Thief

The night sky like spilled ink, casts a dark shadow beneath which the thief hides. Money. Lust. Greed. Need. Desperate need. But not all thieves hunt at night. Some move through the day silent and unseen. I remember one that visited my grandfather. Years later, it visited my grandmother. Its fingers danced upon their heads, then it reached inside. This one?…This one?…Or perhaps this one? It plucked from them a knowing, a moving picture. It laughed. It ate. Then promised, ‘I’ll be back for more.’ My grandmother mistakenly called me on her second grandchild’s birthday, thinking it was mine. My grandfather frowned and stuttered as he gestured towards me and asked ‘are you the older one?’ Before the invisible thief came back for seconds, Death took them both.

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Written on 14th April 2020 as part of a freewriting exercise with my writers group. The prompt was ‘Thief’. Friend and fellow writer Georgie Knaggs, kindly posted this piece on her site: http://www.thephraser.com.

Do check out Georgie’s site, she has shared some beautiful pieces of her writing and very recently posted a short story born from a freewriting prompt. Link: https://thephraser.com/2021/01/14/fiction-born-out-of-a-storm/

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