How To Rob A Pensioner

How To Rob A Pensioner

Matt Brumstine had always been a man of small features; one would call him compact. Small hands, tiny square teeth, like a box within a box. One thing Matt Brumstine wasn’t, however, was predictable. His thoughts ranged from the speed of a dolphin to what time the Queen of England rose for breakfast. The only two things predictable about Matt Brumstine was his symmetry and the fact that he caught the nine-twenty-two bus at exactly seven-o-five every morning. Here we find Brumstine, seated in the middle of a bus shelter bench, staring up at a cloudless sky.

This morning, Matt is deep in thought over another fellow passenger, an elderly woman seated at the far end of the two bench bus shelters. Her white hair and thick woollen clothes tell Matt one thing: she’s a pensioner. Matt closed his eyes; his mind ran over everything he knew of pensioners. They enjoyed a value meal, moved slower than most of the population, and would be an easy target for a criminal. Matt toyed with the notion of robbing one, but where would one start he thoug-.

Air-filled with the levels of Saturn, hydrogen, methane, water ice. How funny thinks Matt, that he should be able to see stars explode when sunlight taps his shoulder. Matt smiled as a bus rolled past. Not the one. No, not the one. The buses weave in and out of one another. Matt thinks of his brother- the swimmer; he swam with the grace of a man with two broken arms. Ha-ha Olympian. Sharp pain like the eye of a needle piercing through the skin of a balloon seared, grew, and grew in Matt’s head.

Lift. Simmer. Bird crossing, can’t be, lookout, over there. Where did it all go? Am I inside? Pain. Can’t be. Where did you all go? Scream once, no twice, see what happens-.

Matt breathed again, tasting Jupiter this time instead of Saturn. Another bus went by - the driver waved. Matt threw up a gang sign he’d seen from Bad Boys. The driver looked away. Roots filled with lead touch the darkness, carrying forth a word clouded in judgement. Prisms, mirrors, enveloped, wrapped circling their prey, a baby cries out to the sound of a horn blaring across the seas; touching glitter on stranded beaches a thousand images on the face of two handfuls of dice. Metallic blood boils faster than water under the scope of a splitting atom.

No, get back to the task at hand, thinks Matt. You were trying to think up ways to rob a pensioner when – Matt’s train of thought got tangled in the pursuit of an oncoming bus.

Matt stood from his spot on the bus bench - he checked his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. The shorthand read seven, the long hand pointed straight up, cutting Mickey’s face in half. Matt sighed, closing his eyes; another number flashed forward at him.

‘Seven.’ He exclaimed loudly, scaring two nearby pigeons into flight. That must be it, he thought, the holy trinity, the beginning, seven days in a week, a prime number. The needle came back with a fierceness that left Matt winded.

Bass pounded the ground on a bed of jellyfish; the grasp of a human hand flexed all the muscles within their eyes. How cold, so cold all of this speaking is. It chills the bone - right down to the nerves that can’t be touched within the snow globe shaken with air as sweet as wine. Doctors can’t see patient’s organs. Moving time, space caught over there in a vacuum. Fire tasted like a bowl caught in the dishwasher. I can’t stop and sleep over there.

He bent at the hip and counted backward from ten like he had been taught from an early age whenever his thoughts became scattered. Matt slid his hand into his right pocket; retrieving a coin, he thumbed the dents on its side and continued to count. The thoughts left him winded but faded out of mind. Matt stumbled to the bench. His Mickey Mouse wristwatch read seven-o-seven. The bus hadn’t come yet. He sat and waited. Another bus went by, but the bus driver took no notice of Matt. He tapped the end of his brown suitcase against his thighs; Matt unlocked the numbered briefcase and rummaged at its contents. A tightly wrapped ham and cheese sandwich, half a bag of sand, a broken Yoyo, four one-dollar coins, a pair of clean socks, and an empty Winnie the Pooh water bottle stared back at him. Matt touched each of the items three times before wishing them safe travels just as he closed the lid. Matt thumbed the lock over the briefcase - two more buses went by. Not the ones Matt needed.

***

The morning’s first cloud floated above Matt’s head; he traced its outline with the tip of his tongue. To him, it looked like a slightly deformed lobster; Matt’s always liked the look of lobsters. So shiny, he thought, made of armour but horrible to eat. Matt checked his watch with lobsters on his mind; seven-o-ten read back at him.

‘Late, so late!’ He yelled, startling more pigeons into flight.

Matt wished he could join them, but he knew he hadn’t been invited and thought it might be rude if he tried to follow them. Matt began to get agitated; his body twitched like invisible ants were crawling across his skin, using the hair across his body as transport from limb to limb. Matt’s breathing accelerated; he could feel them now, the ants. They raced along his skin; Matt stood from the bench, his briefcase tumbled from his lap. He grabbed at his jacket - ripped it free from his body, and started to scratch at his skin. That only seemed to make the ants worse; the floor Matt thought suddenly was the only remedy. Matt rolled roughly against the pavement, uneven bricks stuck into his muscles, leaving bruises that Matt would wonder later where they came from. A minute ticked by on the Mickey Mouse watch before the ants left Matt’s skin. He laid still on the pavement, drinking in the air, his heartbeat steady and constant; it drummed inside his head.

***

Now thought Matt, while I have the time is the perfect place to think up of a way to rob a pensioner. I could just steal their bag, he thought? But no, that would be too cruel, too amateur. I need to have a bigger game plan if I intend to pull this off long-term. I could offer them something, yes, he thought, a distraction. But it would have to be where they are comfortable, somewhere they wouldn’t suspect someone to steal from them. A home? Who’s home, ah, no their own home Matt concluded. Yes, I would have to be selling something. That’s it, give something to get something. A little quid pro quo in this case. Let’s recap Matt thought. What do pensioners love? Value meals? Then I could go round house to house selling value meals; they would surely let me in if I had some coupons or selling a lovely array of woollen slippers. Matt smiled at the thought; he now knew how to rob a pensioner should the situation ever present itself. Not that it ever would, thought Matt. Criminal activity wasn’t part of his DNA; Matt was only ever in trouble a day in his life when Bobby Smith blamed the tire that had been cut with a pocket knife at school on him. Matt hadn’t known what to say; they all believed he did it, so he went along too. Satisfied with his efforts, Matt pushed all thought of robbing a pensioner aside.

Matt rolled onto his side and looked up, the lobster had disappeared, and a herd of formless, ordinary clouds appeared in its place. Matt wanted to reach up, up and through them, hold onto their folds, the edges of imagination, and hold on so tightly he would never fall from the heavens. Matt rocked himself into a sitting position; all was well, he thought, the ants were gone, the clouds were back, and here he thought comes the bus.

The nine-twenty-two bus rolled up to the bus shelter. Matt remembered his jacket on the seat just as the doors swung open.

‘Morning, Matt.’ A friendly voice welcomed him in. ‘Where are we off to today?’ George, the middle-aged, greying bus driver, asked.

Matt saluted George, ‘We are off to catch the clouds, George.’

George smiled. ‘Go on then, grab a seat; we don’t want to miss them, do we?’

‘No.’ Matt smiled back. ‘No, we don’t.’

The doors to the bus closed, with the turn of the steering wheel, its position was redirected - in the direction of the clouds that raced above. Matt stared outwards, his nose pressed to the glass.