Tonight's Episode...

...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.