K. A. Laity

The Big Break

 

Bloody psychics!

He switched the crowbar to the other hand and brought his right hand up to blow warm breath on his stiff fingers. If it weren’t for that woman he wouldn’t freezing his nuts off waiting here by the bins. You just couldn’t make a living anymore as an honest thief. There were cameras and alarms everywhere. 24/7 streaming video. He was tired. But this one promised to set him up for a good long while. Or so she said.

He still wasn’t sure what made him turn in that door. The psychic’s door was sandwiched between the new dispensary (putting drug dealers out of business so nice white ladies could ‘curate’ organic blends) and the shiny hardware store that was just an affront to life as he knew it. Hardware stores were dirty places where a grumbling old man could listen to your dad’s description of the mess he had made at home, rifle through a few worm-eaten boxes and hand you the precise tools and screws you needed.

It was all those rich folks who moved up here during the first wave of the plague, sending property into astronomical realms and driving up the cost of everything. Then they joined local government and ruined everything that gave this old city its charm. Rust was declared an enemy and all the wild places he had played as a kid were suddenly hazardous.

Maybe it was just the desperation permeating the city like a second plague, but he pushed open the door and walked up a flight to knock on her door, swearing to himself the whole time. He’d not been in one of those cheesy places since his mum passed. She swore by them, though much good it did her. They never got out of that stinking little hole his dad’s death had abandoned them to: two rooms and a galley kitchen. But she always found money for the lottery and the psychic. What was her name? Madame something or other. They always were.

Not this one though: Clodagh. Irish name, right? But she had west country accent so maybe she just had posh parents. Nobody gave their kids normal names like Jenny or Edward anymore. She did take him by surprise, though. His mum. He didn’t ask for her. The psychic prompted him for a name but he just shrugged. ‘Your father’s here but he doesn’t have anything to say.’ Too right, he never did.

‘Your mum says you are about to get a big break.’ He snorted, but she persisted. Then there was the gradual revelation of this building, Friday cash out, no cameras, poor security. Could it really be true? He staked out the place a week. Boss quietly bringing the pay packets under his arm on Friday afternoon. Happy workers all going home with them on Saturday.

And the lone security guard who had a lackadaisical approach to his job. He’d take a turn about the building when he first arrived after lockup. He’d take another about midnight. Then he’d put his feet up on the desk in the tiny office downstairs and watch videos on his phone until he nodded off.

The guard was asleep now.

Flexing his fingers around the crowbar, he climbed up on one of the bins so he could reach the fire escape. On the second floor, the boarded up window the psychic or his mother had described so clearly. The nails screamed as he pried it open, but no one came near.

He stepped through the broken window and stood for a moment listening. Not a peep. He waited for his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. Should have brought a flashlight. He’d seen people use their phones like flashlights and tried it. The sickly blue gleam wasn’t really enough to guide him, but it was better than nothing.

This room seemed to be abandoned equipment, probably no longer functioning. He wasn’t entirely certain what they made or did here. Everything was made by robots now. They were taking all the jobs. Last week he almost went to the job centre to look for something to tide him over, but he turned on his heel at the door. Too humiliating. He wasn’t working with robots.

Finally through the door and into a kind of hallway filled with warning signs and rules and emergency exit signs. Rules and regs: he always hated them even back in school he could never quite follow the rules. He didn’t always break them on purpose, they just never made much sense to him.

If this thing worked out he’d go somewhere warm a while. It was always cheaper living in those places. Get away from this damp cold dying city and get some heat in his bones. He would be forty before he knew it and already felt well past it. Never mind. Being old in a warm place wasn’t so bad.

If he could just find the stairs. Then he would get down, tap the guard on the head and break open that locked drawer. Not even a safe or a money box: they kept the pay packets in a locked drawer. He couldn’t believe his luck. He was never lucky. Never won so much as a single bingo game in his time. His mum hadn’t said his luck was changing, yet she did harp on the big break coming. Just one was all he needed.

A cold blast of air his his face. Imagine working all day in this rubbish. Probably for next to nothing, too. Something metal jutted into his hip. He stumbled and shied to the right.

Just like that there was nothing under his feet.

The fall probably took an instant and yet it seemed to take forever like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. He hit the ground with a crack and for a moment that sound filled his head with blackness.

He couldn’t tell if it was a minute later or hours when his head cleared long enough for him to scream with pain. As his foot was nearly in his face, he knew his leg was broken, but he couldn’t lift his head to try to see in the velvet dark. His head was wet. He finally realised the sirens were only inside his brain. He might lie there until morning. Or longer. Where was this even?

Big break, my aunt Fanny. Mum, is that you?