Ch. 1 A Life Undetermined

Chapter 1 A Life Undetermined
“Wow, your eyes are so blue. It’s so mesmerizing.”
That was one of my favorite lines to use. It was a fill in the blank phrase I liked to use that typically got the job done. “Your (Insert body part) is/are so (insert adjective). It’s so (Insert more descriptive adjective).” It always works. “Your muscles are so big. It’s so sexy.” Or “Your smile is so charming. It’s so tantalizing.” Men love it. They love it even more when I put my hand on their leg. It’s like they lose their minds. Their hormones start racing so fast, they don’t even feel that my other hand is stealing their wallet. Then I give them a kiss on the cheek and say “I’ll be right back,” like I’m going to go freshen up in the bathroom. They get so excited they don’t realize until 30 minutes later, I took off. Two hours later, after they drink away their pain, they realize I took their money. It never went past flirting. I accomplished my goal before anyone even mentioned getting physical. I simply wasn’t the kind of girl to take it that far, so all I did was hang around clubs or bars, choosing my victims, letting them get drunk, buttering them up, and then stealing their money. I was selective. Don’t think for a second I didn’t see the wedding band on the hand of these creeps so eagerly looking for my compliments. I felt no shame in taking money from lying, cheating jerks. If anything, I found it to be a pre-emptive form of justice. Sometimes I liked to imagine how they would explain the theft when they got home. I wondered if they even mentioned me at all.
I had it down to a system. Take the cash out of the wallet, use the credit cards immediately on something ridiculous, and then go pawn it. I was reeling in the money. However, this kind of lifestyle doesn’t come without downfalls. Someone had to teach me all these skills, so of course, I had a collector. There was a whole group of us living the dream. We actually lived in an old abandoned warehouse. Every week the collector would stop in for payment.
His name was Chaz and he was a really interesting guy. He wasn’t like us, living off the streets. He was a functioning member of society and that’s how he kept our little operation going. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t teach us. He taught us how to steal easily and effectively. In the outside world, he was some kind of master martial artist, so he taught us to fight. He never even told us what he was teaching us. He said it was for the purpose of getting us out of trouble sometimes, though I had acquired some of my own means of protection, such as a stun gun. He taught us how to survive in poor conditions and how to use our resources. He was the mastermind.
I was just a kid when I met Chaz. I was only 10 years old and I had been tossed around more foster families than I could count. The last foster family I was with was really abusive. I was getting beaten every day until I couldn’t take it anymore. One night, when they passed out, I collected my stuff, snatched some of their cash, and took off. I had no plan; I just had to get out. I was roaming the streets of Philadelphia when Chaz found me sifting through a dumpster for any scrap of food or something of worth. He said there were others like me and that he could offer me a better life. Out of all the options at that time, his was the best, so I took it. I was in the theft game for 10 years.
Chaz was no hero. He was just as slimy and manipulative as any other creep you meet out on the streets; he was just more calculative about it. When I first got involved, he was fine. He even let me keep a portion of the money I earned, but then he got too money hungry. He started having expectations for how much we should be bringing in at collection time and we were to turn in all but what we would need for food. Along with his greed came a temper that didn’t stop him from slapping around anyone who didn’t make quota or just didn’t follow directives.
I guess you could say I myself also got a little money hungry. Here I was doing the work, putting myself on the line, and what did I get to keep? Oh, twenty dollars for food this week? How generous, even though I just brought in a thousand last night. I was tired of not seeing any profit. So I started stashing some of my cash. Everything was going well, until Chaz found out.
He started to suspect that some of us were stashing cash, so he started searching the warehouse. That’s how he found my stash and he was in the middle of counting it when I walked in. His eyes burned with a fire that could have burned me in my place.
“Really, Arianna?! After everything I have done for you? You would steal, from me?” His voice was the scream of a man on the verge of insanity. “$10,000? You stole $10,000 from me!” He continued to yell as he ran over and back handed me across the face, knocking me to the ground. He gave me a swift kick in the side and I took it. He didn’t calm down though, like I was expecting he would. Usually, if you just let him rough you up a little, he would feel that he got his message across and then he would calm down and lecture you for a while. Not today. No, today, he was in a fit of rage, and I realized after the next four kicks, he was possibly going to kill me. So, I decided to get real. I threw my leg out in a swing kick, knocking him off his feet. When he hit the ground, I grabbed my stun gun from my back pocket and gave him a jolt before I jumped up, grabbed my money, and made a run for it. There was no turning back now.
He was tough. Within minutes, he was up and pursuing me. That’s the quality I should have expected of a stun gun I stole from a teenager. Surely, if he caught me, he was going to kill me, so I ran as fast as my feet could go. He was raving like a mad man behind me. “I’ll kill you, Arianna! No one steals from me,” said the man who stole from everyone else.
He was gaining on me until finally he was close enough to grab my arm and throw me to the ground. It all happened so fast. I could only focus on the fact that he had his hands wrapped around my throat and was choking the life out of me. All I could see was his face and the ferocity in his eyes. I was sure I was going to die. I could feel myself slipping away when suddenly he stopped pressing down. He became distracted by something. My vision was blurring, but I could tell he was looking at something off to the side. Quickly he jumped up and ran away, leaving me lying there in the street. I struggled to turn my head in the direction he was looking and that’s when I saw it. It was a swirling, golden mass of wind, like a miniature tornado, but faster. There was no time to run, all I could do was close my eyes tight as it engulfed me and I lost consciousness.