Emerging Author/Highly Commended Fiction — Superficial Thugs by Daniel Spicer
About the author...
Ex-criminal. Movie buff. Gym junkie. Novelist via guerrilla education. GTA Online addict. Youtuber who does film analysis, reviews and spoof trailers. Loves rabbits.
Superficial Thugs by Daniel Spicer
First up, a bit of shoplifting before the narcissistic venom in my gut wears off.
Step 1: Eyes open for surveillance cameras and plain-clothes store
detectives.
Step 2: Watch out for electronic tags.
Step 3: Act innocent.
My name is Turnbuckle. Arrowhead, my mate, is with me. Like Batman and Superman and Spider-Man, our nicknames are a representation of our true greatness.
We’re in a shopping mall named Erina Fair. The department store we’ve picked for our little excursion shall remain nameless so we can return to it and continue stealing undetected. I admit, it’s a little pretentious coming into the store together when only one of us is necessary, but this is our life. We love it.
The polished floor carries a picture of me, my bent reflection mirrored in glorious technicolour. It’s slightly wonky as if to tell me how beautifully twisted I am. For crying out loud, I feel special.
I steal music CDs. That’s my focus whenever I visit this mall. My friends would rather have gym memberships and fast food, the ultimate counterbalance – but I like music and I actually listen to the CDs I steal. Music is evidence of a rhythmic universe, the very essence of matter and energy, where everything is in tune and the thumps are more than background noise. It’s such a seductress, the ultimate bride of temptation. I fall for her so often, always in a constant state of concussion. It’s what I live for. It’s ecstasy and revelation rolled into one. It cures all and heals all and defies all. So much can be said about music, and yet I am often speechless, my tongue petrified at the prospect of potentially saying something dull about it.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if the police raided my house and found all the CDs I’ve stolen. Clearly they would not have evidence concerning where the items came from specifically, but you’d think I’d be left with the one thing that could condemn me: shame. I mean, do I at least feel pity for the store managers who tirelessly strive to prevent thieving, who want only for their employees to have a decent pay packet every fortnight and for customers to have the lowest prices without the tax incurred from making up the difference generated through property loss?
What a cosmic question.
Me and Arrowhead enter the music CD aisle now, and the array leaves me in awe. I feel greedy. I could have all of them and yet I can only carry three or four in my pants. I have to choose. My indecision haunts me.
Arrowhead is wearing nifty cargo shorts. He makes his selection immediately, fits four CDs down the front of his pants and I’m caught admiring his facial features, those wonderfully bushy eyebrows. They’re like in-built teddy bear projectors. How could anyone consider Arrowhead a thief when he looks so flippantly heart-warming? If I could be so lucky. I have eyebrows as jarring as Bert from Sesame Street. I should bleach them. Yeah, that’s what I think I’ll do. Steal some hair dye and whiten my brows. I think that would look cool, less unscrupulous-looking.
An impossibly large woman enters our aisle and stands in the way of the CD I’m after. I hesitate to manoeuvre around her so I keep browsing, looking at other CDs with artificial interest. The scourge of penniless shoppers who come here just to look like they can afford something has always bugged me, so this woman gets on my nerves big time when she departs without picking anything. All a performance.
Back in the correct gear, me and Arrowhead are totally cosmic now. No one bothers to notice what we’re doing. And our backs are positioned towards the nearest surveillance camera so that’s not a problem either.
The comedy of shoving a CD down your pants is a façade of beauty and purpose, an emotional necessity I feel I would otherwise never experience if I had any concept of a moral foundation. Ramifications? Consequences? There are none when you never get caught. Nothing legal or emotional or spiritual to worry about, guaranteed.
I make a selection.
I now have five CDs pressing down on my penis and I don’t feel the least be conspicuous. Besides, my Rugby League shirt is long enough to cover the protrusion down there.
A store detective appears at the end of the aisle. He’s wearing boardshorts and a surfie t-shirt. I see through his disguise quite easily – I’ve encountered store detectives in the past and they are nearly always young guys, young constables, trying to show me up at my own game. No words can describe how much I couldn’t care less about this one currently studying me.
Arrowhead has since disappeared into another aisle and I’m concentrating on making a future purchase like a good citizen.
But the store detective stares at me. I notice this out of the corner of my eye. He’s baiting me to feel perturbed by his glare, but my attention is directed towards portraying an innocent shopper casually browsing CDs.
“I think you’ve been here long enough,” the store detective tells me. I’m so surprised he spoke, I jolt at the sound of his voice. But I’m glad he did speak because now I know, from that simple statement, that he doesn’t believe I’ve committed anything criminal thus far.
I leave the aisle.
Awkwardly, my CDs start to come loose, slipping out of my pants. I quickly retreat to an aisle in the toy section and adjust my bounty.
The store detective follows me. This minor annoyance has the potential to blow up into something much larger, but I’m not facing him when I’m fixing up my CDs. I think, from previous experience, store detectives can’t actually do anything with you until you’ve actually ‘lifted’ stolen items from the store. Until then, you can do what you want.
The store detective places a hand on my shoulder. Painful regret fills my heart, a pulsating need to apologize because there is nothing to stop me from maintaining my personal sovereignty and spinning around on one foot to deck this guy.
My jaunty knuckles have craved this my whole life.
The store detective doesn’t know what hit him. His jaw snaps like crackerbread, the bone crystallizing. My nerves are full of energy. My mood is revitalised and I want more ultra-violence to maintain that apex. I launch another punch and I feel at ease before it connects. Just predicting the damage it’ll inflict calms me – the work is done, the punch is airborne, you can’t defy its movement, its trajectory, it’s faster than sound, faster than light, it’s plated with metal, it’s indestructible.
Arrowhead reappears and enters the foray. He delivers a beautiful punch to the store detective’s head, causing blood to burst from the man’s ear and sending him keeling over and collapsing.
With the store detective on the floor, I’m tempted to cripple him for good with a bit of the old ‘spinal dislocation’ jumping game. It sounds sick, and I suppose it is, but I gotta tell you this again: I really, really detest store detectives. Trust me, they have no right to spy, to draw conclusions about shoppers, whether a potential shoplifting crime is taking place or not.
My cruel impulses do not prompt me to ruin this man’s spine, though. Instead, I join Arrowhead in laughing as the store detective squirms in a daze on the polished floor. Our sense of humour is slightly askew, I admit.
But then, my cruel impulses take over, and I do jump on the store detective’s back. It’s so shocking, that crunch. Music to my ears.
Arrowhead marvels at what I’ve done. “Cosmic, dude. Very cosmic.”
“So cosmic,” I respond in a whisper.
Arrowhead then watches me kick the store detective beyond submission. My mouth is a frenzied smile, like a child’s on Christmas morning.
Out of nowhere, two security guards in black suits materialise.
My steps are gracefully short as I bolt away, heading towards the store exit without caring about looking conspicuous. Just plain bolting, darting left and right in order to evade other security guards interested in me.
Their agility is not great; I’m making headway, leading by a good five metres. One or two CDs have since fallen out of my pants. I don’t know what happened to Arrowhead.
Frenetic in my decision-making, I dodge startled shoppers as I exit the department.
Then I slip over and there are security guards all over me.
Things get rough as I’m escorted back into the department store and confined to a vacant room halfway down an access corridor. I feel completely violated. I’m told to sit in a comfortable swivel chair.
The police arrive soon after and for some reason the questions they ask pertain to the crippled store detective rather than the CDs (which have far more value than a store detective, surely). I’m totally relieved when I’m told Arrowhead got away with his CD stash.
A few months later, the assault charges the cops pinned on me evaporate in court. Fortunately, I’d followed Step 1 and the assault was never caught on camera. And despite the physical injuries that the pesky store detective sustained that day, the magistrate accepted my version of events: a kind of ‘grassy knoll’ scenario that blew his mind.
“Cosmic,” the magistrate admitted. “Very cosmic.”
Since that major kafuffle, I’ve been stealing again. The repeating chorus. The magistrate did order me to pay a fine. Okay, sure, I was shoplifting. But now I have to recommence shoplifting to pay off the fine. (I steal CDs to sell to my friends.)
Okay, thanks for reading my story. Have a nice day.
Step 1: Eyes open for surveillance cameras and plain-clothes store
detectives.
Step 2: Watch out for electronic tags.
Step 3: Act innocent.
My name is Turnbuckle. Arrowhead, my mate, is with me. Like Batman and Superman and Spider-Man, our nicknames are a representation of our true greatness.
We’re in a shopping mall named Erina Fair. The department store we’ve picked for our little excursion shall remain nameless so we can return to it and continue stealing undetected. I admit, it’s a little pretentious coming into the store together when only one of us is necessary, but this is our life. We love it.
The polished floor carries a picture of me, my bent reflection mirrored in glorious technicolour. It’s slightly wonky as if to tell me how beautifully twisted I am. For crying out loud, I feel special.
I steal music CDs. That’s my focus whenever I visit this mall. My friends would rather have gym memberships and fast food, the ultimate counterbalance – but I like music and I actually listen to the CDs I steal. Music is evidence of a rhythmic universe, the very essence of matter and energy, where everything is in tune and the thumps are more than background noise. It’s such a seductress, the ultimate bride of temptation. I fall for her so often, always in a constant state of concussion. It’s what I live for. It’s ecstasy and revelation rolled into one. It cures all and heals all and defies all. So much can be said about music, and yet I am often speechless, my tongue petrified at the prospect of potentially saying something dull about it.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if the police raided my house and found all the CDs I’ve stolen. Clearly they would not have evidence concerning where the items came from specifically, but you’d think I’d be left with the one thing that could condemn me: shame. I mean, do I at least feel pity for the store managers who tirelessly strive to prevent thieving, who want only for their employees to have a decent pay packet every fortnight and for customers to have the lowest prices without the tax incurred from making up the difference generated through property loss?
What a cosmic question.
Me and Arrowhead enter the music CD aisle now, and the array leaves me in awe. I feel greedy. I could have all of them and yet I can only carry three or four in my pants. I have to choose. My indecision haunts me.
Arrowhead is wearing nifty cargo shorts. He makes his selection immediately, fits four CDs down the front of his pants and I’m caught admiring his facial features, those wonderfully bushy eyebrows. They’re like in-built teddy bear projectors. How could anyone consider Arrowhead a thief when he looks so flippantly heart-warming? If I could be so lucky. I have eyebrows as jarring as Bert from Sesame Street. I should bleach them. Yeah, that’s what I think I’ll do. Steal some hair dye and whiten my brows. I think that would look cool, less unscrupulous-looking.
An impossibly large woman enters our aisle and stands in the way of the CD I’m after. I hesitate to manoeuvre around her so I keep browsing, looking at other CDs with artificial interest. The scourge of penniless shoppers who come here just to look like they can afford something has always bugged me, so this woman gets on my nerves big time when she departs without picking anything. All a performance.
Back in the correct gear, me and Arrowhead are totally cosmic now. No one bothers to notice what we’re doing. And our backs are positioned towards the nearest surveillance camera so that’s not a problem either.
The comedy of shoving a CD down your pants is a façade of beauty and purpose, an emotional necessity I feel I would otherwise never experience if I had any concept of a moral foundation. Ramifications? Consequences? There are none when you never get caught. Nothing legal or emotional or spiritual to worry about, guaranteed.
I make a selection.
I now have five CDs pressing down on my penis and I don’t feel the least be conspicuous. Besides, my Rugby League shirt is long enough to cover the protrusion down there.
A store detective appears at the end of the aisle. He’s wearing boardshorts and a surfie t-shirt. I see through his disguise quite easily – I’ve encountered store detectives in the past and they are nearly always young guys, young constables, trying to show me up at my own game. No words can describe how much I couldn’t care less about this one currently studying me.
Arrowhead has since disappeared into another aisle and I’m concentrating on making a future purchase like a good citizen.
But the store detective stares at me. I notice this out of the corner of my eye. He’s baiting me to feel perturbed by his glare, but my attention is directed towards portraying an innocent shopper casually browsing CDs.
“I think you’ve been here long enough,” the store detective tells me. I’m so surprised he spoke, I jolt at the sound of his voice. But I’m glad he did speak because now I know, from that simple statement, that he doesn’t believe I’ve committed anything criminal thus far.
I leave the aisle.
Awkwardly, my CDs start to come loose, slipping out of my pants. I quickly retreat to an aisle in the toy section and adjust my bounty.
The store detective follows me. This minor annoyance has the potential to blow up into something much larger, but I’m not facing him when I’m fixing up my CDs. I think, from previous experience, store detectives can’t actually do anything with you until you’ve actually ‘lifted’ stolen items from the store. Until then, you can do what you want.
The store detective places a hand on my shoulder. Painful regret fills my heart, a pulsating need to apologize because there is nothing to stop me from maintaining my personal sovereignty and spinning around on one foot to deck this guy.
My jaunty knuckles have craved this my whole life.
The store detective doesn’t know what hit him. His jaw snaps like crackerbread, the bone crystallizing. My nerves are full of energy. My mood is revitalised and I want more ultra-violence to maintain that apex. I launch another punch and I feel at ease before it connects. Just predicting the damage it’ll inflict calms me – the work is done, the punch is airborne, you can’t defy its movement, its trajectory, it’s faster than sound, faster than light, it’s plated with metal, it’s indestructible.
Arrowhead reappears and enters the foray. He delivers a beautiful punch to the store detective’s head, causing blood to burst from the man’s ear and sending him keeling over and collapsing.
With the store detective on the floor, I’m tempted to cripple him for good with a bit of the old ‘spinal dislocation’ jumping game. It sounds sick, and I suppose it is, but I gotta tell you this again: I really, really detest store detectives. Trust me, they have no right to spy, to draw conclusions about shoppers, whether a potential shoplifting crime is taking place or not.
My cruel impulses do not prompt me to ruin this man’s spine, though. Instead, I join Arrowhead in laughing as the store detective squirms in a daze on the polished floor. Our sense of humour is slightly askew, I admit.
But then, my cruel impulses take over, and I do jump on the store detective’s back. It’s so shocking, that crunch. Music to my ears.
Arrowhead marvels at what I’ve done. “Cosmic, dude. Very cosmic.”
“So cosmic,” I respond in a whisper.
Arrowhead then watches me kick the store detective beyond submission. My mouth is a frenzied smile, like a child’s on Christmas morning.
Out of nowhere, two security guards in black suits materialise.
My steps are gracefully short as I bolt away, heading towards the store exit without caring about looking conspicuous. Just plain bolting, darting left and right in order to evade other security guards interested in me.
Their agility is not great; I’m making headway, leading by a good five metres. One or two CDs have since fallen out of my pants. I don’t know what happened to Arrowhead.
Frenetic in my decision-making, I dodge startled shoppers as I exit the department.
Then I slip over and there are security guards all over me.
Things get rough as I’m escorted back into the department store and confined to a vacant room halfway down an access corridor. I feel completely violated. I’m told to sit in a comfortable swivel chair.
The police arrive soon after and for some reason the questions they ask pertain to the crippled store detective rather than the CDs (which have far more value than a store detective, surely). I’m totally relieved when I’m told Arrowhead got away with his CD stash.
A few months later, the assault charges the cops pinned on me evaporate in court. Fortunately, I’d followed Step 1 and the assault was never caught on camera. And despite the physical injuries that the pesky store detective sustained that day, the magistrate accepted my version of events: a kind of ‘grassy knoll’ scenario that blew his mind.
“Cosmic,” the magistrate admitted. “Very cosmic.”
Since that major kafuffle, I’ve been stealing again. The repeating chorus. The magistrate did order me to pay a fine. Okay, sure, I was shoplifting. But now I have to recommence shoplifting to pay off the fine. (I steal CDs to sell to my friends.)
Okay, thanks for reading my story. Have a nice day.