...was inspired by an AFI song. I have been listening to it for hours nonstop, because I was at work when it struck me and I had to keep the mood. I think it's my best post yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqDujfyEMk
~~~
Times
were hard. There was nothing else anyone
could say about them. It was a time for
desperate measures by desperate people.
Headlines
remained littered with terrifying stories of death, theft, and rape. Everyone tried to change the world, through
right or wrong, which spawned the next great bank robbery. Too many people considered modern times a
time for radical change, a time to create a throwback to those great eras
before.
Mila
and Ahsten were mere creations of society.
The greatest celebrities of their times were known for their public
scandals; sex tapes, careless nipple shots, drunken outbursts. There was no greatness for the sake of
greatness. No one challenged the rules
enough for them.
So
they decided to show the world how it was done.
They
spent several weeks around café tables, the kitchen peninsula, on the living
room floor, in drunkard’s bars and pool halls; always plotting. Mila had a friend who worked for the bank,
before moving to Alaska and losing touch.
She always had stories of crazy customers, and they lent knowledge of
basic bank workings.
Their
local bank kept the panic buttons under the clerk counters, under the
management tables, and one on the wall by the safe deposit boxes. No shadow could escape the view of the
cameras, no corner left unwatched. A
police station sat up the street, less than five minutes away, just on the
other side of the local deli and beyond the stream that long since dried up.
Mila
took extra visits to the bank, asking questions, depositing money, withdrawing
money. She kept her eyes up sometimes,
scanning for the cameras, or studying the layout of the building.
The
entrance consisted of a windowed wall and glass doors. They were easy to open; simple push or
pull. The locks were large, but not as
easy as a twist of the wrist; they would need keys, which they had no way of
getting. The wooded floor pathway lead
customers to the line, roped off like an imitation path of a PacMan game. There were five windows for tellers, which
Mila noticed only ever housed two tellers; and new faces replaced the old quite
frequently.
To
the left were office rooms, with more glass walls and doors. To the right, a swinging door that lead to
safe deposit boxes and restrooms. It was
also the only way to get behind the counter, a thing Ahsten had no interest in
doing; the tellers could give them the money.
He
rarely stepped foot in the bank.
Instead, he sat across the street at the deli, watching and keeping track
of peak hours in the bank. Every day he
wrote the amount of cars, the weather, and the time. He made note of when a deli employee would
walk across the street to the bank for business purposes. If a police officer came to eat, or stopped
at the bank, he kept that information; the car number, the type of vehicle, and
how long they stayed.
They’d
meet at home again, their small studio apartment that their combined
unemployment checks barely covered. Mila
would heat up whatever they could afford to eat and Ahsten would compare his
information, review hers, and then put one of their few DVDs in the player. They had no cable, no phones, no internet or
computers.
The
times caused them to sell all their luxuries and spread the venom of bitterness
through their veins. They watched as
their friends became desperate like them.
A few died from drugs, one became a streetwalker, two went to jail for
murder and one for rape, and more than they could count served too many years
for attempted robbery. It became a time
of the rich, who hoarded their money, and the poor, desperate sinners without
choice.
Ahsten
long swore he would never turn to crime, but school left him in a beginner’s
job, and when depression hits the economy, it was the new guy’s that got kicked
to the curb first. No one would hire him
and he all too soon found the interest on his student loans choking the
morality out of him. He turned to his
girlfriend, who took him in and supported him the best she could.
But
even Mila got struck with the economy when her father’s business crashed,
leaving her jobless. She figured with
her years of experience, she could easily sweet talk her way into another
company, but with only her father as her employer, no one trusted her. And when she got the call from her mother
that her father shot himself, she could no longer cling to her Catholic
upbringing.
They
did what they could, but what they could was just not enough.
So
the plotted and planned and finally ended up outside the bank, throwing open
the beat up white doors of a stolen 1970 Chevy Camaro. They rolled the top down to keep from having
to open the doors and Mila pushed the gas down as far as it could go. Tires squealed on black top and they were
away, headed straight passed the police station and laughing when the cops
couldn’t get over the median dividing the two sides of the road.
Ahsten
tossed the hand gun in the glove box and glanced to the bag of cash Mila threw
at his feet. “I can’t believe we did it,” she stated, a grin spreading open her
lips. She let out a laugh, feeling
freedom for the first time as wind swept her auburn hair.
“Me
either,” he responded. He rested his
head back and closed his eyes, letting one arm rest where the window should
have been. The cool mountain air rushed
over him and he felt the scent of pine trees release his guilt. After all, it was all behind them. “Do you
know where we’re headed?” he asked, lifting his head and opening his eyes.
“Nope,”
she answered with a small shake of her head.
They never planned for after the robbery, just up until it, and she didn’t
care at this moment. It felt oddly exhilarating,
freeing. There she was with the man she
loved, speeding off into the distance to an unknown destination where they
could start a new life, a good life.
They wouldn’t have to screw over the little guys of the word by hoarding
their money and stealing from the less fortunate. Maybe they could start a family, or just live
the two of them into old age with a dog at their side.
“Even
better.” The two passed each other a glance before leaning in and giving the
other a quick kiss on the lips. Ahsten
stretched his arm over her seat and glanced to the other side. They’d go down in history, even if no one
ever knew it was them, though he wished they’d know. He always thought of the great excitement it
would hold, to be one of those famous criminals of the twenties. It made him wonder if they ever thought of their
own fame, or did they merely focus on the tasks at hand?
Mila
stretched a hand away from the wheel, finally removing her cut up sock from her
head then turning on the radio. Static
crackled over the radio and Ahsten unmasked himself. The road steepened, twisting and curving
around the mountain as they headed further on, expecting no trouble from that
moment. They’d already sped passed the
cops and who knew how much time had passed.
Their
hearts were only just beginning to slow down from the excitement of it all,
their minds steadily wandering from the bank and the money to possible future
outcomes. Fugitives or new neighbors?
Ahsten closed his eyes again, taking in the progressive temperature drop, his
fingers dancing to silent tune on the top of the car door.
Mila
focused on her driving, trying to keep up her high speed while still guiding
the car seamlessly through the turns.
Her attention shifted from the yellow solid lines in the center to her
rearview mirror and her heart stopped.
In the reflection rose a sea of red and blue lights, flashing behind
them. Ahsten turned, eyes now open, at
the sound of the sirens. He glanced to
Mila, gauging her reaction as she cursed under her breath and attempted to push
the car harder.
He
glanced back again, smirking at the glint of sun on the black paint of the new
cop cars. An odd calmness washed over
him, as if the air itself fed it to his mind.
A part of him wanted to be caught, to give his testimony, leave an
unease in the rich man’s mind. They
weren’t safe, so long as they kept sitting on the unemployed, the disabled, the
poor.
“They’re
gaining,” he muttered.
“I
know!” Mila snapped back. She jerked the
wheel through the turns. The rear wheels
struggled to keep their bite on the road, the front wheels keeping no
consideration for them. Her boyfriend
looked back to her, still partially turned toward the sight behind them.
“I
could shoot at them,” he added. She
passed him an almost panicked look, causing her to enter a turn late. The tires squealed and nearly lost their
traction.
“Are
you crazy?!” She couldn’t believe he would make a joke now; now that everything
was ruined. If they couldn’t dodge the
black and white, there’d be no home for them, no vows to death, no children or
dog. They’d be separated by iron bars
and heavy walls and guards and miles upon miles between prisons.
All
of their dreams would be shattered.
But
Ahsten just chuckled. He remembered all
those internet posts about making names for themselves, about becoming famous
and going down in history. All the
grumblings of dissatisfied Republicans, and then the dissatisfied
Democrats. Everyone groaned and
complained about something; welfare, teenage pregnancy, the economy,
unemployment, the government, the laws, the system, their freedoms being taken
away.
At
last now he could say he did something.
He
didn’t just sit at home, on his computer, and whine, talking of revolution but
do nothing. His gaze shifted back. A cop nudged their tail. Mila gasped and gripped the wheel hard. The cop nudged again, sending them toward the
mountain face. Mila grit her teeth and
overcorrected. Their front end spun
toward guard rail on the other side. She
overcorrected again. The back end lost
its grip and clipped the end of the guard rail, sliding over the edge.
Ahsten
leaned over, brushing his lips to her ear. “We’ll be famous,” he
whispered. She screamed as the car began
its roll. The ground crunched
upward. He leaned forward, trying to
hold his head toward his knees, trapping the bag still at his feet. The world cracked and crunched and shattered
until finally the car landed upright.
Mila
sat in her seat, flopped to one side, her neck looking extended too far. Her nose bled a stream of red over her
slightly parted lips; her eyes couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be open
or closed and compromised halfway; leaves and debris tangled in her hair that
steadily became red from some deep cut.
Ahsten
gasped for breath and straightened in his seat.
Something had hit his back, hard enough to make him lose feeling in the
center. He glanced to Mila, studying her
lifeless body before looking to the still running engine. The hood of the car had come off, the engine
looked damaged. He could see one of the
spark plugs pulled out of the engine and wagered several others were loose.
A
punctured line sent the smell of gas into the air and the fumes close to the
plug. A spark lit it and Ahsten
chuckled, coughing a bit as well. His
shakey hand reached for glove box. It
fell open when he let it, the gun almost sliding to the floor.
He
wrapped his fingers around it and turned his head toward the road. The cop cars swarmed the place they’d fallen,
their owners staring down. His lips
turned upward into a smirk. “We’ll be famous…” he whispered. And the world went out with a bang.
