Liberation: Chapter 6

It had happened the same way as the twenty-two cases before it; twenty two victims, twenty two home computers accessed, fifty-one bank accounts cleaned out with an overdrawn amount of measly five dollars and seventy-one cents. 'How could it have happened to me?' all of the victims must have thought at one point or another, nonetheless, as the red text continued reading -$5.71 every time he refreshed the page, Bradley Tzernich shocked himself when he slammed his fist onto the surface of his desk so hard that his rage was temporarily redirected at himself.

"Son of a bitch!" Brad screamed at the ceiling as he fell to the floor from his knees. He held his hand to his chest, squeezing it tightly, seeking comfort in the new-found silence around him. His face, red as the twilit sky, sank into a beach-like shade of tan as he slowed his breathing with each breath, and finally opened his eyes to look at what he'd done to himself.

He extended his right hand and rotated it to either side, feeling a stiff pain when it turned to the right. He bent his elbow and held his palm inches from his face. Brad clenched and unclenched his fist, squeezing tightly the third time through; he felt nothing. Still skeptical, he pressed on the bones in his hand, but still to no result. He had started believing his pain was only a temporary affair, but when he tried moving his two leftmost fingers independently, palm still facing him, the stabbing pain that shot down his arm, starting from the wrist and ending before it reached the elbow, the hope that the pain was only temporary had been derailed. Before he had time to fully take in the realization, however, Brad had found the way back onto his feet and was headed back to his desk, where he reached for the cell phone lying just to the right of his computer monitor.

"Nine-one-one... Nine-one-one..." Brad murmured to himself as he held the phone between the thumb and his two good fingers and dialed with his left hand. After pressing Send, he took the phone with his left hand and held it to his ear, letting his right palm rest on the desk as he slid into his expensive reclining computer chair, rocking back and forth. The phone clicked and a pleasant-sounding voice spoke broke through, "Nine-one-one, how may I..."
"I need the police."
"What's your situation sir?"
"My bank account... it's been emptied... I think it's the..."
"Hold on, let me transfer you."

'Click...'

...

...

'Clic-Kaylant P.D. Cyber Crimes Division, this is officer Anthony Hengrin, may I have your name and location?"

"My name is Bradley Tzernich and my address is 12874 Jilpardon Circle, Growli, FL 37548."

... ... ...

"Okay, Mr. Tzernich," Hengrin spoke in a calm tone, "you told the operator your bank account had been accessed and your funds have been removed, is this correct?"
"Yes it is, officer. The account balance was negative five..."
"Negative five dollars and seventy-one cents?"
"Yes officer..."
"You're the twenty-third to call in about this same problem. You will be happy to know we have enlisted the aid of the best internet-security professionals in the state to get to the bottom of this. All I can advise you to do now is change your online passwords and leave your debit card at home in a secure location." Brad's fist tightened again, reigniting the fire in his wrist, "I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you on the perpetrator's behalf, and I wish there was something else I could do for you, but all I can give you right now is my confidence in the team we enlisted."
"Thank you officer," Brad said calmly, despite his inclining frustration, "in case you can't reach me on this number, call my wife on her phone, her number is three-five-two, eight-eight-four, five-two-seven-six."
"Thank you Mr. Tzernich, we will contact you as progress is made in this case."

'Berrrrrrn!' Brad pressed the red, digital End button on his phone and set it face down on his desk and let his head fall back into the curve at the top of his chair's back. He looked at an angle at the intersection of the wall and ceiling above the double doors leading into the garden he and his wife built together out of an unattractive plot of sandy soil and grass. 'Honey...'

Brad pictured his wife and daughter in the garden. His wife's long-red hair swinging back and forth as she picked their daughter up out of the dirt. A small tear welled up in the corner of his eye as he was brought back into reality. His mind raced, wary of the heavy burden looming above, but pressing on nonetheless; he was determined, desperate to figure something out... then he stopped. Brad's torso shot forward from it's leaning position and he began bawling into his hands.

---

She watched the clock as the small hand crawled over from 2 to 3, and no matter how she attempted to get her mind off of it, reality refused to bend. For what seemed to be the fifth time in the last half an hour, some lazy customers left not only their cups on a table she had just cleaned, but dirty straws, wet napkins, lids wearing a fine coat of cappuccino, and melting ice cubes. Taking nearly immediate notice to the mess, she searched near the sink for a clean-looking rag. Identifying her quarry, she tightened up her apron and turned on the sink, allowing warm water to wash through the white square of fabric. She wrung out the rag, twisting it on both ends, and paced towards the table, lifting up the opening in the counter top to allow her passage.

"Can you clean that up Melissa?" Called her coworker, who wiped a bead of sweat from underneath her faded-tangerine bangs. "I've got it already," Melissa called back in an irate tone of voice. She thought of how her coworker should have been the one cleaning, but since she'd been hogging the register since about a quarter after one, this would prove nearly impossible to accomplish.

Melissa let her mind focus on how much she couldn't stand people like her coworker Jeanine at times, as well as customers like the ones who left her table a mess. She kept telling herself that she shouldn't feel that way towards others, but she was already at the point where she was beyond sympathizing with anyone who only cared for themselves. Despicable, basic creatures, hardly worthy of being called human, especially since that's how she referred to herself. The thought angered her as she threw the empty plastic cups into the trash and placed a ceramic cappuccino mug on the seat while she wiped the table down. A bead of sweat formed under her left eyebrow, such an uncomfortable feeling, she thought as she wiped it away, the smell of stale soap, water, and blended coffee filled up her nasal cavities, triggering the olfactories.

She couldn't help but think of another cigarette at this point, the series of inconsiderate customers coupled with her unwilling coworker made the prospect of stepping outside for 5 minutes of respite seem a gift. She stood up fully, looking around to find not a single customer standing in line. Walking up to Jeanine, who was in the middle of flipping through a newspaper, Melissa dropped the rag on the other side of the counter and informed her coworker that she was going outside for a cigarette, who simply responded with an indifferent "Meh." Melissa decided she was taking that as a sign of approval and turned and walked to the door.

Pushing the door open from it's frame instead of the handle, Melissa walked to the left and past the large window in the store front. Fiddling around in her pocket, she produced a single, 100mm cigarettte and a transparent purple lighter. She put the filter of the cigarette in her mouth and lit the open end, her eyes firing upwards towards the grey sky.

A sign, she thought as she took a drag off of her smoke. Her day was nearly over, it was only another twenty-two minutes until her shift ended, but the thought of seeing her stepmother for the first time in seven months was almost enough to make her want to stay until closing time. That option wasn't feasible, much to her dismay, as she was broke for another week and her tips weren't exactly paying her part of the rent.

Her thoughts became long as she lingered by the window, length of tobacco growing short. Her thoughts began to focus on the men and women coming from every direction. Who they are and what sort of lives they led intrigued Melissa, surely their lives were more interesting than hers; sharing a cramped apartment with Jeanine and her obnoxious friends didn't exactly fit into her image of ideal city life. It could be worse, she thought, tossing her cigarette butt into the gutter below her feet. 'I have a job and a place to live,' she told herself often, but it wasn't enough. She never asked for much, never too much anyways, and things always seemed to work out just fine, but it wasn't enough. She envied the people on the street that she knew nothing about, and that worried her.

She took a few short but deep breaths to calm herself down and she turned to walk back inside, but she was caught off-guard by an ambulance rushing by, forcing her to jump back a couple steps. Her heart beat for a few moments, leading her into deep breaths to calm herself down once more, this time leading her into a series of painful coughs that lasted a good fifteen seconds before she started breathing normally again, "I need to quit smoking."