Kirbunny's First Law of Payday: People will panic if they hear even the quietest grunt.

Washington D.C. was in the middle of a crisis. The city had been plagued by a string of professional heists, all carried out by a crew of four criminals in rubber masks, for years. By 2015, the criminals had stolen millions of dollars and showed no signs of slowing down. It became increasingly apparent that the police were never going to stop the mysterious crew.

The heists were not the crisis. Instead, the crisis was the effect those heists had on the city's residents. To be blunt, they all got really damn paranoid. Everybody lived in constant fear of being shot, robbed, or taken hostage. It was legitimately impressive that the dark claws of fear managed to take hold of an entire city. That said, it was also incredibly annoying. People jumped at insignificant sounds and screamed if something slightly surprising happened.

I first noticed this trend on a Saturday in June. My wife Isabelle and I were about to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, so I wanted to find a gift that she would truly appreciate. Her favorite jewelry store had recently reopened after being robbed by that infamous crew, so I decided to check there first.

Unfortunately, I knew nothing about jewelry. I understood it about as well as polar bears understand cacti. All of the store's employees were busy with other customers, so my only option was to lean up against a wall and wait.

I surveyed the store. Its security budget had certainly been increased since the last robbery. Two bulky security cameras watched the store from opposite corners of the room. Each customer was required to pass through a metal detector before entering the building. A security guard was also present, but he probably wasn't going to be very useful in the event of a robbery. Why do I say that? Well, he had been staring at a wall for the past five minutes.

The guard moved away from the wall after another minute. He made his way toward a hallway at the back of the store. That was when he fell. I'm not sure if he stepped on his own shoelace or tripped on a bag that somebody had left lying on the floor. The important thing is that he tumbled to the ground like a tree crashing down in the forest. When he hit the floor, he released a faint grunt of surprise.

As far as I could tell, I was the only person who saw that go down. I certainly wasn't the only person who heard it, however. Two customers who had their backs to the hallway looked around, confused.

Their faces suddenly twisted into expressions of abject horror. Thousands of years ago, a caveman probably made the same expression when he was being chased by a goddamn lion. It almost seemed disrespectful to humanity's ancestors. Two idiots in 2015 had no right to be so scared by a security guard's disgruntled groan.

"Oh my God, he's dead!" one of the morons shrieked.

"Someone call the police!" the other shouted.

I wondered why they immediately assumed that somebody had been murdered. The guard simply grunted. There were a million things that could have happened, yet those two somehow came to the conclusion that he had been killed.

Unfortunately, they weren't the only hypersensitive morons in the store. Their screams seemed to resonate with everybody else in the room. Within seconds, I was surrounded by a crowd of terrified people. Some screamed while others immediately started sobbing. I was the only person that seemed to keep his cool through the entire situation.

The guard who tripped and started this ordeal rose to his feet. He surveyed the store and, upon seeing that everybody was completely freaked out, drew his weapon. It was my turn to be horrified. I could only watch as he grabbed his pager and spoke into it. "We have a disturbance here," he said. "Send backup right away!"

Police sirens started screeching in the distance. My jaw dropped open. "What the hell are you doing?" I shouted, outraged at how these events had unfolded. There was no universe in which this should've happened.

"Hard contact!" the security guard shouted before running through the hallway at the back of the store. I didn't seem him again after that.

The police sirens drew closer. I briefly considered leaving the store and going home, but I ultimately rejected the idea. A cool-headed guy trying to flee from a jewelry store was a prime suspect. Instead, I sat on the floor, withdrew my cell phone from my pocket, and dialed my wife's number.

Isabelle answered the phone after a few rings. "Hi, muffin!" she said.

Her sunny voice eased my nerves a little. "Hey, Izzy" I replied, a faint smile spreading across my face. "I might not be able to pick you up from work tonight."

"Oh, really? Why?"

A police car pulled up in front of the store. Two cops emerged from it, their guns at the ready. "It's a long story. I'll explain it all at dinner." My wife would probably worry if she heard the cops shouting, so I hung up before we could say our usual goodbyes. I crossed my legs and sighed. This was probably going to take a while.

"What happened after that?" Isabelle asked. She held a white mug out to me. The sweet scent of her special tea wafted from the cup.

I took the cup and brought it to my lips. The tea couldn't taste any better, even if it was served in the Holy Grail itself. "Well," I began, setting the mug on my nightstand. "The police gathered everybody up and took each statement individually."

Izzy flopped down on the opposite side of the bed."What did you say?" she asked.

"I told the truth. The guard tripped and everybody in the store started screaming." I shook my head. "The cops didn't believe me. They kept asking if the robbers were wearing clown masks, but I kept trying to tell them that there were no robbers in the first place!"

Izzy's big, brown eyes widened. "So everybody else in the store thought they saw burglars?"

I grimaced. "None of those idiots knew what had happened. I think the cops just assumed. Anyway, that jewelry store is closed until the investigation is over. That's a shame. You really like that place, don't you?"

"Yeah," my wife said with a nod. She blinked a few extra times as a new thought entered her mind. "Wait, why were you there in the first place?"

I had been hoping that she wouldn't ask that. Her anniversary gift had to remain a surprise. "Oh, you know," I said, trying to invent a story on the spot. "There used to be a hot dog stand outside of that place, and I wanted to see if anyone knew where it went."

Izzy squinted at me. After a few moments of silence, she smiled. "Oh, okay! That makes sense." She hopped to her feet and walked toward the bedroom door. "Hey, do you want to watch some TV? A new show is coming on tonight and I want to see if it's any good."

"That sounds fun." I slid my legs off the bed, grabbed my tea, and turned off the bedroom lights. We were hippies in that we never left the lights on in an empty room, so our entire house was cloaked in darkness. Izzy led the way to our living room.

I was ready to turn on the living room lights when our doorbell rang. That was odd. We didn't usually have visitors at nine PM. "Hey, were you expecting someone?" I asked.

"Shh!" Izzy said. Before I had a chance to acknowledge her command, she tackled me to the ground. She pinned my shoulders down and moved her mouth incredibly close to my ear. "Don't make a sound," she whispered. Her voice was barely audible, but the urgency it contained was no less noticeable. "I don't want him to know that we're here."