The Ticket

She had no idea the value of the item she had just lifted off an unsuspecting mark. Annabelle Kranz was a skinny, hipster type, an early-thirties happy-go-lucky thief, specifically a pickpocket. Her antics had earned her a reputation among the locals of being a great big old pain in the rear. Her sticky little fingers had found their way into many a pocket that dare frequent her section of the Crossroads Center mall.

She had zero’d in on her mark and knew exactly which pocket contained the goods. It would be a quick bump-n-grab operation and it went down without a hitch, save for the fact that what she lifted was not what she targeted. It turned out the little pickpocket was not as bright as she fancied herself to be.

She watched her guy put the goods in his right jacket pocket. However, he had his back to her when he did it. While walking towards her, she forgot to account for the change in direction, so when she made her move, she went for the pocket closest to her, which was the opposite of the one she originally targeted. But as fate would have it, what she ended up with was considerably more valuable than what she targeted. She just didn’t know it yet.

At home that evening, as she sifted through her grab bag of goodies, she came across the item she lifted from the guy in the mall. It looked like a sweepstakes ticket. Uninterested, she tossed it aside and continued sifting through the bag for valuables. Just then, a couple of goons kicked in the door of her apartment. They must have figured, “Hey, the door is open. We may as well come in.” And that’s exactly what they did.

Annabelle was a cocky little cuss. She ran towards the bigger of the two and demanded to know what they wanted. He looked at her for less than a second before popping her square in the chops, sending her flying backwards onto the floor. She made a mental note of the failed strategy and quickly went to Plan B, the crying phase.

“What’d you do that for, man? What do you guys want?” she whimpered.

“Where’s the ticket, Annabelle?”

“What ticket?” she retorted.

The big guy moved towards her, obviously intent on popping her again, but she stopped him by saying she no longer had the ticket. He grabbed her bag and went through it, but didn’t find the ticket. When she saw it earlier, she chucked it over her shoulder and it slid under the couch. Had she looked at the ticket closely, she would have known what it was, its value, but Annabelle was the type who got easily distracted and the ticket simply was not a shiny enough object to keep her attention. However, she also figured if someone broke into her home to retrieve it, chances were good it was worth something. With that summation, she went to Plan C, the begging phase.

“C’mon, guys, please, believe me. I don’t have what you’re looking for.”

She laid it on thick with real fake tears and fake sniffles, and fake dry heaves. It was quite a show. And it worked. They left, but would stay close by and monitor her comings and goings. As soon as they left, she searched around and found the ticket. She examined it. She twirled it between her fingers, flipped it over, and held it up to the light. Finally mumbled, “Screw it,” threw it in her day bag and went to sleep. Annabelle was about as sharp as a dollop of mayonnaise when she hadn’t convinced her mind to focus. There was a lot about that ticket that she missed.

⁂

Tage Sorenson worked for a software development company in Hanover, MN. On Thursday, 21, 2022, he sat alone having a coffee at Starbucks in the Crossroads Center mall up in St. Cloud. He had driven up for a meeting with a client. Tage was about to have a run in with a menace and it would produce strange results a few days later.

She seemed to come out of nowhere, spewing the most hateful rhetoric he’d ever heard. She loudly accused him of sadistic, despicable things. As he sat at his table, mouth agape, totally defenseless against her accusations, he kept coming back to the same questions.

“What the hell is going on and who is this lunatic?”

As she got louder, he noticed she kept scanning the crowd as if looking for a specific audience. She was a perky little thing for sure, full of piss and vinegar, and he got the distinct feeling she had pulled this stunt before. Finally, she must have found who among the crowd she was looking for because she made a big deal out of handing Tage a ticket, along with her sincere apologies for mistaken identity. Poor Tage, thoroughly embarrassed, took the ticket and hightailed it out of there.

⁂

A few days later, back home in Hanover, Tage was walking from his car to his office when someone clubbed him from behind and he fell to the ground unconscious. He was awakened a few minutes later by a guy throwing a bucket of ice water in his face. After the initial shock and frantic grasps for air, he noticed he was tied to a chair in a big empty room.

The first blow was to the left side of his face, causing a great strain in his neck. Tage could not focus on anything but the feeling of pain and disorientation. He tried to ask what was going on, but that was met with another blow to the opposite side of his face. He was done, didn’t like the game, wanted it to end.

A man pulled a chair up and sat in front of him. He said nothing as he raised a photo and asked him to identify the woman. Tage pleaded with him, saying he didn’t know her but that she had accused him of horrible things a few days earlier.

“She gave you a ticket. It belongs to me. We can end this with no more pain if you simply hand it over.”

Tage’s heart sank because he didn’t have the ticket. He chucked it into a dumpster outside his apartment as he left for work that morning. He strained for words that might lesson the impact of telling that lie to the man in front of him.

“I, ah, ah, I, ah, don’t have the ticket,” he lied.

“We saw the woman give it to you in the mall,” the man said.

“Yea, but, ah, I, ah, kind of threw it away this morning,” Tage replied.

It was terrifying to watch that man’s expression in microseconds go from serious to super serious to down right horrifying. As he backed his chair away and stood, Tage braced for more blows to the face. Suddenly, there was a gunshot and a golf ball sized hole appeared between the man’s eyes as his body fell to the floor, dead. The two guys who were with him drew weapons and looked around, hopelessly trying to see who was shooting. One guy met the same fate. The third guy took a round in the gut, and then the chest, and then the head. They were all dead.

Poor Tage recalled his company’s training videos on how people react to extreme fear. He knew about the three f’s, fight, flight, and freeze, but the training didn’t prepare him for the reaction he had, which was flop. He looked like an old catfish out of water, the way he was flopping against the ropes that bound him in response to the level of fear he felt at that moment. And then she showed up.

She casually walked from the shadows towards him carrying a rifle, and as much as wanted to stop, he was still fear flopping like crazy. She walked up and stood in front of him. It was the girl from the mall. She told him to calm down, that she wasn’t a threat to him, yet. She began untying him, as his flopping had finally subsided.

“Lady, why are you causing so much stress in my life?” Tage blurted out hysterically.

“No time for questions, mister. I just need that ticket I gave you. Give it to me. I’ll be on my way, and you’ll never see me again.”

He looked around the room in amazement that she had just killed three armed professionals and made it look as easy as chewing gum.

“I don’t have it. I tossed it this morning on my way to work,” Tage lied again.

“No, Mr. Sorenson, you din’t. I’ve been watching you since you got back from St. Cloud. Now give me the ticket. Please.”

He produced the ticket and twirled it between his fingers. He suddenly had a smug look on his face, as if daring her to shoot him. His demeanor had changed, and he acted as if he’d gained a burst of bravery. And then it hit her as she realized that the whole fear flopping thing was a ruse. Everything about him was a ruse, and she suddenly wanted to know his story more than she wanted the ticket. She casually pulled up the chair the dead guy used and sat down in front of him. Neither of them seemed particularly disturbed by the three dead bodies strewn about the room. Tage spoke first.

“So, Annabelle, it’s obvious you know what this thicket is. Where’d you get it?”

She didn’t seem concerned that he knew her name, and without turning around, without taking her eyes off his, she reached around behind her chair and pointed to the dead guy on the ground, the former hitter.

“His name is Seth Khan,” Tage said. “But I’m betting you already know that. I’m betting it was no accident that you showed up here today either. I just can’t figure out what these yokels were up to. He explained there was a QR code on the ticket, revealing three sets of numbers that defined rules of engagement. The first is the hitter’s ID, the second is the geographic location of the target, and the third…”

“The target’s ID, you,” she said under her breath.

They both slowly reached inside their jackets. Both expressed caution as they read each other’s body language, mostly facial expressions, as the eyes would project an intent of aggression. He figured her little trigger finger was fondling a handgun under her coat. So was he. He raised his opposite hand in a gesture to let her know he intended no harm, as he cautiously pulled out another ticket and handed it to her.

She took it, used her phone to read the QR code and hastily looked up the numbers. Apparently, they worked for the same organization. Also, apparently, someone wanted them both dead. The first number set showed that Tage was the hitter. The second number set showed the location was right there in Hanover, and the third number set identified the target, Annabelle Kranz. They both cautiously stood, and both slowly backed away, acknowledging they had mutually agreed, for the time being anyway, to suspend each other’s contracts and go their separate ways.

It would not be the last time they found themselves together.

K.R. Eaton - The Ticket

Short Stories by K.R Eaton