WRITING COMPETITIONS

Change in Behavior

One man, born to be a pawn of the mafia. One boy, born to be a target of wealth.

Submission to Round 1 of the 2023 Short Story Competition for NYC Midnight. Feedback below.

I recited the script in my head for the fifth time and walked the pristine pavement to the next gross display of wealth. The community Capo sent me into belonged to a bunch of billionaires. That much was clear based on the miles of property stretching between each estate. I roamed the neighborhood to complete a task list, not a hit list. I hadn’t acknowledged the darker side of the burglary business since the age of twenty-three. With my best friend, Derek, dead and my decade stay in the Big House finished, the change in my behavior seemed true. There was no enjoyment in hurting others anymore. Despite my inner turmoil, the smile on my face seemed sincere when I chatted with the guards at the golden gates. Clueless from the lies I spun, the gates opened for me.

A voice popped into my mind as I walked the stone pathway. A sweet young woman with a candy-coated tongue mentioned it in her last breath. I hadn’t thought of her in ten years. My attack affected her vocal cords. Her attack ruined my right arm.

“You enjoy my death now. I’ll enjoy yours later. You’ll plan your escape from this moment. I’ll plan my revenge for this moment,” she croaked. We had no fore-thought about the babysitter fighting us for the baby. I repeated the script for the sixth time.

I hated the way her speech affected me. It’s why I never relished in the success of that night. Millions made from a stolen vase, and we never saw a cent. Never would either, because one of us was beneath dirt and Capo only gave payments to teams that finished their hits, not those who died trying. We should’ve seen her coming. We should’ve known about the girl babysitting our target.

My focus wasn’t on where I strolled as stumbled onto a familiar beaten path.

Spit pooled in my mouth, dripping from the corners of my down-turned lips when I came eye-to-eye with Derek’s place of death. I recited the script for the seventh time. My payment would be more than nothing if I missed a single estate on the route. Freedom counted as currency in my line of work. As the son of a treacherous man, I owed a life debt plus.

The stone made my steps sound heavy. My arms shivered from a passing chill foreign to the heat of the desert. My heart sped faster than a hummingbird’s. And the same uncanny feeling I experienced the night I left Derek behind settled into my chest.

I knew leaving was a death sentence. I kept on, into the dark courtyard filled with decadent fruit trees, manicured shrubs, and rainwater trickling out of a forbidding gargoyle.

The Estate looked spectacular. I knew the Estate was nice already. Capo marked the place because he learned the vase I stole would be within inches of the entrance. Attempting to capture the kid counted as “bonus commission” for us. A numbing pain snared my hands and legs, leaving me incapacitated a step away from the front door. The decision to knock was not my own.

KNOCK.

I prayed to a god I never believed in for the door to go unanswered. “Three times the charm,” Capo said. He struck my face three times with his belt for forgetting once. He knew the rich community appreciated stellar security, he knew it as well as Derek and I did.

KNOCK.

A creaking sound interrupted the silent chaos raging inside of me. I was a thief; a cold-blooded killer; someone who could withstand what others considered horrifying and live to see another day. The dread boiling in my gut felt misplaced until a sweet young woman, her coppery hair similar to the girl I killed, answered the door with a bright face. My breath caught at the sight of her and a teenage boy glooming in the ostentatious foyer behind her.

She tilted her head, waiting for my words when I couldn’t give her any. The boy staring daggers into my neck was pulling me out of my game. Stealing the script from my memory, taking me to a place in my mind I never liked to visit. The babysitter snapped her fingers in front of my face, breaking the trance I entered as soon as she swung the door open. I knew if I left, I would feel the sting of a cruel retribution. My finger getting chopped would be easy; facing my demons wouldn’t. I needed to leave.

“Are you okay? You don’t look so good,” she said, snatching my injured arm to keep me from falling on my face. There was something enigmatic about her, a happiness in her eyes I hadn’t come into contact with since Derek died.

“Come in, please. Let me get you a glass of water. I’m sure wandering the acres of these estates can’t be easy. Don’t worry, we don’t bite. Right, James?” Her shining eyes fell on the boy lurking in the peeking light of the thick curtains.

James smirked at his babysitter. His movements were quick, as if he spent his free time watching ghosts wander through the walls. Sunken eyes and skinny arms. I’d never assume the kid was the heir to a billion-dollar fortune. “I know you, don’t I?”

My nodding head betrayed me. “No. we’ve never met,” I lied.

The babysitter agreed and took my truth for testimony because she didn’t know any better. She couldn’t have known about my experience in the Estate unless James told her. The boy wasn’t much older than three when he witnessed his babysitter kill a man and die soon after. I doubted he told her. Her grip on my arm tightened as she dragged me from the foyer. I wished Derek were with me to see the place in all its glory. He would’ve loved the fridge.

James hadn’t followed us into the marbled kitchen and I didn’t question his actions. If he thought he knew me for the reason he knew me, him being in the room with us was less than ideal. I sipped the water she offered once, twice, and when I set the glass down, the babysitter smiled at me. A sweet, perfect smile. I planned to never hurt another person. I repeated the script for the eighth time as she pointed out the wet spot near my foot.

“Sorry about my silence. I don’t regularly choke up in front of clients. Your beauty caught me quite off-guard. I’m here on behalf of Ornate Security. We are the front-runners for home security devices and services, and we are doing free consultations to those that have prior purchases in our database. Which is almost every house in this gated community,” I laughed, trying to keep the bitter-edge out of my tone. It was hard holding my expression neutral when images of a crying child screaming for help popped into my brain. “Would you like to hear more? We could also plan for a day when our providers can reach out to explain the process and how Ornate can protect your home?”

The smell of strawberries and cream entered the surrounding air. I caught a whiff of the intoxicating smell immediately. The babysitter detected nothing. “Do you have a business card I could hand them? I’m not sure I can commit to anything without the parents here.”

I had a business card. I didn’t want to give her my business card. My name—the name that was booked in a concrete cell for ten years—would get recognized.

“We will come back. No worries on your end.” I paused when James passed the kitchen, a strange glow following in his wake. “I should get going. Do you mind showing me the way out? It’s a maze in here.” I had no reason to be there anymore. I did what Capo needed done.

She laughed in the way people do when they understand you. “Of course, follow me.”

The walk was longer on our way back to the foyer than I remembered. The curtains, the ones letting in slits of the sun, closed with an invisible wind. We stood alone in the darkness of the enormous iron door and long corridors filled with priceless artifacts sitting on podiums made of gold.

In another minute, the temptations of becoming a multi-millionaire would’ve been too great for me to ignore. The babysitter spun the knob, flooding the inside with a frigid wind. Knots in my neck cascaded down my tense shoulders. I needed to leave.

“Aren’t you going to say hi? It’s been so long since I promised I’d have my revenge.” The door to freedom shut on my face in the same manner it had on Derek a decade ago.

“You promised you would wait for Derek,” James said as he entered with a white sheet over his head and a candlestick in his hand. The kid looked psychotic. I had zero doubts about his intentions to harm the intruder in his home. I did, however, doubt his friendship with my best friend. Derek died before James ever spoke a complete sentence.

The laughter bubbling in my throat fell short when Derek floated through the walls to stand beside the babysitter I killed. James and his current babysitter stepped away from the supernatural nightmare. They left me with two ghosts of my past and took my laughter with them.

Derek regarded me in a way he never did when he was living. His skin had a translucent silver hue. His body hadn’t gained or lost a pound. He had blood on the side of his head where the babysitter smacked him with the firepit poker.

“Why’d you come back?” Derek asked. No malice in his tone, no happiness either. I took in his sense of permanence and forced the thoughts capable of forging tears to fixate elsewhere.

All I offered him was a single word. “Capo.” He knew who I meant, he knew I couldn’t escape the man anymore than he could escape death. Megan moved for the first time since she laid her barren eyes on me. The floral dress she wore the night I killed her skated around her thin ankles as she waltzed to the space under my chin.

“Wait,” Derek warned her. The two exchanged a silent conversation, switching their gazes from me to the corridor. “We will let you free of the Estate, if you promise us one thing.”

My relief was palpable. If there were any living souls in the foyer, it would have been. “Anything. Derek, anything.”

“When you see Capo again, kill him. Be done with this and never look back,” he said simply, as if the act alone wouldn’t have me shot. He knew the direction my train of thought headed. “Don’t play stupid. He goes to the Magnolia Bar every Thursday night to meet with one of his girls. Get him there, tonight. Make him a ghost inside of his favorite strip club and he might let you fly free from your past.”

Derek and Megan would never let me go if I said no. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“One more thing,” Megan whispered, a hint of cheer colliding with her serious demeanor. I forgot how close she stood to me. Her transparent hand slipped beneath my t-shirt in a swift motion. “Your thoughts are as loud as your footsteps. You might not plan to hurt others, but I can see the want in your eyes. Promise the last person you hurt is this boss of yours or find yourself surrounded by ghosts you’ve never known. Creatures you won’t want to meet as long as you roam the realm of reality.”

“Promise,” I said. Derek eyed me as the heavy door swung towards me. No manual labor needed. The sun caught the wind of my despair and covered its light with blackened rain clouds. My pace quickened as the gargoyle’s head swung in my direction. The family living in the Estate possessed a security system unlike any other.

My car sat more than a mile away from where I stood. The run to the beat-up Mazda I called a ride was brief, spent debating my next move. I’d do as Derek said and be done with it. Promises made to the dead meant nothing to me.

Fifteen Minutes Later

Halfway across town, a strange feeling of someone following me had me pulling over to the side of the highway. Nothing, I was sure it was nothing apart from a prominent case of paranoia. When I went to check my rear-view mirror, I panicked and pulled my foot off the brake. An older man wearing a fedora with a dusty suit from the early nineteen-hundreds sat in the back of my car, grinning at me with bleeding gums and rotted teeth.

He said nothing; he didn’t have to for me to understand. The underworld would watch me until I fulfilled my promise to Derek and Megan. My car rolled along the shoulder of the road as I waited for an opening and snuck back into traffic, heading south to Magnolia Bar.

Six Months Later

With a ghost on my left and a ghost at the bar beside Capo, I knew how our plan would go. He’d never expect someone to appear out of thin air, let alone me. It’s true, I didn’t need to kill him anymore. Derek and Megan pardoned me of my promise when a semi-truck smashed into my car on the way to Magnolia Bar six months ago. After half a year of spending my time thriving in the underworld, I wanted to end the man that held my life hostage.

When Megan and I met again, she acted far kinder. Kind enough to explain the trauma that consumed the boy she defended with her life. I couldn’t swallow the guilt of knowing Capo came for James more than once. Derek and I were the third attack since his first birthday. His men attacked the boy every year since he’d been born, hoping to cash in ransom money.

Megan nodded to Derek from across the bar. The terror consuming him as Derek took his last breath was almost as powerful as the satisfaction coursing through my bloodless veins. Because of Capo’s death and my eternal existence as a ghost, the change in my behavior stuck true. I found the freedom I ached for, and I died doing it.

Liked: The protagonist was well-portrayed as a morally ambiguous character. His internal dialogue was engaging and provoked questions about his past while also making him more relatable. Using first person narration was a smart choice, as it immediately grounds readers in the protagonist’s headspace and introduces the possibility of an unreliable narrator. Although the final act of this story and most of its events centered on revenge, the ending and the protagonist’s character arc made it one ultimately of redemption, which was very moving.

Disliked: The transitions between present and past events were a little unclear, which made it difficult at times to understand what the protagonist was learning and experiencing in the moment. The twist in the last scene was a little startling as well. Before the final section, the main character seems determined to carry out Derek’s revenge, hounded by the ghost in the backseat of his car. Then the story cuts to six months later, where off the page, the protagonist has died in a car crash and now must carry out the task from beyond the grave. With a little more set up in the second to last section, readers might be better prepared for the ending.

Liked: What an intricate premise: a thief poses as a traveling salesman of security services so he can scope out potential wealthy targets. I especially enjoyed the economic tension in this piece. I also appreciated the enforcer character who sits on the protagonist’s car shortly before he’s killed. My favorite part of this piece is the way it seeks and celebrates freedom at the end–even with its cost for the protagonist. Thanks for sharing!

Disliked: I wonder if we might get more backstory on the protagonist’s debt to Capo. How did the protagonist become indebted to him? How did the two become involved? A future version of this story might position the premise in more context to account for this plot choice: maybe this vase is their only lead and they’ve sacked everywhere else. Questions to consider!