Antecedent 0.2
I walk calmly down the sidewalk, looking side-to-side at the buildings sandwiching the lamplit road. I don't pay too much attention to them because of the neighborhood I'm walking past; stealing from the poor is useless; they'd only have pennies, and I wasn't out to find pennies. We had enough of those at home. I start to formulate a checklist in my head as I cross neighborhoods.
I don't wait too long before I find what I was looking for. A white house stands in front of me, two stories tall with some wooden pillars holding up a patio roof at the entrance. There is a rocking chair as well as a table and three stools set out on the polished wooden floorboards. The house's roof is a musty brown, making the full house look like half an ice cream sandwich. A confusing analogy, but it reflects something important, which is that I am quite hungry.
I push that away for now and analyze the house; I am discovering more of my abilities every day, and hyperfocused logical analysis seems to be one of the symptoms.
For example: Three stools. Three residents. Mother, son, father? Rocking chair. Father confirmed. Patio and two stories? Too much for one person. Two bedrooms at least. White color looks painted, while the brown roof looks natural, like dyed hair covering the roots. A job done for someone else yet not fully finished. Running out of money? No. The rocking chair looks recently bought, and those are not cheap. The father most likely did half of the paint job before stopping, clearly not caring about it. Since the son might not have had an opinion when it came to that, it was the wife's idea. Stop there. His failing marriage is a completely different can of worms that was useless to me.
I unfocus from this analysis as I walk up to the door. I didn't knock; they wouldn't open for a stranger in the middle of the night. Besides, I already had a different idea for getting in.
I close my eyes and spread my focus. This may sound odd to you, but it makes perfect sense to me. I can't fully describe the feeling, but it was as if I was expanding a sphere around me, trying to find…there we are. I opened my new eyes, keeping my own closed. The eyes of a dragonfly are quite like our own, other than the ability to see in almost every direction. That is not necessary for my plan however; just their ability for high-def vision is enough.
While I move the dragonfly away from the community pond, I make sure to bring a few house flies as well. There are plenty in the house itself, along with a few cockroaches as well. I'm not able to see as well through these more unsightly insects, but the dragonfly arrives a little bit after I've grouped them together. I fly it through one of the open windows on the upper floor, the master bedroom apparently. A man and a woman are asleep in an olympic queen-sized bed. They look peaceful. Hopefully, I wouldn't disturb it; that was up to them.
With the dragonfly as the eyes, and the roaches and flies as the hands, I was able to quickly find the keys to the front door. They were splayed out on a table situated a few feet away from the entrance, easily available to me. It took a few minutes to actually slide it in the lock and turn it the appropriate amount to hear a satisfying click. I gently push open the door, taking care not to allow it to make any noise. I do the same as I close and lock it. As soon as I finish with that, I pull down my mask; an improvised travesty made up of half a sock, a five-inch circle from a sweater to close the opening, and some mesh nets to cover the eye-holes. I essentially looked like a low budget version of an Earth Aleph superhero; I'm sure you know which.
I spread my bugs out in the house, the dragonfly under the most focus. See, if I had full focus on every single bug under my control, I would run out of energy very quickly, while being quite inefficient. If I gave them orders just to move around the house looking for something specific, they could alert me with a mental jolt of sorts when they find it. They would be almost completely independent other than that. Their vision was a bit unreliable, though, so I would have more direct control on the dragonfly, whose vision approached human capabilities, and in some ways surpassed it.
I put the insects to work by splitting them into three, technically two, groups: the flies would go around the house and find as much loose money as they could, the cockroaches would investigate the walls of the house for any hidden safes or holes, and set my dragonfly in the master bedroom, keeping his wingbeats quiet as he surveyed the couple in the bed. If they woke up, it would complicate things.
I quickly start to pile everything I had found in the middle of the room. Watches, room I stand in, on top of a nice looking carpet. Watches, trophies, expensive paperweights, pennies, dimes, nickels. The real big catch is what I find in the wallets. I quickly do the math in my head as I add it all together. Fifty tens, sixty twenties, forty hundreds, and five ones. Four-thousand, one-hundred and seventy-five dollars. More money than I had ever personally seen in my life.
However, I know I'm not finished. Some cockroaches had burrowed behind a painting, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, and found something cuboid and metal. I walk over to the painting and slowly take it off of the wall, leaning it on the table underneath. A keypad stares back at me, along with a little red light next to it. I sigh. I suppose I have to complicate things. I pull down the hammer of the revolver and walk to the stairs.
I nudge the man softly. He does not wake up. Annoying. I nudge him again, slightly harder this time. He still does not wake up. He stirs slightly, mumbling.
"Honey, it's too early…" I groan as I put the gun in my left hand. I quickly put it over the man's mouth, gripping it tight. His eyes flash open, groggy. He looks up at me. His eyes widen. I hold up my gun. They widen more.
"Stand up. Quietly." He hesitates for a few moments before nodding softly. I take my hand off of his mouth. He pulls the covers off and gets out of the bed. I hear another voice.
"Sweetie…where are you going?" The man looks back at the bed then looks at me. I bring my index finger to where my mouth should be and make a shh gesture. He looks back at his wife.
"Just need a glass of water, honey. I'll be right back." There is no response. The two of us walk out into the hallway just outside the room. As I close the door behind him, he speaks up again. "What do you want?" I turn to him, my blank expression hidden by my mask.
"I think it's quite obvious. I found your safe. You will enter the code." The man looked incredulous. Before he can say anything, I point the gun at him. "The only thing you can negotiate with is your life. I do not want to kill you, but I will if you are not useful to me. You will enter the code." He quickly shuts his mouth. I gesture to the stairs and we walk down.
I keep the gun firmly on his temple as he inputs the code. One. Nine. Eight. Five. Click.
The little door swivels open. I see seven large bundles of green immediately, tied together with rubber bands. I see a few rolls littering the floor of the box as well. There's even a little jewelry box.
I had struck gold.
I quickly get everything together on the carpet. I instruct the man, Carl, apparently, to get me some extra bed sheets. He was very reluctant, but easily convinced by another showing of the revolver. As he disappeared back up the stairs, I started to add everything in the safe to the pile. It was getting to be quite the dragon hoard at this point. I survey my handiwork with the closest feeling to pride I can have as Carl walks back down the stairs.
He drops off the sheets on the floor in front of me and stands in place. I am about to grab the new sheets when I notice something odd. There was a change in his demeanour. He was obviously already in distress, but my analysis told me that there was something new. I stand back up, ignoring the sheets.
"Is something wrong, Carl?" His cheek twitches.
"What?" A crease of worry grows on his forehead.
"What did you do?" His breathing gets funny.
"I…what do you…mean? I didn't…" I take a step towards him.
"Carl. What did you do." It is no longer a question. He tenses up like a bullet had passed by his ear.
"I…I…" I can read it in his face. He is gone, replaced by an obstacle.
"It called the police." I reach for the gun. "It woke up its wife." I pull it out. "It forfeited its life." I bring the gun up to its head. "Either one of these options would have been correct. " I pull the trigger.
It takes less than five minutes to tie together a makeshift bag as I start to run. I am already out of the house when I hear the sirens. I run as fast as I can into the next neighborhood. The bag hits my back with every step, though it's not so bad as it mostly contains paper. After a few minutes of nonstop sprinting, I take a moment in an alleyway to catch my breath. I lean on a wall, taking deep breaths in and out, attempting to prevent hyperventilation. The difficulty disappears after a few minutes, and I wait a few minutes more until the coast is clear.
I arrive at my house a half hour later. I sneak through the window again and check my alarm clock: eleven forty-nine. I release the tension in my body as I drop the bag. I empty it out on the floor and start counting. Stacking. Estimating. Adding. Re-counting.
There is a total of thirty five thousand dollars on the floor in front of me.
A light elation creeps up my body, fading away as quick as it came. Organization comes before celebration. I went to my bed and pulled out the shoebox. I store my revolver and take out the money before putting it back under; surprisingly, it only took one bullet for a house as well. I throw the diner money into the bag with the rest, sliding it next to the shoebox. Satisfied, I jump into bed.
As I lie down, I find myself involuntarily reflecting.
What did this experience mean to me?
I had mostly done it because it filled me with something new.
A pure, unmuted feeling.
Yet, it felt incomplete.
Like it wasn't the full experience I needed.
Was this my purpose?
The purpose for which I got these powers?
Something I was willing to commit to?
I did not have an answer.
Perhaps it was a good idea to cease the robberies for a while.
Until I have a definite answer.
From what my powers have given me, it was clear that lots of things in my life would be different.
Many things would feel redundant or unnecessary.
What will my purpose be then?
I guess I'll have to see.