“Bye Vanessa! See you tomorrow.”
“Bye guys!”
Vanessa’s legs were stiff with cold, even the three drinks those guys at the bar bought her weren’t enough to make her warm. She didn’t really like the skirt she was wearing—admittedly it was a little slutty. But slutty skirts get drinks. Just an empirical fact. But goddamn, she needed to get back home. She needed to study for her Quals that were coming up, especially for complex analysis. Even though it was a pretty rote thing to do, she could never compute the contour integrals.
She shook her head, whipping the dreadful exams far from her head. She burped a bit under her breath. A group of three men was standing on the corner smoking.
“Oh look at them tits on that love. Hey you! Come over here!”
Rather than walk past them, she turned off into an alley. Why are men so disgusting?
The alley was dark, and walking through it felt a lot longer than it looked. She quickened her steps. A dark silhouette emerged from behind a dumpster. Vanessa squeaked.
“Pssst. Come here. Don’t be scare now.”
There was absolutely no fucking way Vanessa was going over there.
“Don’t make me use this, miss.” The silhouette flashed a small silver revolver that glinted the little light that it caught.
“What do you want?”
“Toss over your purse. Right here on the ground next to me. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, and I’ll give it back. I promise. I just want a little something in your wallet.”
Vanessa thought about grabbing the pepper spray discretely, but it was buried at the bottom her puse. She slung her purse over on the ground by his feet.
“Thank you kindly. Now don’t be running off or anything. It’ll just be a minute.”
The silhouette reached down and dug until he found her wallet. “Mmm… pepper spray. You know this is technically a chemical weapon—it’s against the Geneva Convention to use this in a war. Naughty, naughty. I’ll hold on to it.… Ah, here she is.” He pulled out her wallet, popped it open and pulled out her driver’s license. Then he sloppily tossed her wallet and purse back to her. He pulled out a pair of scissors from his back pocket and cut her license in half. Then he cut those halves in half. “Okay, you can go.”
“Are you fucking serious man?”
“What?”
“You didn’t even rob me. You just cut my license in half? Why?”
“I don’t want to rob you. I just want you to have to go the DMV.”
“The DMV? The fucking DMV! Fuck you, asshole.”
“What? you would rather have me rob you?”
“Honestly, yeah. If it meant I didn’t have to go the DMV, I would have gladly traded the $300 in my wallet.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I—”
“Just shut up.”
Vanessa walked past him, brushing his shoulder harshly, crying.