(Short Story – Under 15K words)

Struggling bookshop owner, Josie lives a mundane life in a small town where the most eligible bachelor is a below-average Joe and the most happening place in town is a crummy bar called the Speckled Hen. She spends her days with the only things that bring her joy: books and prison shows on TV. On what would be a boring night like any other, she witnesses an ongoing bank robbery that will forever change her life. 
The last one was a joke. I grabbed the duffel bag with the explosive and a pair of bolt cutters for the pathetic-as-fuck folding scissor gate on the front door. My younger brother, Dagen, was the wheelman, so he always stayed in the car. I put on my ski mask, swung the duffel over my shoulder, and grabbed my assault rifle. Yeah, the rifle was overkill for a place like this, but I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
One snap of the lock and I was in. The silent alarm would go off the moment I opened that front door, so we had exactly ten minutes to get in and get out. Just so happens the land-whale of a sheriff and his cumstain deputy were just called out to a nonexistent car accident right outside city limits. It would take them ten minutes to drive out there, another five to realize there was no accident, and thirteen more to reach the bank when it was called in. That gave us an eighteen- minute head start.
In eighteen minutes, we would be long fucking gone.
I set up the homemade bomb on the vault. Six minutes later — boom! I was in and got to work filling the duffel bag. Nine minutes, done. Fuck yeah. I grabbed the rifle and headed out. I threw the bag onto the backseat and was about to climb into the passenger seat when I saw the girl staring directly at me and Dagen, who wasn’t wearing a mask. Fuck. My. Life. I guess she was closing that gay-ass looking book store and walked out at the same time I did. I’ll give her credit, she pretended not to see us and tried to lollygag away, but there was no way we could let her go.























































































