On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 235, of 240 so far.

Heist

There were three men, and they were dressed conservatively, but each wore a rubber mask with the likeness of the same man; one with skin of bright red, one green, and one blue. When they burst into the bank on a busy Tuesday morning, none of the staff or customers recognised the face that the masks portrayed.

They had come from a side street, and CCTV saw a plain van leaving that same side street from the other end just moments later, but the license plates were duplicates and the make and model were so common as to be ubiquitous.

“Everyone stop what you’re doing, please,” Red called out, drawing a mean-looking large handgun from his immaculate suit jacket and sweeping it around to encompass everyone. “And you, sir,” he added, gesturing at the bank manager who happened to be passing behind the row of tellers and had stopped in his tracks, “if you’d be good enough to press the nearest silent alarm to call the police, I’d appreciate it very much.”

The bank had gone from its usual muted buzz of business interactions and idle conversations to being noiseless. The bank manager frowned, raising his hands reflexively, and the part of his mind that wasn’t now paralysed with shock and confusion wondered if these would be his last few moments on Earth.

As if reading his mind, Red spoke again. “I have no intention of killing you, as long as you cooperate. Now, please: the alarm.”

Slowly, the bank manager realised that he had no other option, and that he was being asked to do the very thing that he’d been trained to do anyway. He took a careful step forward, leaning down past the terrified young female teller whose eyes were wider now than he’d ever seen them before, and slid his hand under the counter to press the recessed alarm button there. It was 09:48, and the clouds were just beginning to allow some real sunlight through.

The alert appeared at police central dispatch less than a second later, just as Green was instructing the frightened customers to move to the front of the lobby, reminding them to be sure to collect all of their belongings. “You’ll be leaving shortly,” he said. A middle-aged man walked past him as instructed, passing close by, and then Green cleared his throat, making the man looked back in alarm.

“Don’t forget this, now,” Green said, holding up the man’s watch — which was worth about two months of the average salary — and which had been on his wrist until a moment ago, as far as the man knew. Green gave the watch back to him, and motioned for him to continue on his way.

Blue now approached the secure door which separated the tellers’ area from the main floor, peering at the keypad through his mask. He made an elaborate show of pondering it, and then quickly tapped six digits in succession, after which the door unlocked. He opened it, and gestured for everyone within, including the manager, to come out and head to the front of the bank with the customers. The manager, though, he pulled aside.

Red came over now, right up to the manager, and clapped him on the shoulder. “I have a job for you, let’s see… Mark, is it? You look like a Mark to me.”

The manager, whose name was indeed Mark, could only nod.

“I need you to go and fetch everyone else who’s in the building, which shouldn’t be too many people, I expect,” Red continued. “Anyone in the bathrooms, or the deposit boxes room, or the primary vault, or the staff-only areas. Quickly now.”

A guard, who had until this moment been concealed around the corner of the rear vestibule which led to the stairs, now made his move, clutching his own weapon and stepping out into view within only a few metres of Red.

“Hold it,” the guard said, and Red turned in his direction.

“Seems you’re already holding it,” Red said, gesturing at the small floral bouquet the guard was clutching with both hands, and which until only a moment ago he had been certain was his firearm.

With the guard disarmed of his lilies and chrysanthemums, he sheepishly joined the others, under Blue’s amused gaze.

Red went along with the manager to the other areas of the bank, rapidly gathering the handful of others around the building, and on the way encountering one further guard who grabbed at his own baton upon seeing the masked man, only to immediately drop the object in horror, convinced that it was in fact a snake.

Back in the lobby, now with everyone concentrated in one place, the customers were both relieved and apprehensive to hear the approach of many sirens. Barely four minutes had passed since the dramatic entrance of their three captors, and now those masked men all pointed towards the main doors.

“You can go now, slowly and carefully,” Green said, holding his own pistol. “And be sure to tell them that we came in peace.”

With a barely-perceptible motion of his hand, the gun was now a perfect white dove, and the bird took flight immediately, criss-crossing the space below the high ceiling before finally coming to rest on a security camera.

The customers and staff filed out under the watchful eyes and raised weapons of the officers from five police vehicles, with additional units arriving every few moments. Some of the first to leave were already telling the police that they had been neither harmed nor robbed, and the bank manager – whose name was Mark — told a detective that it was the strangest damned heist he’d ever heard of.

It took another twenty minutes for the police to decide to storm the building, even though a headcount and repeated assurances from the bank staff had indicated that only the armed men remained inside. A tactical team entered with unnecessary drama and aggression, finding a frightened dove and a small floral bouquet on the main floor, an ordinary baton on the carpet downstairs, and absolutely no-one to be found.

The deposit boxes were untouched, but the vault was completely empty — with the exception of three playing cards arranged on the floor. They were all the king of diamonds from different decks, identical except that the chequered backing pattern on the first was red, the second green, and the third blue.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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