Enter Apathy

Robbery Gone Wrong (1.)

Lilliana feels herself being shaken, hard. She opens her eyes to find Aunt Cindy waking her up with a worried look furrowing her brow. Lilliana feels panic creep into her skin, and she pulls her blankets closer to her body.

"What's going on?" Her eyes wildly search the room and land again on her aunt Cindy's face. Aunt Cindy hasn't spoken yet; she's listening to the noises outside Lilliana's room. They hear thudding and shouts, and then a loud noise like a firework that's been set off far too close.

"What was that?" She frantically asks her aunt. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears.

Aunt Cindy whispers, "Someone broke in, Mike went to check it out but I don't think we're safe."

She points toward Lilliana's hope chest and puts her fingers up to her mouth, gesturing silence. Mouthing the word hide, Aunt Cindy opens the chest and urges Lilliana into it. She gets in and Aunt Cindy hurriedly lays a few items of clothing and books on top of it to avoid suspicion.

Aunt Cindy stands up straight right before the robber bursts into the room. Another firework noise sounds off, which she now realizes is a gunshot, followed by the thud of someone hitting the floor. Lilliana holds her breath. She still doesn't understand what's going on, being confused and overwhelmed causes tears to burn her eyes. She hears another person rush into room.

Lifting the lid of the chest carefully, she peeks out and sees two men standing over Aunt Cindy's body. Her lifeless eyes stare back at Lilliana, wide and full of fear. Blood pools out on the floorboard beneath her. Lilliana's cheeks feel wet and she still doesn't realize that she's crying. Her eyes stay fixed on her aunt's dead ones while the men bicker.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing? This was supposed to be a low-risk robbery and you've turned it into a double homicide, for fucks sake! What are we gonna do with the bodies, man? Aw, fuck, we're so going to jail after this, Jesus fucking Christ, I knew I shouldn't have teamed up with the damn Czech!" One of the robbers screams at the other.

     The other robber speaks with a thick accent and seems completely unbothered. He even stands like he didn't just murder two people.

"Is no big deal. We grab valuable, we leave. Simple," he shrugs. He bends over Aunt Cindy's body to take a gold bracelet off of her wrist. Lilliana covers her mouth with her hand, scared of making noise. These men are horrible. She watches the robber with the accent drop her aunt's limp hand as if she weren't just alive only a few moments ago. He completely disregards and disrespects life. How can someone so evil exist?

     "What do you mean 'is no big deal'? Kroj, there's two dead bodies in this house, and they didn't even deserve it! You're so fucking fired after this man, I'm gonna let Don know just how bad you fucked up tonight." The first robber steps over Aunt Cindy and shouts in the other's face, "You can't just kill people! We were supposed to scope the place out, break in when they were sleeping, take the good shit, and leave. But instead, you banged the door down, went rogue, and killed two people, you absolute fucking-"

His words are interrupted by a loud smack, followed by a thud. Lilliana watches as the robbers turn on each other, grappling and fighting on the ground, occasionally bumping the dead body on the floor. The fight is short-lived. The Czech robber, Kroj, pins the other one down, pummeling his face in. He's far more vicious and volatile than the other, unnamed robber. Lilliana's head hurts from crying and no matter how much she wants to stop looking, she can't. She keeps staring at Kroj as he beats the now unconscious robber's face in. Small amounts of blood splatter the floorboard, his arms, and his face. His face. Lilliana makes a mental note of the long scar that accents his jaw. Whatever caused that scar had to have been gnarly, because the scar tissue looks deep.