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Most recently published stories in Criminal.
today was different
t started like any other day. 6am-wake up, coffee and cigarette, shower, get dressed go to work somehow, that had been me for the past six years. at a standstill. A robot. everything exciting in my life just came to an abrupt stop one day and to be completely honest I hadn’t noticed it until that day. I was everything I never wanted to be. a lonely 27-year-Old, no kids no man, no social life, no goals or ambitions just living the same day over and over. Pitiful right? but I guess that’s what life does to some people .it sucks you clean of all hope and imagination and leaves you dry and in an altered state of reality. the world suddenly seems less magic. I used to see opportunity in even the smallest of things but at that point in my life. I was too scared to even ask for a promotion for a job i had been at for 7+ years .. just didn’t believe in myself like I once did I had lost my light.
By Remy Martin5 years ago in Criminal
An Eye for an Eye
Nurse Lucinda Mendoza pushed the medicine cart slowly down the jail corridor. She was working her usual 3-11:30 pm shift at Godwin T. Jackson Prison in Oakdale, California. It was time for medication pass, and she had to get to inmate pods to service them. This shift weighed heavy on her because Lucinda knew this shift was going to be different. She was worried, as Deputy Carr walked quickly ahead of her. On this shift, she was going to have to kill someone.
By Keisha A. Steed5 years ago in Criminal
Little Black Book
It was 1946, not long after the war we were women inspired to be more, me and my sisters I mean. There was Priscilla, Melissa and myself Juliet, with Priscilla being the oldest and me in the middle. Our parents were hero’s of the war, my father being a war veteran and my mother as a medical nurse and our trust goes beyond words, which is why me and my 2 sisters have decided to travel the world together without our parents supervision of course. It was the perfect time for liberation, independence, ambition, interaction, being a female with all the courage in the world, we were going to change the world. My interest in journalism had got me through the war and all I wanted was a great story to tell as I would progressively be the first female journalist to travel and exceed limitations, opportunities were up for grabs and nothing at this point was going to get in the way. However things didn’t turn out the way I imagined, in a matter of fact it could have been a journey worth writing.
By Miqat Chowdhury5 years ago in Criminal
Purge & Breathe
“The target number is 57858. Locate the target,” the disembodied voice of the monitor crackled through an intercom. Jack Singer was in another room lying back on a recliner, encased in soundproof, bulletproof, and radar-proof glass. His breathing was slow and deep, his face expressionless; he wasn’t asleep, but he looked like it. He was in an altered hypnotic state. In double-blind remote viewing sessions like these, an intelligence officer assigns a random number to an intelligence target. The number alone, without context, is provided to a human monitor, who issues that target number to the remote viewer. Psychics like Jack can then use their abilities to locate the object, person, place, or thing that is associated with that target number.
By Asad Mecci5 years ago in Criminal
Secure Storage
She held her breath looking up to the dark sky ringed with street lights, passing buses and the glow of shops. She cursed herself for leaving work later than she’d meant and ending up in this crush of people trying to get down the steps of the Oxford Circus tube. People crushed up hard enough to lift each other off their feet. It was dangerous going down the steps to the ticket barriers. Touching the brick wall, Caroline held her small case to steady herself. The movement stopped suddenly pushing Caroline’s nose into the collar of a man on the step below her. She pulled back and saw his balding head, the dandruff she’d just had her nose pushed into and inwardly shuddered. ‘I am never doing this again’ she thought as the crowd suddenly released into the wider ticket hall. The mass rushed to the automatic ticket barriers, tutting as slower people got their tickets stuck or struggled to get their cards to pay to open the barriers quickly enough for the daily experts behind them. Caroline stopped to take a breath before tackling the barrier and then the escalators down to the rammed tube trains.
By carole foster5 years ago in Criminal
five finger discount
i was today years old when i realized that saks fifth avenue is a store that i literally can't afford anything. it's almost as if they knew it when i walked in. that's probably why i've been here for 20 minutes and not one sales person has even attempted to ask me if i needed help. now i could make the assumption that it's a race thing, but working a place like this they can most likey spot a window shopper pretty easily. besides, i just wanted to get a glimpse at all the designer brands people on the internet tell me i can't live without. funny how you can know something is fluff but fall for the trap regardless. anyway i better make my way to the exit before my mother realizes i made a detour and disobeyed the come home immediately after school directive she gives me daily. i think she has to work both jobs today so i might have a little free time for myself. i know being a single mother can be stressful but can we please acknowledge the aggravation her aggravation causes the anti-adult member of this duo. the whole "don't do what i did" and "get your education" speech is cool, and i get it. but can i please just finish my game without her making it a life altering decision, please. actually, this a good chance for me to run upstairs to big bruh's place to get a couple games in. big bruh for those who care is demarcus. demarcus is the guy that stays right above us in 4d. i think he lives with his mom but she never comes out of her room so i can neither confirm nor deny her existence. my mother doesn't like me going up there because she see's him hanging on the corner sometimes so in her eyes he's offically a hoodlum. not in the pull the occasional drive-by drug kingpin way, but in a his life will probably go nowhere, wouldn't trust him in her home along kind of way. anyway, mid hot dog/call of duty massacre he tells me about some ppp scam him and a couple of potential co-defendants are about to get into. i've always been amazed at how people can talk about doing something illegal like it was no big deal at all. not that i'm some choir boy, but whenever i think of commiting a criminal act i imagine the end result being me in a cell with insert any oz tv show character as my cell mate for the next 10 years. then he finally come out with it. he wanted me to be a part of his plans as some sort of fake business partner. after reminding him that i still need my mother's permission to go on field trips he tells me that its just for paperwork. he just needs my name and social because apparently the other guys involved are some what familiar with handcuffs and the back seat of police cars, so someone that wasn't in the system would be nice. i guess it could work. but it's not as if i have alot of experience with scams aside from what i've seen on television. besides that i'm having a hard time taking this criminal mastermind seriously with yellow mustard stuck in his beard. but let's weigh my options. i can remain mr. brokey broke with no money and continue to watch my mom struggle, or i can do this small, slightly illegal thing that could possibly dig us out of this hole that life dug for us. guess it's time to warm up these cold feet cause i'm in. fast forward a few months later i figured big bruh must had gotten cold feet as well, or maybe he picked up that virus that's been driving everyone crazy because i haven't seen or heard from him in a while. then, just like that i get a text telling me to meet him after school which is going to be sort of difficult seeing that the only school i've been attending is virtually through my school board aquired laptop. so i tell him i'd try to get away this weeked because my mom has had me on lockdown ever since her night job went out of business. during the day she's a nurse so lucky for her the sick people business is booming. saturday morning comes and i slip off to the fitness center in my complex that literally consist of two treadmills and some medicine balls. i think old people come for the free coffee. i see demarcus standing next to the door with a big smile and a fresh haircut which lately is the quivalent of seeing someone with bottled water during a drought. i ask him where he's been hiding and that i've been to his place a few times but no one answered. bruh told me his mom passed way from pneumonia which is crazy to me cause we live in new orleans and i thought you had to be in cold weather to catch that. apparently he wasn't in the mood for small talk cause he handed me a bookbag mid conversation and said don't spend it all in one place. i went to open it but he stopped me and said wait until you get home, i'm leaving the city for a while so if anyone ask, you haven't seen me. guess he needed some new scenery. understandable. i plan to leave one day as well. i ran back up to my apartment and did my best ethan hunt from mission impossible impression to get this bag in the house without being noticed. luckily while judge judy's on my mom wouldn't notice a nuke going off until the commercials came on. when i opened the bag all i saw was hundreds. after the count i figured there was at least 20 thousand, that is if my c minus math skills were correct. i didn't know what to do first. i could run and tell my mom we're rich, but then i'd have to explain the shady way i aquired my wealth. and that wouldn't benefit either of us because she'd surely go to prison after she killed me for being in cahoots with scammers. decisions decisions. who would've thought having a bag full of money would be a problem. i can't even go on a shopping spree like i wanted to because everything is closed. i better hide the money somewhere just in case. luckily due to my room smelling like gym socks and doritos most of the time my mom doesn't visit often. it's only been a few days and this money is burning a hole in my pockets. think i need to make a walmart run before my mom comes home just to make myself feel a little better. i head straight for the electronics but when i pass up the grocery section, i'm thinking maybe i should've focused my attention on essentials like toilet paper and water bottles cause the shelves were clean. even the cheap paper was gone. anyway i picked up a few games which took longer than i expected because the lines were never ending. made it home just in time to be greeted by death, i mean that's the look she gave me anyway. when i left the house in a spending frenzy i left the bag on the floor instead of putting it back in my hiding spot like any career criminal would have done. rookie move. it took me a good two hours to explain the entire story which she actually listened to without assaulting me even once. she was probably too tired from work. she took me to the police station to explain what i did to some officers who were somewhat entertained by the story. maybe i should have added how i was held against my will by a disfigured villain with mustard in his beard but i left that part out and just stuck to the facts like joe friday would say. dragnet reference. i guess tv is good for something. in the end i did get arrested. good thing i'm a minor cause they let me off with probation and hopefully if i stay out of trouble i can get my record expunged in the future. they say demarcus wasn't so lucky. he got a few years in jail, mostly because he was a repeat offender. guess his friends weren't the only ones familiar with handcuffs and police cars. i write him sometimes. he says he's sorry for getting me involved and he's not upset with me at all. he even sent me a little black book to write him in. maybe when he gets home he'll be up for another game. but anyway i have to get to work. i was able to land myself a job at saks fifth avenue in the stocking area. so i still won't be going on that shopping spree anytime soon. especially since my mom made me give back that 10 thousand dollars we scammed. but at least now when i shop there i can get a discount.
By Andre reed5 years ago in Criminal
The carved box
Arianne was blown away when the police called to tell her that no one had claimed the money and as a result, it was hers. Guess finders-keepers isn’t just true on the playground. Arianne couldn’t believe that no one had picked it up, that the police hadn’t confiscated it, that some crooked cop hadn’t found a way to make it their own. It was a lot of money, just over $20,000 crammed into a carved wooden box. It was the box that had caught her eye, sticking out from under a bush in the corner of the park. The box was dirty but looked serviceable and so she picked it up.
By Michelle Causton5 years ago in Criminal
Ice-cold cash
Isabella stared at the icicles on her ceiling fan. Just last week, Austin was its normal 70 degrees. Today? Freezing wind and ice and a frigid 35 degrees. No heat inside the one bedroom basement apartment she shared with her fifteen-year-old daughter Sofia.
By Crystal Spackman5 years ago in Criminal
