Pilfered

Photo courtesy of Zoomi

The pen wasn’t worth anything, but Maddie pocketed it anyway. It wasn’t about the pen. It was about the rush. Stepping so far outside of her exhausted reality, that she could feel the hair on the back of her arms standing at attention.

Sometimes Maddie believed, stealing was the only thing that made her life worth living.

Mindlessly whisking her toddling two year old into the car seat, Maddie caught a glimpse of something sparkly dangling from her daughters tightly clenched fist. A necklace pilfered from the display adjacent the cash register, where Maddie herself had pocketed the pen.

Written for Carrot Ranch’s Flash Fiction Challenge Prompt: Exhausted, utilizing Mind Loves Misery Menagerie’s First Line Friday Prompt: The pen wasn’t worth anything, but Maddie pocketed it anyway.

33 thoughts on “Pilfered”

  4. This harried mom brings back memories of herding little ones. Nothing like marching right back into the store and having the child hand the cashier the item. That’ll wipe that darling smile off her face. Regrettably, children imitate us in things both big and small.

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  8. One often wonders where little ones learn things – forgetting to look at or listen to the examples they set.
    I would be concerned with driving while being exhausted too. Lag reaction time and all that.
    Hopefully both characters wake up in time to make a difference in the future.

    (PS Hoping your ‘new’ adventure is beginning smoothly.)

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  12. How cool. At first like, yeah, she’s bad, but the worst thing is what if she gets caught for lifting these trifles. But that baby she was so mindless of- now there’s a problem to resolve for sure and not an easy one to come out of. But hey, your 99 words are up, you don’t have to resolve the situation, just know it was well presented.

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  18. Great story. The image reminded me of one of my daughters . She was about that age when she took a china candlestick from a shop. She was in her buggy, so I didn’t notice at first. Luckily she didn’t break it and I was able to return it to the shopkeeper who laughed and said she was too little to know any better. Thirteen years later it was a different story… but she learnt her lesson.

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