Just A Few Dollars

The Line.

Everyone always talks about "crossing the line". That line that separates "Good" from "Evil". That separates you from your enemies. That line that represents the boundaries you have set in your life, that you adhere to when the going gets tough, when life beats the ever-living -shit out of you.

The Line. There are laws and rules in place, ordinances passed by cities, though let's be honest, who really gives a rat's ass about the ordinances of a city? It's pure revenue generation in that case, but whatever. Even the city officials gotta eat, and the tax payers have to feed them. But The Line. The one thing that keeps us sane, showing us that we are not the animals we could so easily become.

When do we ever cross that line? Everyone, absolutely everyone, has a breaking point. Or maybe it isn't a breaking point per se, but a point in time when you have toed that line ever so closely, and decided that the situation, whether it be your life or something else, warranted crossing that sacred line, that unbreakable rule that you or others have set down for you.

And so I sat there on my couch and wondered, as I held the pistol in my hand, unloaded obviously. I'm not suicidal after all. But holding that pistol there in my hand, the barrel pointing at the ground, the thought of The Line crossed my mind.

How far would you go to protect the ones you love? The ones you care for. For me, there were a precious few that I would go this far for. Family, what of it I had left. A few choice friends, since when the going got tough, the number of true friends you have can be counted on your fingers.

I looked over my magazine. I had a full one, and I really didn't plan on being in a shootout tonight. One magazine. Fifteen rounds. That's all I am going to pack tonight, and if I run out of ammo, then I know it was a bad night. A very bad night. And I prayed, I actually prayed on the night I was doing this, that it would not be a bad night. Kind of ironic actually, that the very night me and my friends were going to do this that I would pray to a god that was supposed to be just and loving and committing this kind of act.

But then again, no god had ever helped me, my family, or any of my friends. No divine sign or miracle had ever shown up. Grace had been alien to me. And he, she, it or they had to exist right? Hell, they'd had one of those supposed gods swinging a hammer at freaking aliens not too long ago, and just what the hell had levitated a whole freaking country some time ago? Power existed, but it was never mine to share.

And so here I was. My Mother and Brother were working, leaving me to tend the house, or at least as far as they knew. My buds would be here soon, and we would get the money, split it, and then hopefully we could be done with this for at least a while. Until life forced me to do this again, at which point in time I would have no choice. Or would I? No, I don't think I'll ever be that lucky.

Someday, I might be dead in a ditch. But hopefully, death might be a release. My Brother would be with Mom when she needed him. He was the likable one anyway. I was...well, I don't know sometimes. Sometimes it was like-

A knock on the apartment door got my attention. They're here.

I rose from the couch, placing my pistol on the table, not wanting to open the door with it in my hand in case it was actually someone other than my friends. The cops had knocked on my door before, and though I never opened the door without a warrant and never, ever spoke to them, I wasn't going to take chances. Flex your rights...

"Who is it?" I asked. I heard a chuckle.

"It's me, man. You know who and his little buddies."

I chuckled to myself. Santos was a joker. I opened the door to see my friends there, all three of them, wearing coats and jeans. Stepping aside, I allowed them entrance, the three of them grinning and nodding as they passed by me. We all went into the living area to collect ourselves, as per our usual game plan.

"Your folks out for tonight?" Santos asked. I nodded.

"They won't be back for some time. We've got plenty of time my man," I answered. Santos grinned even wider.

"Good. Never hurts to have more time than expected."

Santos was slightly taller than me, maybe 6 foot on the mark. He was of Hispanic stock, with dark hair and eyes. And he was always cracking jokes even in the worst of times. It was as if nothing could get under his skin. And maybe nothing could.

Next to him were the other two of our crew, Mike and Barry. Both were white skinned, Mike with short, blond hair and blue eyes, with Barry having brown hair with green eyes. Both had high cheekbones and were more bulky in their body structure, compared to me and Santos, who were more on the lean side.

I didn't actually know their last names. I never cared anyway. Sure that maybe just a little flag raising, but honestly, as long as we got what we came for, then I couldn't care less about the names...

All of them began to check their weapons, and I saw we were all packing pistols, obviously. Anything bigger wouldn't be very practical in this case. And it wasn't as though we expected anyone to go all kung fu on us or some weird crap like that. We were in and out, and that was it.

I couldn't shake the feeling something might be different about this though. I always got the jitters before a bust. Pre-event trembles, as one might say. The adrenaline was waiting to fire up. But today, when I thought about this one, I just couldn't shake the feeling that something...unexpected...was about to happen.

But I never did get a chance to elaborate with myself on this feeling. Santos reached into his pocket and drew his keys out, giving them a whirl.

"So, my partners in mayhem, shall we commence with today's daring heist?" he put a high, sophisticated tone to his voice that got us grinning.

"Why yes, my good man. Let's roll," Mike said, imitating Santos's voice with the devil in his eyes.

And so we walked out of my family's apartment, over the barrier from the safety of home into a hostile world, with intent to reap something from the fire.

I crossed The Line.

-0-

We were in the car, Santos's, and the usual chatter was on. What we were planning to do with our share, the amount we expected to rip off, whatever. Santos drove while I stared out the window in the backseat, letting my mind wonder as I watched the dark streets flash by.

So many people here, I thought. So many people, and so much wasted.

The look of the city at night was like a change of mask. At day it was hustle and bustle with life. Vendors, pedestrians, and tourists. Streets like Broadway and the famous buildings drew the crowds, not to mention that funky "Avengers" tower. God, the amount of fans that always gathered around that building was smothering.

But at night, it was as if an aura had been cast, and the worst of society roamed free. Thieves, murderers, and rapists roamed these streets, and sadly, with what we were about to do, I couldn't help but wonder if we were joining them.

I thrust the thought aside. No, we were not like them. We scoped this store, owned by this creep for some time. We never killed anyone, and we barely had to get physical with anyone either. Something about a sudden hit made people freeze up, and that was the main weapon we used. In and out, no blood and no hassle.

Besides, I was doing what I needed to survive. To help my family live, eat, and have a place to sleep another day. Rent wasn't going to pay itself after all. Money always seems to be what made the Earth go round and round. Screw gravity.

We pulled out onto the street where the store was located. It was a small grocery store, rather popular with the area so the money would be quickly reimbursed by the needs of the masses. I may feel guilty about taking from others, but guilt can be dealt with later. I had a job to do. A mission to accomplish. A family to feed.

The store was just down a little ways. I saw that there wasn't much traffic at this time of night, and few pedestrians were walking around. Good, since less people meant less reaction time. We were pretty sure someone like him wouldn't have a panic button or anything, since it was in a rather poorer part of the city. But still, it didn't hurt to find less obstacles in the way.

We pulled into the almost empty parking lot, and I took a deep breathe, hoping to calm my racing heart. I felt my pistol beneath my jacket, and reassured myself that it was safely tucked away until I was ready to whip it out for use. Hopefully, and I truly meant it, I wouldn't actually have to fire it at anyone. Or at all, preferably.

We exited the car and walked inside, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Besides our weapons, we each had a backpack to stash the money in. The Clerk behind the counter glanced up from his newspaper and took notice of us, but quickly went back to his readings. It must have been a slow day for him. Well, it was about to get a whole lot more interesting for him, a whole lot quicker. I made my way through several aisles, making sure to seem interested in what they had to offer.

Well, I'll admit I snagged a couple packs of chips, but hey, if you're going to rob a store, you might as well take everything you want after all...

Santos was browsing the magazines up front. Mike was standing near the rear exit, looking intimidating and making himself ready to jump in front of anyone rushing the exit. Barry was near the front doors, ready to do the same. Santos, was reading from the magazine, though he glanced up at Barry and nodded slightly. Barry returned the gesture and drew his weapon.

With a loud bang, the shot he fired into the roof of the building rang in our ears. Instantly, the few patrons in the store instinctively crouched down, and a female scream sounded from one of them, more visibly terrified than the rest, though not by much it seemed. Mike drew his weapon and stepped in front of an older gentleman who had made a rush for the back exit. He pointed it directly at the man's chest, who saw what was possible and stopped in his tracks, hands in the air.

"Please son, please don't do this!" he pleaded. Mike gestured with his pistol.

"Get the hell back! GET BACK!" he screamed. The man slowly backed up against a stand of soda bottles.

"Okay, okay. Please don't shoot," he pleaded again, crouching down and lowering himself onto his knees. Mike placed the barrel to the man's temple, the old man sputtering in fear. Tears coming down as his lips moved on their own.

"Get on your stomach old man! Get on your goddamn stomach! That goes for all of you!" Mike roared, raising his pistol at the rest of the customers in the store. Slowly, they all complied. One young woman, a bulging belly and young child clinging to her, was awkwardly trying to stay down while holding her young daughter to her.

I was holding up a young gentleman at the milk fridge, who simply stared at me in shock as I ordered him to the ground. Making him put his hands on the top of his head, I approved of him offering no resistance. If no one tried anything, I left them unharmed. I didn't ask myself if I would ever shoot anyone. I try not to think of it.

We started to gather them all into one place, after searching them for anything like a cell phone or anything that could be used to contact anyone. Piling them up in the back, we kept them separate from the hands of the now captive customers. Santos was already working over the clerk, barking orders to open the safe behind the counter.

"Please stop, sir. There is nothing behind the counter," the clerk tried to explain. We knew about that safe for some time now, so lying would not work here. And lying to Santos of all people would be a very bad move on the clerk's part. Santos slammed his fist into the counter, causing a loud thud that startled several people near me.

"I know the safe's there, you old piece of shit! Now you either open it, or I'll blow your goddamn brains out all over this floor," he screamed. When the man still shook his head, Santos placed the barrel of his pistol between his eyes. "I'm warning you old man! I'll paint the walls with your brain matter!"

Finally, the old man nodded and bent down, clearly working the safe. Santos kept his weapon trained on him, clearly thinking that the man might actually be foolish enough to try something, if his delaying tactic meant anything. I kept my own trained on the young guy with the milk, as well as the softly crying mother with the child, who seemed too shocked at what she was seeing for it to register in her young mind.

I might have felt a twinge of empathy, but that could have just been me. But my pistol did lower just a little...

Santos was still watching the man trying to open the safe, with Barry and Mike guarding the exits. I began to tap my foot with impatience. How long did it take to open a safe? Did the man even know the combination?

The woman let out a sob. I pointed my weapon at her for effect. Crying was something that got under my skin.

"Hey lady, you're alive alright. And you'll stay that way if you don't try anything. Now pipe down!" I ordered. She still let out a sob, the child beginning to whimper along with her cries. "I'm serious! Stop crying!" I tried again.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and Santos was behind me, glaring at the woman and child. He gestured toward the counter. "Go watch the old man. I got these people."

"Alright," I replied, dutifully walking over to the counter. I didn't get why he decided to change positions, but I found thinking about it to be irrelevant and leaned over the counter to see the old man still tinkering with the combination.

"For god's sake, do you even know the combination?" I asked. He looked up at me and stopped what he was doing. I was surprised to not see fear in his eyes, but something else.

"How old are you son?" he asked.

What the hell kind of question was that? He was being held hostage until he got that safe open. Maybe he should be worrying about surviving instead of asking his robbers about their ages. I growled at him for show.

"That's none of your business. Hurry up with that safe, or what my friend here will do is nothing compared to what I'll do to you," I snarled, making my voice sound fierce, at least to my ears. But the man still didn't seem scared of me. Instead he seemed as though he was...sympathetic.

"Please, just tell me. How old are you?" he asked. His voice had a fatherly tone to it that seemed to melt a little of my anger annoyance away. That was dangerous. To lose focus, to be swayed by words in the middle of a situation like this could be fatal.

But in his voice, I felt like I had to answer. It was just...something I couldn't explain.

"Eighteen..." He, unbelievably, slightly smiled, a sad looking smile.

"You're only eighteen? And you're doing things like this? A handsome boy like you?" I glared at him with that comment, but he still didn't seem fazed.

"You have your whole life ahead of you. And you choose to take what doesn't belong to you. Why? Do you not have much at home?" he continued to question me as if he had some right to. As though this was an interrogation instead of a robbery, and he was the interrogator.

"Where are you going with your life son...?" he tried to ask, but was cut off.

"Why are you jabbering! Get that safe open, or I swear to god I'll start capping these people!" Santos bellowed, his gun only inches from the mother's head. The man saw this and got back to work. I didn't think Santos would actually go through with it anyway, so I kept my attention on the man. Finally, I heard a click. The man took a hold of the door, and it swung open.

"Guys, we're in!" I shouted. Santos walked over and grinned at the sight. The safe really was full of bills. My previous horror that the safe might be empty or just a decoy of some kind was apparently exaggerated. I threw my backpack off my shoulders and started to shove the cash into it. Santos did the same.

When they were both full, we took Mike and Barry's place as they filled the contents of their bags with the same, as much more as was left in the safe. We would divide it out later. The old clerk had been placed against the wall away from the safe, but his gaze still lingered on me. I won't admit that it was uncomfortable.

Finally we were set. We had what we needed. And now all I wanted to do was bug out, get home, and try to pretend this never had to happen. And that was when it happened.

So fast. It happened so fast. One moment, the little girl was in her mother's arms, her face buried in her chest, hiding from the horror that we were. The monsters she may have been told about. And then she was running for the exit, tears flying from her ears and a cry in her throat. She ran like a frightened animal to the exit.

And her mother panicked, screaming her name. And then she bolted as well, running for her terrified daughter.

"Elizabeth!"

The sound of the gunshot deafened all sound in my ears. It shouldn't have, since I was used to hearing it occasionally. But for whatever reason, this time I heard nothing afterward, as if my mind was focused on the fact that Santos had raised his pistol at the fleeing woman, a mother racing to grab her scared girl like any mother would, and fired one shot. Just one shot.

The woman's head snapped to the side as blood splattered around the area. She fell on her side, and the young girl, who couldn't have been more than five or six, raced back toward her, having been startled to stop after the gunshot, turning just in time to see her mother's last moment as she crumbled to the ground.

"Mommy!"

The girl raced over and grabbed he mother's side, pushing the body onto its back. The girl couldn't understand why her mother was lying there with her eyes open, now lifeless. She shook her, trying to get a reaction, but was met with only dead silence. Her mother was gone from this Earth and she couldn't know that yet, as she kept wailing for her and trying to revive her.

My God...Oh god...

Santos slowly lowered his pistol, his face stone cold. A muscle was jumping in his cheek. Mike and Barry were also looking at the woman, but were also glancing frantically at Santos, as though looking for orders.

Me...all I could do was stare. My muscles wouldn't respond. My whole view was of this girl trying to call her mother back to her, when she unknowingly had already had her final moment with her. It felt like the last sight I myself would ever see. I just couldn't look away.

"We have what we need. Let's get the hell out of here!" Santos finally yelled. Mike and Barry ran out the doors. Santos nudged me. "Come on! Let's go!"

I still didn't respond, my mind still on the scene playing out before me. I finally saw the bulge in the woman's stomach wasn't fat. It wasn't the right look.

She was pregnant. Or had been...

Santos finally ran out toward the car. The cops would be here shortly. That was inevitable. How they hadn't already been was beyond me, not that I could mentally dwell on it with what I beheld before me.

"Mommy! Mommy, please wake up!"

And then the girl looked at me with wide scared eyes, tears flowing freely, in both fear and despair. And I gazed back upon them, a sensation of something I couldn't describe running through me. The girl was afraid of me. Like I was...

A monster...

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. I snapped out of my trance and turned to see the old man had walked behind me, and his hand gently gripped my shoulder. I stared into his eyes and expected to see anger, or judgement in them. By god I deserved it. But all I saw in them...was sympathy.

"You could be so much more..." he whispered.

Sirens in the distance. Outside, the car door honked. I bolted away from the man and the death, though I swear his look was burning into me as I ran. I sprinted to the car door and flung it open, hurling myself into it. I barely had time to shut the door before Santos put the petal to the metal, and the view of the store was gone from my physical view.

But I knew I would see this forever...

-0-

I was still shell shocked as we entered my apartment. I wasn't even shaking. Something in me was different, I knew it. My bones felt it, and where I thought most people would be shaking in the aftermath of a heist, I didn't. That little girl's eyes were still looking at me in my mind, still so afraid of me. So very afraid.

We walking into my living area and Mike, Barry, and Santos emptied their packs onto the ground, dividing it up into equal shares. I still didn't move a muscle as I sat on my couch. If my mind wasn't wired to breathe on its own, I might have stopped even that basic function.

"Hey Michael! You with us buddy?" Mike asked. I slowly nodded and took off my pack, opening it and dropping the bills onto the ground. It really had been a good haul, and the rent for my place would be paid for at least for some time. They divided the totals among themselves, leaving my share of the money in front of me. I picked it up and placed it under my bed, my motions like a robot, someone operating on a mental auto-pilot.

I returned to the living room to find them laughing. And something in me began to break. I could feel control slipping.

"That was a lot more money than I thought that place would have," Mike said. Barry nodded in agreement. Santos chuckled.

Why was he laughing? He had just murdered a woman in cold blood, and here he was...laughing. How could any of them be thinking they...we...had done a "good job" when a woman was dead, and a little girl had lost her mother by my "friends" hand?

And by my involvement...my hand...

"Shame about that woman though," Santos said. "She shouldn't have tried to run..."

And that's when I snapped. It happened fast, almost as if everything else was in slow motion. My fist connected with Santos's face. I felt bones bend under my blow, and cries of surprise from all three, but also pain from Santos.

My fist connected again, this time with his jaw. And then as he bent back in reaction to the surprise attack, his gut. Both of my hands where then beating him, almost without thought from me except for one screaming voice in my head.

Murderer!

Mike and Barry finally pulled me off him. Santos spit blood and glared up at me, rising up from the floor. If he was going to hit me I would have taken the blow and used it as encouragement to keep fighting all three if needed.

"What the hell Michael!"

"You killed that woman! You killed her and she didn't need to die!"

"She startled me!"

"She was scared!"

"She was stupid!"

I threw Barry and Mike's arms off me, and braced myself for a fight, but Santos made no move. Only glared at me with his icy, dark eyes.

"She didn't have to die. We were there for the money, and nothing else! She was pregnant Santos. She was fucking pregnant!"

"That doesn't change the fact that she and her munchkin shouldn't have taken off," Santos replied, his voice icy and low.

"Get out. All of you. Leave my share here and get out. I don't want to see your faces here again. I swear that if any of you try to get me involved in this shit again, I'll tell everyone what you did." Santos narrowed his eyes.

"If you did that, you would be locked up like the rest of us. And no one would be here for your family. Is that what you want Michael? To leave your family...defenseless?"

I stared at him. Those words carried some weight to them. Santos did have other friends that we knew of. We weren't in a gang, but he had family that was. And they were not the nice sort.

"You wouldn't dare.."

"Try me Michael. You may have made a grave mistake here today my friend..."

"Get out..."

The three scooped up their money and left, Santos giving me one last glare before he shut the door. "Remember what I said..."

"Get out!"

And with a slam of the door, they were gone. And I was alone for the first time tonight. That's when the wave hit me. I crumbled to the ground on my knees, a silent cry, a scream, ripping out of me. My breath was ragged, and tears, yes tears, fell from my face.

I didn't know how long I was there on my knees, like a pathetic little boy crying. My arms were around my stomach like I was sick, and maybe I was, since the emotions were causing some unpleasant pain in my abdomen. I took several deep breathes and stumbled my way into my room.

Oh god...I couldn't stop seeing them. The dead mother and the little girl. Please God make it stop! Please!

I finally curled into the fetal position on my bed. My breath was still coming in waves and grunts of pain and despair sounding like trumpets to my ears in the still, dark room. I can't stop seeing them. I can't stop seeing them. I can't stop seeing them.

Mercy...Please God...Mercy...

Mercy...