Micah Jennings

2.9.05 Wednesday [guilt trip]

I was furious when I saw the time on the digital clock next to my bed—I’d overslept two hours! Perhaps I overdid it yesterday, but still! It’s yet another frustrating setback, and it meant that I was only able to manage two deliveries today: Jackson Smith and Donna Pierce.

It was fitting to do these together—I robbed them both in August of last year. By this time, my technique was highly refined. I’d establish their patterns and routines from carefully determined surveillance spots. Within a few days I knew if and where they hid their most valued possessions, and by the end of the week my job was complete.

But these two were unusually difficult cases. It wasn’t that I couldn’t figure them out; in fact, I had nailed Donna’s habits after a single stalk. My trouble came from within ME.

Both Jackson and Donna were simple people: neither lived luxuriously by any means.. Jackson grew corn, Donna lived in drab apartment in the city. I remember convincing myself desperately that it was right to take from people who had so little.

‘They’ve taken from US. This is what we are OWED,’ I’d think. I was never fully swayed by this, particularly as my eyes peered hopelessly around their homes, seeing nothing of worth. Still, I ended up generating a total of $1,000 from the two. I was anxious to get it back.

But Donna had moved. I asked the woman in the crammed lobby office, who merely reported: “Moved out last fall. Couldn’t pay the rent…”
The words dealt a sickening blow.
“Do you know where she went?” I asked.
“Yeah, just moved across the street. Smaller place. Something she could afford,” she told me haltingly.

It was hard to believe, but the woman was right. Donna’s new place was even more crammed and inhabitable than the first. I left an extra couple hundred, and returned home in anguish.

-M.J.

posted by Mr. Linty @ 1:37 AM