He smelled something burning.  He left his post—guarding the door—to investigate.  As he entered the living room he saw flames escaping from the fireplace and kissing the mantle above.

He shouted to his partner, “What are you doing?”

“They’re coming! We have to get rid of the evidence.” 

The “evidence” was $1.5 million dollars that they had so cleverly borrowed from the bank earlier that day. His partner made a bulldozer with his arms and shoved the piles of money into the fire.

“Stop! No one is coming!” His partner’s extreme paranoia had foiled every previous plan. 

“They’re almost here!” His partner kept shoveling and shoveling until the evidence was no longer burning in the fireplace. The pile of money on the rug, and the rug itself, was now aflame. They stopped arguing and began futilely stomping the rogue flames. 

“Here they come.” 

“Quiet!  No one is coming.”

The moment of shock experienced when the flames engulfed the drapes was interrupted by the front door imploding. A line of policemen, guns drawn, poured into the room. The symbol of justified paranoia meant that the next plan would involve escaping from a prison cell.

Nicholas Lee is a 28 year old from Colorado Springs, CO.

© 2008 Nicholas Lee. Original for CCF  (Lee grants CCF  first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).