Christmas Heist

By

Chicken Tornado

The air smelt like festivity: people wearing flannels gaping at displays of Christmas lights, groups of carolers roaming the streets, each singing to a different tune, and most of all, the little flakes of winter sprinkled over the neighborhood like powdered sugar.

My buddies and I were drinking all of it up, blending right in with the crowd gathered in the streets on Christmas Eve. No-one looked twice at our beanies and gloves, or the backpacks we wore on our shoulders.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, here’s a hint: Christmas time holds the record for most robberies year round.

And unlike Santa, we weren’t coming down the chimney to leave presents under the tree.

My friends and I were your average High School students, with the exception that we weren’t afraid of crime. I’d like to tell you more about us, except that revealing our names or personal information is probably a stupid move for a robber. I’ll use codenames for now.

My friend Blitzen first suggested the idea. Each of us is a bit of a rule-breaker, but if one of us was going to end up in prison, it’d be Blitzen.

At first, we were all unwilling. The most any of us had done at that point was steal a Snickers bar from a gas station. But it got me thinking: Why not? I’m young, I need action, and the most that could happen is a few years in jail. I have a cousin who went to jail once. He said they have a really good Taco Tuesday.

But that’s beside the point. Maybe Blitzen was right. We were becoming goodie-two-shoes. That couldn’t happen. Besides, I could use the money.

So there we were. Each of us had a switchblade, but we’d agreed that if we got caught, we’d bail. The four of us were ready. Blitzen, Cupid, Dasher, and me: Rudolf.

Cupid looked at his watch, and I could tell he was getting antsy. Out of all of us, he was the most apprehensive about the whole thing. “It’s 9:28.” He told us. “You said the crowd would be gone by now.”

Dasher rolled his eyes. “What, you got somewhere to be?”

“Keep it down!” I hushed at them. “You’re drawing attention.”

They quieted. I looked around, taking in the view of the street. A few stragglers remained, taking a good fifteen minutes to be all sentimental about the experience. I tapped my foot against the ground, and said “Merry Christmas” to an old lady that passed by.

“You ready?” Blitzen asked us, pulling his beanie down over his face, and revealing that he’d cut two holes in it earlier. I’d done the same, but my scissor work is pretty shoddy, so I ended up with two very different sized holes, and one much higher than the other.

“Ready.” I told him.

I watched as my other friends pulled down their beanies, becoming thieves in the night. I handed out our Santa hats, and we all jammed them on. I can’t overstate how cool I felt just then.

“Okay.” Dasher said, his hands clinging to the straps his backpack like an excited schoolboy. “The address is 2327 Myrtle Crescent Drive.”

“I remember.” I snapped. “Keep it down!”

“I have a bad feeling about this…” Cupid being Cupid.

We snuck up to the house, a kinda rinky-dinky looking one story with a shaggy lawn and three bikes parked out front. Why this house? I don’t know… I guess we figured some old lady lived there, and that she wouldn’t give us much trouble if we got caught. Plus, knowing old people they would probably have gold buried in the top part of the toilet.