The Thief That Vanished Into the Night

This was a fun story to write. Enjoy! Please comment.

All was dark in upper floors of the Greenridge Building, except for a light in the office of Jim “Diamond” Spencer. A man dressed in white coveralls occupied the room. Anyone would have thought that he was a cleaning man except for the fact that the shades were down, the only light came from a lantern, and the man had a leather briefcase.

The man in coveralls had pointed the beam of the lantern so it was shining on the door of a large safe, the large “walk-in cooler” type. In the center of the huge metal door was a combination knob. The man inserted a round key into the center of the knob and gave it a full turn to the right, a half of a turn back to the left and removed the key. He turned the knob right to four, left to nine, left to five, right to one and left to zero. Pulling on the lever, the man opened the big door only to be confronted by another.

This door was different from the first because it had neither handle nor combination knob. It simply had a hand-shaped depression, a small circular hole, and a flat LCD computer screen.

The screen flashed the words, “Initializing retina scan.” The man put his eye to the hole. A laser beam lanced out from inside the hole and scanned the man’s retina.

The screen flashed a new message, “Retina scan was a success. Initializing hand scan.” The man breathed a sign of relief. If his retina had not matched, the laser would have burned his eye, but the contact lens had worked perfect.

The man put his hand in the proper indentation and was again rewarded with success. With a quiet click the door slid open, revealing the most expensive jewel collection in the country. The man quickly removed several trays of jewels from the safe and deposited them into the briefcase. The real jewels were replaced with clever glass copies.

The man closed both doors of the safe and turned off his light. Replacing everything as it had been when he entered; he opened the door and left the room.

Outside the door there sat a cart with a garbage barrel on it. The briefcase and the light were deposited into the bottom of the barrel and covered with rags and crumpled papers. The man took his cart into the elevator at the end of the hall and descended to the ground floor. After bidding the night watchman, “Good night”, the man loaded the cart into his truck and was on his way.

© JPW – July 2, 2006

Paul, the Character

I rode this paragraph in high school as part of an English assignment. This is about an actual person I know.

One of things that age brings besides wisdom is character. Paul contributes extensively to this belief. If you are lucky enough to sit next to him, you must be careful, for when he starts on a subject that interests him, such as philosophy, you can be sure that he will use his hands extensively. Like the conductor of an orchestra or like a flag during a wind storm, he has a tendency to wave his arms around. You also run the chance of getting crumbs on you if he chances to be eating when he talks. Like the flames from the mouth of the biblical dragon fly the crumbs. If he is not talking about philosophy or politics, he is talking about gardening and the widows that chase him, the widower. Most of the time, his departing words are in Latin or Polish, are philosophical, or a joke that will leave you laughing. Overall he is a lovable and humorous character.

© JPW – July 2, 2006