By: Austin Chau

In the middle of the night at a boisterous market, instruments enveloped the shops with their energetic songs. Lights sparkled like stars in the night, positioned on the sides of shops and walkways. These lights formed a line indicating which merchandise is the most expensive. The darker the light, the lower the price. The brighter the light, the higher the price.

One item stood out as the brightest, surrounded with an abundance of colored lights. Valued over half a billion dollars and displayed behind bulletproof glass, an air-conditioning machine stood above the rest. People believed the machine contained revolutionary power to cool down anything.

A small eighteen-year-old boy named Draco planned to steal the air-conditioning machine to help his ill mother. His mother suffered from an illness that made her body temperature spike up to one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit. The doctors don’t have a cure. They said the air-conditioning machine is the only way to restore her back to normal. Draco created a plan and commenced a heist on a Friday night.

Draco knew the market’s establishment like the palm of his hand because of the constant visits for medicinal herbs. Draco wandered into the crowd and darted into an alleyway. He climbed to the top of the closest building to the air-conditioning machine and began to rehearse his plan.

“All I have to do is wait until they start cleaning up and covering the merchandise. I grab the documents next to the box and look for the passcode for the box. Then, I grab the machine and run into the foggy alleyways. Seems easy enough,” Draco muttered under his breath while walking in circles.

Because of Draco’s unnecessary monologue, the alarms immediately blared. Someone stole the machine.

“Oh crap!” Draco shouted. He jumped across buildings and slipped into the open cracks of the bulletproof glass. He saw a masked figure holding onto the machine and Draco lunged at him. They fight over the appliance, but the cops corner them in the box.

“Put your hand in the air. You are under arrest!” the officer shouted.

Draco couldn’t believe this; he got caught red handed. He felt crestfallen and thought about how he was unable to help his mother when she needed it the most. His life was over.

Image Credit by Katia Miasoed