I heard rustlings in the bushes behind the fence and squinted trying to see in the dark. It was quiet for so long I was beginning to think I had been left behind. Just then I saw shadows dancing to my right and the guard came around the far corner of the building, the beam of his flashlight cutting a path through the mist in front of his feet. I hooted, cleared my throat and hooted again. Nothing happened except the guard continued to advance. When he was halfway across the lot, I finally heard an answering call. Realizing the guard was approaching the door, I stood up and slid back into the loading bay, keeping to the shadows. I hooted again, feeling anxious and excited all at once. A few more owls called back to me from inside the building, sounding so genuine I remember wondering if any of them were real. I thought I heard a noise behind me and turning, nearly collided with Quinn coming to see why I had signaled. I squeaked in alarm, grabbing onto him as he steadied me with a warm hand. Recovering quickly, I pointed out the guard walking across the lot toward us, his light swinging from side to side and his shoes grinding on the scattered gravel. Quinn put his mouth to my ear and sent me to warn the others, sliding his knife from the scabbard at his belt as he crouched behind the door jamb. I could barely breathe as I crept quickly to the next cover, and ducking behind the extinct movie counter, I listened for any noise besides my rapidly beating heart and the sound of my breath whistling in and out. I signaled again as soon as I had my wind back, afraid to move anymore with the guard so close, and heard several muted answering calls from somewhere behind me in the store.

It was pitch black inside the movie kiosk and the floor was covered with wayward VHS tapes, making it hard for me to sit still. The movies kept shifting beneath me, snapping and creaking every time I dared to move. I could almost hear Quinn shushing me inside my head. My attention was diverted back toward the bay doors by a slight noise. I found a crack and pressed my eye to the tiny peephole. The light coming through the open bay door was broken by the shadow of the officer as he paused, framed in the doorway. He vanished inside and I heard the muffled scrape of a shoe on concrete and a grunt like my old papa used to make getting up from his Lazy Boy.

We had forgotten to watch him for a while first tonight so we could ascertain his regular routine. We had no idea there were different guards on a rotating schedule. The one we watched only walked around the perimeter. This one came inside every third pass he made of the loading dock. I can't believe we were actually so careless as to have skipped such an important step, but I wasn't in charge and we had all agreed to take Quinn's instruction. In the excitement, he had forgotten, and we all assumed he had taken care of everything, so no one else thought to check. I hadn’t known him very long but I trusted him. Mainly because we were sleeping together and I had that blind trust we all have in our first few relationships, comfortably secure in the false knowledge of things working out in the ideal fashion of our fantasies and daydreams. But that night things took a right turn away from all that. Quinn told me later that it was my safety he was worried about the most. He said he felt responsible for me and that was the reason he gave for his impulsive actions.

I was unable to see much through the crack I had my eyeball pressed over, but a tangle of light and shadow rolled by several times, and flashes struck my retina as something bright was lifted and lowered so fast I wasn’t sure I saw it. Every thrust was accompanied by another human grunt, this time unlike anything I had ever heard before. They sounded hollow, like someone had let all the air out of someone. It wasn’t air. A long loud whistle rent the silence; our prearranged signal that it was time to leave, and I began to hear the rustlings and shuffling noises that let me know it was time to go. I stood up and stepped out from behind the counter I had been crouching behind. Not wanting to leave empty handed, I scooped up an armful of movies and dumped them into my bag. Then looking quickly around, I grabbed a jewelry rack and an adding machine that looked like it came straight out of a 50's gangster movie and made my way, thus laden, toward the doors where I could see everyone gathered in a loose circle around something on the floor. I pushed my way through into the circle and stopped short, my booty falling to the floor with a crash that made everyone jump. The security guard was lying on his back on the concrete, a dark patch spreading beneath him. I stared at him in shock for what seemed like a long time, but surely could have only been seconds. Someone touched me and I jumped back away, colliding with someone else in the dark. Then we were all running together, following Quinn to the fence. He grabbed the edge and pulled it up, pushing us all through, whispering, "GO, GO!" to each of us as we passed him. Panic caught and I didn't stop until I caught up to some of the others up the street. Quinn was right behind me, pushing us all to keep going.

Later there were multiple sirens, and ambulances and rescue vehicles rushing down the block, their lights pulsing over the neighborhood for hours. We all filed into my apartment and lay low with the lights out, afraid to move, sure the cops would be coming for us any moment.

But they never did. Nothing ever happened to us, and no one ever found out. Quinn gathered us all together the next day and we all solemnly cut ourselves and swore the blood oath to him, never to reveal what had happened that night. But I'll never forget the way the man reached up, pleading with us for the help that would come too late while his lifeblood slowly leaked out of him. I can still smell the blood and I remember how it reminded me of the taste in my mouth.

Cat Burgling

Fiction

Teen to Adult

2048 words

Deanna Salser

Everyone loves a good crime mystery

If you're planning a crime, it's best to have a plan

A group of young people decide to burgle an abandoned store with unexpected results

Older humans seem to like my stories but I have younger readers interested as well.

My name is Deanna Salser. I've always loved to read, in fact, I don't feel right if I don't have at least one book going. I've always had a fantasy about being a writer and I actually have a few good book ideas but I never felt like I had the time to write a novel. About seven years ago I had a story coming out of me so I decided to write when I had time and see how it went. It went slow but great. My first story is published and I am writing my second. In the meantime, I thought I would enter a few contests and see where it would get me. I need the publicity after all. So, here I am.

I am a Austin Macauley author.

I attended college to be a mechanical drafter but books have educated me as a writer.

I have published poetry and flash fiction besides my book, Procreation, published in 2021.

I tend toward the darker stories even though I am a die-hard optimist and Free Spirited Hippie who loves to draw, sculpt, paint and carve.

I am from Auburn, California.

I am 56 years young.