Their Thief

One

Damaris Rana

"Stop, you son of a bitch!"

Rain pelts against my face as my ears fill with the sound of my black boots pounding against the wet asphalt that's reflecting the neon lights of surrounding businesses. The black jeans and black hoodie that I'm wearing are being soaked through and weighed down from the rain. I weave my 5′4 body through a crowd of men and scantily clad women waiting to enter an exclusive club, many holding umbrellas and a few unsuccessfully using their clutches or jackets to shield themselves from the rain. A few of them glare at me as I bump into them in my haste.

I look back to see the six-foot-tall, bald, angry man who's chasing me struggling to get through the crowd due to his larger frame. He's constantly shoulder checking people who slowe him down with their rage-filled out lashes. While he's momentarily distracted by an angry man, I turn into an alleyway blocked by the crowd. I run and duck behind a dumpster, waiting for him to run past the entrance, and soon enough, he does.

I stand up and walk further down the alley, pulling out my newly acquired wallet. Going through - John Lee's wallet according to his driver's license - I find 135$. Not bad. Most people don't carry around cash, just plastic, so this is a score. Pocketing the money, I get rid of the wallet in another dumpster I pass.

I pull my hood down and adjust my short haired, black wig back into place. Thankfully, I use waterproof makeup to contour my face to appear masculine. It would suck if my face started melting and he saw my real appearance.

Most of my targets don't realize they have had their wallets stolen until after the fact when I'm long gone. Today I screwed up. I made a rookie mistake and dropped the wallet right after lifting it. I decided to grab it off the ground and run while John was still shocked that I would steal it. After doing this for seven years out of the twenty-two that I have been alive, it's pretty easy to spot the signs that someone is going to give chase. He already realized I was pickpocketing him and had that look where he was pissed enough to chase me, so why not be chased with the winnings rather than without? This way if I get away, then I have the money and he has a false description to give to the police. If I get caught... well I'd be fucked whether I had the wallet or not because he witnessed me lift it, and I highly doubt he would have believed me if I said he had dropped it. It was in a pretty deep pocket.

I turn right into another alleyway so I'm going in the opposite direction from John. This alley is behind the exclusive club, I think it said Chaos on the sign in front. I heard that it's a club for the super-rich. Apparently, three brothers own it, triplets. I heard their rumoured to be cold-blooded, ruthless, and don't care about anything but power, and they already are the most powerful people in Canada, in all of North America, maybe even the world. They prioritize those with money and power, but that's nothing new in society. Most of the people in line out front won't even get in. They don't meet the qualifications of the elite and are just wasting their night out in the cold rain hoping for an opportunity.

When I enter the alley behind Chaos I see five men standing in the middle of the alley by the clubs backdoor. If I was dressed as a girl I would have turned around to not risk running into drunk creeps, but I was dressed in my male disguise.

Dressing as Leo Dharan gives me a sense of security, I get left alone because I'm a guy and the creeps lurking around in the dark are looking  to prey upon young, defenceless, girls. There was a gay guy who bothered me once believing that because I'm smaller it would be easier to overpower me. Jokes on him, I had a switchblade. I whipped it out and that made him back off.

I use my male disguise when I go about my thieving ways or the occasional times when I get hired to do a job, which is usually to steal a specific something for someone. It makes it easier to escape from those who would seek me out to get revenge and the cops. While they're looking for a guy, I've already changed and walk right past them as a girl.