Darius Zerevan looked at his goal, mayor Evi Vrokk’s home. It was a large mansion, situated near the middle of the city, and just what he needed.
Now he didn’t have any issue with mayor Evi or her associates. He just needed money to get his neran hide out of this dras city where he spent every day just trying to avoid getting some new and terrifying disease and back to the plains he called home before. This mansion was a good place to get that for two reasons, the mayor was rich, due to her owning the local jet quarry and she was out of town to conduct business with the count.
He glanced left and right but only saw a couple of people going about their business, none paying attention to him. His courage bolstered by this, he walked up to the front door and, using picks he pawned off some waerd for some jet jewelry, went at the lock, opening it rather quickly. When the lock turned, it made a small thunk, causing him to flinch and look around.
Fortunately, no one else seemed to have heard it, so he quietly opened the door and looked around. The living room was smaller than he expected, and had a simple yet cozy feel to it. He saw his first target right away, a shield with the mayor’s crest of a black raven on a white background with a blue border sitting above the jet fireplace, a perfect place to quickly hide something.
He moved quickly and quietly as he could to the fireplace, and removed the shield. Behind it was a cubby with medium sized box, wrapped in rope. He grabbed it and tugged on it, finding the rope was attached to something behind the wall. He wanted to look inside to see what he was getting before setting off any traps, but the way the rope was wrapped around it made that impossible.
He looked around for any obvious signs of a trap, but couldn’t see any. Still he decided it was better to be safe than sorry and stood to one side of the cubby before carefully unwrapping the box.
When the last of the rope came free, it rapidly slid back into the cubby and a loud, reverberating crash rang out next to him, as if someone had hit a gong. His instincts took over and he ran right out the front door and down several streets before finding a secluded place out of town.
He checked to see if he was being pursued, but didn’t see or hear anyone behind him. Sitting down and taking several deep breaths, he cracked open the box to see what his haul had been. When the lid came free he looked inside and to his horror, saw that it contained several worthless gray rocks no larger than his fist and a note that simply said:
>
>Congratulations sir/madame on your new box of rocks.
>
>Too bad everyone within a block of my home knows you’re a criminal now.
>
>I hope it was worth it.
>
>Signed Mayor Evi Vrokk
I wrote this to get it out of my head so I could get back to work on my novel. I did my best with the thin premise that simply came about due to a few ideas I was juggling (the biggest being the gong trap used herein). Either way, I'm not sure I care how well received it is. I did, however remove anything that could be seen as spiteful or mean spirited towards anyone as I didn't want anyone getting angry at me for this (finding a motivation for the theft was tricky)
