Extortion

‘Oh shit!’ David uttered as he saw the reflexion of the flash as the neighbours’ kids’ polaroid camera snaped against the shiny metal bin. ‘Caught you!’ Robbie, the little prick that lived next to David, taunted as he waved the instant picture in the air through the hole in the wooden fence. David immediately buttoned his pants and jumped the fence to chase the little snot, his future stepsister, Julia, followed his lead.

Davids effort to catch Robbie was in vain as he had a 45 second head start and knocked over a young Buxus tree, smashing its terracotta pot, to slow David down. Robbie locked the back door to his house upon entry, taunting David by blowing him a raspberry, projecting saliva onto the glass of the white PVC sliding door.

David knew he absolutely must get the polaroid as he banged on the door. He only stopped when he heard a loud thump and a groan from Julia who tripped over the fallen Buxus in her haste, David rushed to her aid. When he realised, she only sustained a superficial cut on her hand, he resumed banging on the glass.

‘What are we going to do?’ David panted, trying to catch his breath, as the image of his fathers disappointed face flashed in front of his eyes. If he found out that his son was sleeping with his future stepsister, he would disown him. Julia had a blank look on her face.

David looked around the perfectly landscaped garden, then at the house it belonged to, the cogs in his mind turning as to how he was going to get that photograph. David raced to the front of the house through the narrow passage that connected the front and back gardens. He stepped onto the weed free cement slabs that made up the driveway, the absence of a car confirming his theory that Robbie, the twelve-year-old pest, was home alone.

He looked into the living room window through cupped hands to avoid the glare of the blistering sun. He saw no signs of life and decided to bang on the front door. After several minutes, David’s arm tired, he returned to the back garden. Julia had disappeared. He wondered if she had coaxed Robbie to open the door.

Suddenly David heard a small crash on the patio beside him, his question answered, as several Lego bricks were scattered in a haphazard formation. There were a few bricks that survived the fall, a rubber band surrounded them with a small piece of paper underneath.

David picked up the paper and unfolded it. It was a ransom note of sorts as it read:

If you want the photograph, you’re going to have to pay for it! I want a brand new Alienware M15 R6 gaming laptop with; an Intel Core i9 processor; 32GB of RAM; 1TB of memory; and a NVDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8G GDDR6 graphics card. I want the laptop by Saturday, your dads wedding day, or else I will give him the picture at the wedding reception!

David crushed the piece of paper in his hand with anger and grinded his teeth as he looked up to where the Lego bricks had crashed from. The window was open, Robbie hanging out of it laughing, the photo in his hand.

David had no choice but to return home, fuming at Robbie for taking the picture, but also at himself for getting caught having sex with the one girl in the world who was out of bounds. She was his forbidden fruit.

Both David and Julia’s parents were widows. They knew each other to see around the town, but when they both found themselves volunteering in the local charity shop, they fell in love. Six months passed before Julia and her mother Margaret moved in with David and his father Simon.

At the start all Julia and David seemed to do was bicker. The bickering turned into fondness which turned into secret sex. David knew how much his father longed to marry Margaret and understood that what he was doing with Julia was wrong which was why they had sworn to themselves that the time the polaroid was taken was the last time. Robbie’s camera had put a spanner in the works.

David knew his father would be absolutely furious with him if he ever found out about him and Julia. He went into his bedroom, crumpled note still in his hand, and wondered if he should pay Robbie off or try and sweet talk him into giving it back freely. He definitely was hoping the latter would work as he was strapped for cash and knew that the laptop Robbie was demanding would be expensive. He was curious though as to how much exactly the laptop would be. His curiosity getting the better of him, he found himself on the Dell website and put in the specs from the note. To his horror it was the guts of €4000.

David, his jaw on the floor, was interrupted by Julia asking if he had gotten the photo. Unable to speak, he handed her the ransom note and pointed towards the computer. ‘How much?’ Julia screeched before she became faint and had to sit down.

The two seventeen-year-olds talked amongst themselves as to how to get the money together. Both were working; David was a football coach and Julia worked in an ice cream shop. They both were starting college in September and had earmarked whatever cash they could get during the summer for that. That amount of money would mean they would have to work in college as well in order to keep themselves in alcohol.

Julia was in the mind frame to pay the kid off, David on the other hand had other ideas….

David, accompanied by his binoculars, watched the house next door to see when the best time would be to go and steal the incriminating photo. He knew where Robbie’s family kept the spare key, in the boiler house, and knew that his father had the alarm codes to practically all of the houses in their cul de sac.

David overheard Robbie’s father on the phone, as he watered the grass, say how the whole family were going out for a meal on Tuesday night, the first since covid hit. He heard that the table was booked for 7:30. David rubbed his hands together with excitement. He knew they would be gone for at least an hour and saw it as a great opportunity to save both his new family and his bank balance.

At 7:15 David was just about ready to go to commit his first burglary. He had his trusty pen knife and a photo of the alarm code from his father’s address book, he was just waiting for the family to leave the house. He got his trusty binoculars and focused his attention on the silver, sporty 212 Mercedes Benz. His stomach felt as though he had missed a step on the stairs, his heart raced as he watched Robbie’s dad get into the car, closely followed by his mother. He heard the father beep the horn to get Robbie, their only child, to hurry up.

Once Robbie was in the car it sped away. David jumped out of his chair and raced downstairs announcing his departure by slamming the back door behind him. He hopped over the wooden fence with the hole in it and ran to the boiler house at the back of his neighbour’s garden. To his dismay, he was faced with a lock on the boiler house door. He took out his shiny red pen knife finding a Philips head screwdriver on it and screwed the whole lock off the flimsy whitewashed wooden door. He could have just kicked it in, but he wanted to be stealthy in his actions.

Once the lock was removed, the door opened. David stood back and saw the shiny silver key sparkle like a diamond on a thin wooden slat that spanned the width of the small, bricked structure. He reached in to grab it, however, he was shaking with nerves and dropped it. The key fell to the ground. David panicking got on his hands and knees feeling for the key, his efforts not producing any results. He took out his phone, turning on the flashlight, to aid his search. After a couple of minutes, the light bounced back towards him indicating the shiny silver key which was lodged between a stray brick and the boiler itself. He reached in once more and smiled as he blew the dust off his prize.

David knew the retrieval of the key had cost him valuable minutes, so he ran to the front of the house, opened the front door, and put in the alarm code into the beeping box on the wall, grateful to his father for his meticulous record keeping.

He looked at his watch, it was 7:42. He took a deep breath to compose himself and climbed up the grey carpeted stairs. David paused on the upstairs landing, smiled, and opened the door brandishing the sign which read: Robbie’s room, keep out! in sharpie. It happened to be the room from which the ransom note had come from.

David asked himself, ‘if I was a twelve-year-old boy, where would I hide an incriminating polaroid?’ He glanced into the opened wardrobe, seeing clothes that had been neatly folded and either hung up or placed on one of the six shelves. He couldn’t see the top shelf as it was out of his sightline. Then he moved towards the chest of drawers and found socks and underwear in the top two drawers, the bottom two had more neatly folded clothes. He went through the desk drawers, then the tubs neatly put in their little cubby holes, all of which were ordered and tidy. David wondered if Robbie had obsessive compulsive disorder as each and every item in his room had a home. Everything was neatly in place.

Getting impatient because he was strapped by time, David held his head in his hands and yelled, ‘aaarrrgghhh’ out of frustration. His mind brought him so far as to think this was the wrong room. He sat down on Robbie’s perfectly made bed and closed his eyes.

David felt an inconsistency in the mattress. One of his bum cheeks was sitting on something harder than that of the other one. He remembered back to when he was twelve and how he used to, and still does, hide his dirty magazines under the mattress.

He stood up patted the bed with his hands. There was a discrete bulge at the bottom of the bed. He found himself optimistic as he lifted the mattress and true enough there they were. David had found three dirty magazines along with green cardboard folder. He knelt down against the bed, as if getting ready to pray, ready to inspect the well-used folder.

At first glance he could see that there were a few polaroid’s in there, each attached to a piece of paper by a paper clip. He gently removed them from the folder. Optimistic his was one of the three photos that he counted. ‘Yesss’, he cheered when he found his in the middle. The piece of paper attached had one word written on it: laptop.

David was shocked at the other two photos. One of Mr Flynn’s in his shed fertilising some marijuana plants, the other of Mrs Peterson in her car snorting a white powdery substance that David presumed was cocaine, both had a piece of paper attached: Mr Flynn’s said PS5, Mrs Petersons said iPhone.

Davids phone started to beep indicating that it was 8:30. He knocked the alarm off and decided to take not only his, but the other two photos with him. He quickly put the magazines and empty green folder back under the mattress and proceeded to exit the house, making sure to put the alarm back on as he left. He raced to the back garden to replace the spare key and screw the lock back in place, knowing that then no one would be suspicious of his intrusion.

Once home, David proceeded to fill Julia in on the adventure. That night David decided to discretely reunite Mr Flynn and Mrs Peterson with their photographs, assuring them that no more would be said on the matter. The both of them showed immense gratitude.

The next day, David saw Robbie in the back garden and asked him, over the wooden fence with the hole, if he was missing anything. Robbie didn’t know what he was talking about. David raised an eyebrow and smiled. Robbie’s face went pale, and he ran into the house. Robbie, devoid of evidence, could no longer extort David or his other two neighbours.

Saturday came and as the reception of Simon and Margaret’s wedding went without a hitch. Robbie’s parents expressed their sincere apologies for him not showing up. They told the bride and groom that he was at home sick with the flu. David on the other hand presumed that the little snot was just sulking. He raised an eyebrow at Julia and they both smiled, they had dodged a bullet.

picture from pixabay