Fiction : Heroic
Chris O'Shea
When I hear the window in the kitchen slide open, I know who it is. It's Darryl, and he's coming for the money I stole from him. Seventy-six dollars worth of trouble, just sitting on my night stand.
For the record, I don't normally do that kind of thing. I mean, I have stolen from my girlfriend, but she deserves it, always telling me how my taste in music is terrible - look, if you don't like at least 17 Genesis songs, then there is something wrong with you. And besides, Amy never does anything nice like order KFC with all dark meat (which she knows I prefer) so what the hell, I steal some twenties out of her purse here and there.
But here comes Darryl, creeping around in my apartment at 4:30 AM, looking for his money, and now I've got to deal with this. I wonder, how would Captain America handle this? No, not Batman or Superman - everyone always brings them up - I'm trying to channel Captain America right now.
I'm in the bedroom, lying on my bed, listening to Darryl rummage around the apartment. Does he think I can't hear him? He's so damn loud.
Now he's coming toward my bedroom door. I can see his shadow by the moonlight shining from a hallway window. He's just standing there and I'm just lying here. Two idiots of the night. His feet shuffle closer and closer, and I do that "my eyes are closed but not really" thing I used to do to when I was young to keep my Mom from telling me to do chores. I even consider fake snoring, but just as I am pondering the type of snore to use, I see Darryl's big ol' dome peek around the corner of my opened bedroom door.
We're both looking at each other and my heart is racing. My eyelids are almost closed, so it's hard to tell what exactly he's looking at, but I feel like his eyes are burning a hole in me. I just now consider the fact that maybe Darryl will hurt or kill me. It sounds absurd, considering he works at Dairy Queen (how violent could you be if your day involves unlimited Blizzards?) but one can never be too sure about things. Darryl must be convinced by the fake sleeping I'm doing because he is making his way toward my night stand. Dammit. He must've spotted the money.
He is inching his way to the night stand, and I am doing nothing. I guess I should just do nothing, because technically, I did steal his money. Darryl is about a foot away from me when he leans and stretches out his arm to grab the money. Just then, I sneeze. And not one of those cute sneezes from a pretty girl, this is a certified old man sneeze, one that causes people around the sneezer to run for cover, for fear of being hit with stray boogers.
"Oh shit!" Darryl yells as he stumbles away from the money. I lean up in my bed and watch as he trips over some clothes on my floor, twirls around and tries to save himself from falling, but fails. He hits my floor with a thud, and - just for good measure, I suppose - my standing lamp next to him crashes down onto his back. It is quite the scene.
"Hey Darryl, you okay?" I ask.
"What? Yeah, yeah man, I'm okay I guess." He rolls over and massages his head. "Dude, is that my money?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, that's your money, Darryl. I'm sorry." Darryl stands up now, and I feel fine about everything. I figure if he was going to gut me or something, he'd have done it by now.
"Well, do you figure I could have it back?"
"Oh, for sure," I say. "Here, sorry about that mix up." I hand him the stack of money and he takes it. He is happier now than when I sneezed.
"Well, thanks man. I guess I should be going then."
"Yeah, I guess so. Could you go out through the door this time, though, Darryl?"
"Oh yeah, ha, I can do that." Darryl starts for my bedroom doorway, and just before he's gone from my night, he turns and looks back over his shoulder. "Hey, you wanna shoot some pool?"
I shift in my bed and say, "Well, Darryl, I think that would be real fun, but I think I should get back to sleep. How about tomorrow night? I'll give you a call?"
"Sure, sounds good man," he says, and just like that, he's out of my bedroom. I hear the front door creak open and creak close, and I slide back down into my bed, satisfied with the results of the night. I bet it's exactly what Captain America would've done.
Chris O'Shea, a Pittsburgh native, now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author behind the popular humor blog Surviving Myself and spends his free time reading, writing and being generally cynical. He lives with his fiancée Arielle and their dog Jack, who likes to bite him.
