A Little Bird Called Magpie

CHAPTER SIX

  I wake up. My body feels uncomfortable, I rub my eyes and get up and stretch. Oh shit. Last night. That wasn't a dream, was it? I grab my remote and turn the tv on. There's a stupid make-up ad playing. I change the channel. It's the news. "Man dies in a gruesome apartment explosion," the news says. They mention Jeremy Louis' name. They say it was a murder, amd the prime suspect is a woman in black with short, white hair. Oh my God. It happened. It really happened. I smile. But then, I feel a little anxious. Can they somehow connect it to me? Any fingerprints I could've left in the living room must've been blown off by the explosion, if I even left fingerprints in the first place. I think I touched everything with my nails. I'm probably fine. I'm not that paranoid. This feels like the first time I stole something when I was a kid. At first it feels like your life is over, like you've thrown away everything. But soon, you start to feel like you can get away with anything. Yes. That's exactly how it feels right now. 

  I go to the jewelry shop to pay Kurt a visit. He's in the back so I go back there, he's examining a jewel. I tell him I need more bombs. A lot more. He gives me a nod. I add, "and I also need something else." He looks at me and asks, "what?"

  "I need men," I say. He seems surprised, almost in a bad way. I can tell he's trying to keep a poker face. "How many?" 

  "Five."

  I rented a small warehouse near the Gotham docks. It's very clean and spacious enough. Me and the men meet there. Two of them look above fifty, the others look more in shape and a couple decades younger. Except one. He looks my age. Of course, I'm wearing my Magpie outfit when we meet. They look at me weird. Like they don't repect me. I explain to them my plan to rob a museum, of course, I ask for their input. One of the fit ones tells me he can find a way to cut the electricity from the building so that the alarm isn't triggered. Another man, an older one, stands close to me and laughs in my face. He thinks I'm joking. That working with me is a terrible idea. He says, "You'll end up in the madhouse in a week." With a smug grin on his face. I've had it.

  I use a spear hand strike on him, landing my steel nails around his left eye socket. I quickly gouge out his eyeball and he falls to the floor screaming. I slash his throat with my nails, leaving him to bleed out right there on the floor. I look at the men, they look surprised. One of them looks disgusted.

  "Anyone else here wants to share something with me?" I say.

  After making them get rid of the body, we made a plan. I got them all laser goggles and we arrived at 11:00pm at the museum. We cut the power in the building, including its generator, smashed some windows, and got inside. We grabbed anything shiny, sparkly, or valuable. I got to burn two guard's eyes this time. We got away with a lot of gems, gold, and shiny artifacts. This is just the beginning, though. The beginning of life. I moved out of my apartment and into the warehouse. I bought a lot of display cases to store all my sparkly things. We started hitting jewelry stores. I started to realize that all the people that owned those jewels and shiny things before me, didn't deserve them. They don't appreciate them properly, they don't appreciate them like I do. They would never understand. I don't want their filthy hands on my precious jewels. They should pay for laying their hands on them, and they will. Each time I robbed a jewelry store, I left bombs in the jewel's places. Some of them filled with acid. In the morning, the owners would get blown up or would be eaten up by acid. It would be reported on the news and shows all the time. "Magpie Strikes Again!" is a headline I got used to overtime. Pretty soon I stopped using displays because they took up too much space. I started putting my jewels in a big pile. It's so high right now that I can lay on top of them and make jewel angels. Laying on that pile every day feels like heaven. But that's not enough. Every single shiny shiny belongs to me. I just need to go get them.