FICTION
A Band of Bogarts: Part II
Flint & Steel Two-Part Writing Challenge
An unmistakable squiggle of blood found Jude’s face yet again, as he stared back at this intruder. Jess did not come to his rescue like usual, she too, was in a state of stunted fear. Cy’s hand was losing circulation from squeezing the backdoor handle so tightly.
Homer, however, leaped into the back with the rest and charged forward to this unmasked stranger. Ripping the towel from their hand he slammed them against the van and Jess swore she saw every vein in his forehead pop.
“Who are you? What happened to Verity? What went on in there,” he yelled in their face.
“That was a lot of questions, can you repeat them?” they replied.
“This is no time to be a smartass,” Homer winded up a fist.
“Okay, okay,” Jude stepped in, “let’s not make this a bloodier affair than it already is,” he gestures to his nose.
“You get nosebleeds too, huh,” the stranger quipped.
Jude squinted at them, and reached for Homer’s hand, loosening the fist.
“Larry, did you all do anything to him,” Cy’s voice quivered behind them all.
They shrugged.
“The security guard, is he dead?”
“Oh, the only human around, of course.”
“Of course, you killed him,” Cy was gaining steam now.
“Sorry,” they laughed, “of course as in of course that’s who you were talking about.”
“You should let Homer punch them.”
Gesturing that they meant no harm, they reached into their backpack pulled out a few things, and then finally found what they were looking for. It was a folder, Jess yanked it from their hands.
Flipping through it her eyes grew wide and her mouth struggled to remain closed. Everything about them was there. Photos, addresses, relationships, even their favorite colors. She came to her page and reflected at her was everything she had done within the last month.
“What is this,” she asked.
“You can see for yourself,” they answered.
“It’s some kind of dossier,” she waved it around, “on all of us.”
“What,” Cy took it from her and saw.
Homer wrestled it into his control and tore it apart, page by page as he stared right into their eyes.
“You don’t think we made copies?”
Before anyone could continue this tense exchange of ethics within the unethical someone outside started pounding onto the van.
“Why the hell are we still here anyway,” Homer yawped and got back into the driver’s seat.
“Wait, wait,” Jude called out, but it was too late.
Homer drove off as they looked back into the alley to see some of the other robbers, still masked, but just as confused. No one said anything as they made their way through town, everyone had sunken backed into their shocked states, resigned to the disastrous result of their criminal enterprise. Once they arrived back at their hideout, they reassembled inside of the room and it felt like they had barely begun.
“I think I’ve aged a decade in the last five minutes,” Cy said.
Jude and Jess simply shook their heads being able to relate to this sentiment. Homer slipped out of the room and no one had noticed, at least not until they smelled smoke. They sprinted toward the only window and found the source. Homer had set the van on fire and now it sat there in a greater blaze of glory than any of them could ever expect to have.
“What the actual fuck, Homer,” Jude ran out into the abandoned parking lot.
“Can’t trace this back to us now.”
“That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works,” he pulls on his already frazzled mop of hair.
“A little help in here,” Jess yelps.
Both of them go back in and see Jess and Cy fighting over a piece of rope with the stranger. Jude and Homer swooped in to hold them back as Cy and Jess got the makeshift jail together. Plopping them down on a chair, they tied their hands and feet and stood back to assess their work.
“I think may-” before their verbal assault could reach them Homer shoved a sock into their mouth.
They reconvened in a circle at the center of the room. Jude could only look over at Jess, Jess could only look at the floor, Cy turned his head toward the door, and Homer crossed his arms as he studied all of them.
“That was an abomination,” Homer boomed. “No, ya got nothing to say for yourselves?” He walked over to Jude and forced himself into the younger man’s face. “What about you whiz kid?”
“Leave him alone,” Jess stepped forward.
“Oh, look, his white knight coming to save the day…run out of band-aids did ya?”
Jess lunged at him, but Cy placed himself in between. “Stop this, fighting isn’t going to help any of this.”
They all backed down and slinked away into their respective spots in the circle. A drop of water splashed onto Jude’s face as he looked up to see the dilapidated building was a little worse than he realized.
“Let’s just trade them for Verity,” Jess offered.
“You get all your pointers from movies,” Homer derided her.
“It is an option though,” Jude spoke up. “Maybe if we can exchange them that’s as simple as it has to be.”
“Yeah, let’s do that, get it over and done with,” Cy jumped in his place.
“If we do this, we have to be smart about it, so far we have a pretty piss poor track record of that.”
The stranger in the corner started mumbling something under the sock in their mouth. None of them were going to listen now. Instead, they stomped onto the floor as much as their constricted foot could let them, nothing. All they were met with were faces in deep pits of desperation, they felt worse for these guys than they were for themselves. Finally, they gave it one last shot and smacked themselves into the wall.
“Oh, alright, what is it,” Homer hung the sock to the side of their mouth.
“They don’t care about me.”
“What,” Cy questioned.
“So, your plan is a swap, right? Yeah, they’re long gone. None of us knew each other, I’ve never even seen them without their masks. Unlike you fetid wads of absolute idiocy, we knew how to run an operation and knew total anonymity was the way to go. No ties, no feelings, no nothing. If one of us was left behind,” they looked around at this crumbling structure, “well, we were truly left behind.” They paused to smirk, “even worse your pal Verity was in on all of it. How do you think we got all that information, to begin with?”
This revelation rang out in their ears deafening the pounding of their hearts. A faint giggle formed in the stranger’s throat, and as it snaked its way up into their mouth it became a full-throttled cackle that blew the sock right out of their mouth. All Jude, Jess, Cy, and Homer could do was stare at this bad omen that came in the form of this rogue robber. Homer zipped up his jacket, tipped his cap, and power-walked straight out of the door. No words, no goodbyes, just an abrupt exit of the entire situation.
“What are we supposed to do now,” Cy pleaded to the two others.
Out in the distance, there it was, the worst sound they could imagine. Sirens. The police would soon descend on them and there was nothing any of them could do to survive the oncoming reign of judicial hell unless they acted right now.
Jess and Jude looked at one another and seemed to communicate solely through telepathic spasms. Jude sighed, Jess nodded and they clasped hands. Moving forward they stopped when they reached Cy and Jude placed his hands on his shoulder.
“We’re both genuinely sorry things didn’t work out.”
The couple left, leaving Cy with the stranger and this weeping excuse for a safe house. He reached into his pocket pulled out a knife, and made his way over to them. They shuttered and pressed themselves up against the wall as if they would be able to dissolve right into it. Cy placed the knife on the ground, a few inches from their grasp, and was gone.
The buzzing of the fluorescent lights seemed to taunt Cy, glaring harshly at his presence. Phones could be heard from every direction and the shuffling of feet made this place feel entirely different, but it wasn’t. A man with a pea-green checkered jacket sat down across from him, adjusted his glasses, and leaned forward.
“Sorry, for the delay. We’ve gone back to the old, human model of things ever since last month’s debacle. Alright, Mr. Francis, what can I do for you today?”
Cy let out an almost audible groan, placed a piece of paper on the desk, and slid it across.
“I’m here to apply for any openings you may have.”
Confused? You can find Part I here: