Photograph

 

 

12:09 a.m. I can’t sleep, there’s too much on my mind to even consider getting some shut-eye.

 

Mmrgh…

 

Nrgh..

 

Oh fuck it, my mind is racing, I can’t quiet these thoughts in my head. Sleep Phantom...c’mon, you have work tomorrow…

 

The bed creaks below me as I toss and turn multiple times, body spread in countless ways and styles to find that perfect position to sleep, but to no avail.

 

I lay defeated on my side, the pillow swallowing up about half my face, obscuring my vision in the nearly pitch-black room, save for the bright moonlight out tonight that was a sufficient nightlight. The picture was placed back to its original spot, along the edge of the mirror where a nail was used as a hook with a hole punctured through the tattered photo, hanging it as a result. The picture swung slightly, swaying gently in the still room, not a peep to be heard.

 

I do a double take at the picture,, the group that filled the space with joyous, loving smiles fell into the abyss of a blur, with only one in the gaggle being visible and detailed.

 

 Ahh...those were the good ol’ days, when we used to use our brains for meaningful activities; delivery men and women for “clients” that picked up “packages”. We weren’t told about anything that’s inside the parcels, are we’re told is: “X parcel is at y place, go bypass security and haul it to z place without attractin’ attention to the cops, no questions asked.”

 

 

Think of us as Predex deliverers; we take orders, we scan them, ship them out, take in packages, the whole nine yards, except with more fun in not being caught delivering.

 

 

Naturally, we do what we’re told. However, occasionally, we let things slip and we’d choose our own way of doing things.

 

The hum of my laptop fills the warehouse walls, cables littered the floor, sending gigabits of information to and fro to various locations, from Pack Street to Vine Street to downtown and beyond. Packets of valuable intel that ranged from// the location of some set of expensive jewels to a recently drafted manuscript for a speech for the mayor flew back and forth, keeping it in circulation.

 

A nagging feeling kept pestering me, like something was...off about this job, yet I shook it off as probably nothing. I should have known, Maria was acting a bit...out of character. I asked her questions, she immediately gave me the uh huh, okay yeah responses, a red flag that should’ve be raised higher. Every attempt with wanting to caress her from behind was met with a push-off, a distraction of something else insignificant that was concurrent, the excuses just kept piling up.

 

This feeling was only worsened when recently, a couple of cats (members that is) were starting to stir up trouble in places they shouldn’t-- some of them were even snooping in and spying on citizens, a big no-no in the group unless we have a specified target and had an agreed upon reason.  They became hazards to our anonymity, so I had dealt with it in my own special way; set up multiple chat rooms with the various local ZPD police and set up framed jobs in order for those hazards to be quickly snatched up and silenced.

 

Sounds mob-like, doesn’t it? It is, yet it’s the only way to keep people’s mouths from gabbing up a storm and blowing our cover.

 

It was a normal Tuesday, children are off to school, businessmen are making transactions and deals, construction resumed that erected taller, more advanced buildings as they replaced the old and crumbling.

 

 

My team sat around, a wolf sat in his chair, slumped and tilted with his feet on the table as support-- an unsafe position if you ask me. A fox was busy putting thumbtacks to the board with various pictures and notes scribbled all across the massive canvas, some pictures had X’s across them; meaning our job was completed successfully, and scratched out markings were either failed missions, package was dropped / destroyed, duds, or traps set by ZPD. Fox was meticulous when it came to these sorts of things, being the organizer of the bunch. A few others were idly chatting in the distance, and then there was her, a vixen unlike any other, well, at least a vixen in my eyes.

 

 

I still remembered the way she walked, the way her sashay was just right, how her defined form swayed with just the right amount of femininity yet still stern and rigid with masculinity.

 

 

 

 

I stared off into space, a couple of window panes on my computer were blinking and occasionally had lines of code scrawled across the black background. I was in the process of debugging our anti-alarm program that seemed to malfunction whenever we were a few meters too far for our range, in addition, only a few modern alarms worked, some just gave us errors and a small portion of the high-end systems were tripped when we tried scrambling the access codes.

 

All I can think about was her.

 

Our phones rang, disturbing my lucid dreaming. A window fades in from the right to the center of our smartphones,

 

“boxes herd street apart. 230 3E hot”

 

“Hot” was a codeword that either meant the valuables are high in value or ZPD presence was high. My claws tapped away at the screen, asking which, a reply blipped back with a ZPD badge emoji.

 

All of us packed up our stuff, the usual essentials: computers, anti-alarm transmitters, smartphones, dart-gun, suction cups (y’know, to block a camera’s eye in case), and our skills.

 

Fox’s car chirped, an old beater that still had the gas and muscle in case something goes wrong, plus it was comfy enough to fit 4 without too much bleating and bitching. A tuner that sat next to us was...flashier and bombastic than it needed to be, what with its wide body frame, multiple sponsored stickers across the illegally tinted windows, iridescent green that, under light, turns into a bright orange, and its over-the-top twin-mufflers that had a jagged tip.

 

Surely sleeper cars shouldn’t have a purpose on the road, yet we still managed to have them around, prowling the streets of Zootopia, wreaking havoc upon the city with noise ordinance complaints.

 

Had it not been for the blistering cold temperatures afuera <<cold>> outside (It IS Tundra Town after all), Fox’s beater wouldn’t have sputtered and stalled due to it being exposed to the outside. Eventually, after some time freezing, some serious paw rubbing to keep our hands from breaking off like a zombie, and a round of yelling, the machine roared to life, the dials turning all the way to the right before settling back down to the left at zero, the radio’s transparent buttons glowing a bright blue with the equalizer bars shooting up to the ceiling of the small screen located in the center of the dashboard before equalizing at the bottom.

 

Down the shifter went, and off we sped. Alongside us was the sore-thumb chaser, Jesus...what a car, and not in a good way either. The wind crisp yet still nose-chilling to the core blew through the cracked window of the co-pilot's side, the faint smells of gasoline, spray-on deodorants within the boxcar filled the air as we rode along that slick, winding road towards the bullet train that ran through all part of ZT, following the incoming train’s direction as we swerved left, crossing a red light and leaving behind a whole line of cars honking and steaming mad.

 

Iceberg boulevard, Frosty Road, Plow Street, all just road signs as I peered out the foggy window, the chatter of the car falling behind the stage as I contemplated things--what’ll happen if we fail? What’ll we do when we finish, and if so, are we gonna’ do this until we all get caught?

 

I questioned what I did, sure I have some tech skills, they weren’t much, but at least I’m a step up from a script kiddie-- like anyone would take them seriously.

 

The colors of white shifted to a scenery of colors, skyscrapers as magnificent and towering (snrk) as they were replaced the smaller, snow-capped bungalows that is Tundra Town’s residential areas.

 

Y’know, now that I think about it, maybe I should’ve been more attentive to my surroundings, especially Maria. Her shifty-eyed look whilst typing something away at her laptop should’ve tipped me off that they were going to throw me out like a corrupted file.

 

Herd Street, a quaint little neighborhood, teeming with life; unbeknownst to them, a lil’ kitty is about to be caught doing something bad.

 

I snuffed into the air, my sinuses weren’t functional at the time; I was just battling a cold that’s been plaguing me for months at a time. We pulled up to the curb, but before we exited, Maria finished typing out something, pressing the enter key and caused a loading bar to slowly fill out to the right, a strange ZPD badge floating in the center. Eventually, the bar filled up and was replaced with a check mark, I should’ve asked her what she was doing, but I thought nothing of it.

 

The car died as Fox flipped the ignition off, all four doors opening up and out emerged four shifty men and women came out from it. What were they doing here? They look professional, what if they’re part of some reality T.V. show? Who knows, but 3/4ths of the group was scheming something, the other 1/4th, heading into hell.

 

I was the first one of the group to jump ahead, walking down the street until I reached the exact apartment. The staircase was a bit steep, some of the steps were worn out due to age, the handrail, made out of cobblestone, was tattered and eroding, massive chunks of old paint chipping off as I held onto it during my ascend up. I looked back, everyone was way behind me.

 

“Oi! Y’comin’ or what?” I exclaimed out, getting no answer as the crew hung around the car, Maria sat atop the hood, the others were leaning against the car doors, strange…

 

They were open, as if they were about to leave…

 

One of the bunch, a stout weasel, dooked his way to the roof of the car, throwing his hands to his sides, similar to that in movies where a character is expressing a line that might say,

 

“I’unno man, we’ll stay put, just do your thing.”

 

 

I turned my attention back to the door, an array of silver buttons with a speaker at the top of the metal frame with various names of all the living tenants was placed. I pulled out a dinky device; the anti-alarm transmitter, looked no bigger than your average T.V. remote. A few buttons later, the scrambling program blipped and beeped, eventually buzzing me into the door of the complex, allowing me to take the elevator up to the 3rd floor.

 

No one was here, it was like a ghost-town in the hallways. Weird…

 

I waited for the elevator to come back down from the 9th floor, and after 4 minutes of waiting, the doors opened up, and I stepped in with some gear strapped away in my bookbag.

 

“3rd floor, going up”, said the announcement through the P.A. systems.

 

Empty, hah, this is too easy...actually...this IS too easy...pah, makes this job easier.

 

Down the hall I went, it seemed to stretch for quite a while. Sometimes voices were heard, sometimes there was that voiding silence, but one thing was clear--this package is mine and it’ll take more than an army to stop me.

 

My ears perked to the sounds of distant sirens, ha, poor sucker down the block must’ve got caught doing stupid shit.

 

3E, the plates where the identification for each individual door were missing, leaving behind an matted outline against the green door. Digging into my pockets, I procured a small hairpin, turning it into a key-- cliche, I know, how else would you open doors?

 

 

After some jiggling of the lock, the door popped open easily, and to make things even better, the anti-alarm device didn’t go off. Slipping in, right there, in the center of the living room, sat a square box, no lettering, no markings, no stampage, nothing, just a plain ol’ regular box. Lifting it up, it could’ve been maybe a few pounds, 5 or 6 at the most, so it was easily carriable to my awaiting ride.

 

I never liked sloppy jobs, especially when the team isn’t fully present. After some evidence clearing, knob disinfecting and fur removal, and a good surveillance of outside the door, the door was shut once again, gently of course, the package in my grasp as I made my way over to the elevator, parcel in tow, completely unnoticed to anyone that may have seen me emerge. Back down to the mezzanine level, I buzzed my way outside, holding the large box that jiggled something shiny, maybe it was a set of pearls, who knows.

 

Heading down the stairs carefully, what transpired next broke my heart, and made me the bitter lynx I am today.

 

 

The car was out of its parking spot, only to swing around from the corner, pulling up to where we pulled over. Maria brought the window down, only to yell out,

 

“Good luck with the heat, chump!”

 

And then, Fox slammed on the accelerator, leaving behind tire-marks on the road as he did a burnout, stranding me there on Herd Street, the box still in my possession.

 

ZPD’s finest, a fox and a bunny--a bunny? Oh right, that Hopps character that stopped a near biological civil warfare, popped out of nowhere, guns affixed on my position.

 

“Freeze! You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

 

Down came the parcel, and on went the handcuffs. Nick made them extra tight, and it surely hurt my wrists as they clamped onto them. Just to make sure I was really booked like the bad guy, Nick slammed my upper torso to the hood of his cruiser, holding me tight as he checked my pockets for any knives or armaments I may be hiding.

 

“Well officer Hopps lookie what we got, a neat lil’ toy that’s been bothering us for a while!”

As I laid there on the hood, I looked over at Fox’s car as it rolled up to the center of the intersection, the whole gaggle laughing hysterically as they pointed at me one last time before disappearing into the horizon.

 

I got 1 year.

 

A whole plethora of court dates, appearances, and a whole slew of bank loan arguments later, I was let out on $50,000 bail.

 

Nick lifted me up, slamming me one last time onto the hood, however, before impact, I jolted from my flashback daze, the room still dim as the picture still hung right next to the mirror.

 

With some gasping for air, I finally calmed myself down, remember how awful the feeling was being taken away, how disgraced I felt being ratted out by my own brothers and sisters. I could relive this feeling over and over again with no result in the end, yet I still looked forward.

 

Maybe now I can finally sleep. After all, tomorrow’s a new day.

 

                                               

 

-Signed, Phantom