“Jack! Jack! Get down here this instant!” Jack’s mother was calling him downstairs. He had to get downstairs and fix his mother’s broken down old Ford Pinto again. It was his mother’s only way to get to work and his only way to get around, so with a less-than-enthusiastic “yippee” Jack started working on the car. Jack opened the hood and saw no problem with the car. He would have to check under the car to see what the problem was. Mumbling with frustration as he raised the old jalopy with a jack, Jack slid himself under the car and immediately saw the problem: the fuel line, transmission fluid line, exhaust pipe, and pretty much the whole underside of the car were mangled beyond repair. Jack was wondering how the car could have been damaged when it suddenly hit him point-blank in the face: he’d been out on one of his late-night excursions with friends yesterday and ran over the curb while parking the car in the driveway. Having been dead tired by the time he got home, he didn’t really care that he had run over the curb and went straight to bed, completely forgetting the incident until now. “OH. CRAP. My mom will nuke my entire existence if she finds out I did this!” Jack had totaled his and his mom’s only means of transport, and he and his mother had no auto insurance. While hyperventilating, Jack contemplated ways to replace the car. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in his head as he came up with the perfect idea: he could steal some things from the old abandoned mansion nearby and sell them. “Lucky for me, people will pay ridiculous amounts of cash for antiques,” Jack muttered to himself while grinning in a very sinister manner.

Jack told his mother that the car was totaled, but that he didn’t know what had happened to it. So his mother called out sick from work and just decided to go to a friend’s house so she wouldn’t be bored at home. Jack, in the meantime, snuck out of his house wearing a balaclava and snuck over to the old abandoned Chesterfield mansion in the woods, making sure no one saw him coming out of his house and sneaking over to the mansion. Jack had brought a rucksack with a crowbar and a flashlight with him. Jack restated his plan to himself while walking there: “I’ll just go in, grab some expensive-looking stuff, and get out. Easy as that.” Jack went up to the front door and pried it open with his crowbar. Jack quickly inspected his surroundings. The dining room as to his left, there was a hallway with a stairwell right in front of him, and there was a living room to his right. As soon as he closed the door behind him, though, he heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs in front of him. It turns out the old Chesterfield mansion wasn’t completely abandoned, as local legend had it.

Jack dove behind a nearby couch in the living room and peered out from behind it. A gargantuan, hulking mass of a man walked over the front door and realized someone had broken into his house. “What the HELL!” he shouted. He went over to a nearby gun cabinet and loaded a nasty-looking sawn-off shotgun. Please don’t find me, please don’t find me, please don’t find me Jack repeated to himself in his head. Lucky for Jack, the man walked the other way, into the dining room. Unfortunately, getting out through the front door was out of the question. The owner of the house was still only a room away from the front door. Jack decided his best bet would be to sneak out a window. The windows in the living room were rusty, so Jack went into the kitchen to his right. He then went down a flight of stairs in the kitchen into the look-out basement of the house. While Jack was breaking in, he’d seen that the basement windows were very large, large enough so a person Jack’s size could sneak out of them, out of view or earshot from the owner of the house, who was still searching the first floor. So he went into the surprisingly clean and well-lit basement. When he got downstairs, he was completely shocked at what he saw.

The basement in the house was full of various trinkets and collectibles, some of which Jack knew to be stolen, including a rare, Ancient Mayan vase stolen from a museum in a nearby city years ago. A few policemen and guards were injured during the robbery, so the museum and the police were now offering huge amounts of cash to anyone who gives information leading to the return of the vase and the arrest of the thief, no questions asked. The man whose house he’d been trying to rob was a thief himself! No wonder whoever lives here has been keeping such a low profile, Jack thought. Jack now had to get out of the house so he could give the museum a tip-off as to where the vase was and cash would come rolling his way. There was just one problem.

Jack heard footsteps coming down the basement stairs. He was trapped! His only safe bet was to hide behind an upside-down box and hope whoever lives in the house didn’t see him. “Whoever you are, I’m gonna find you, and when I do, you’ll regret ever breaking into MY HOUSE. Got that? I’m coming for you!” The man pumped his shotgun to intimidate Jack, who was still hiding. Jack knew he had to act fast. So he grabbed an aerosol can that just so happened to be nearby and when the man passed by the spot where Jack was hiding, Jack grabbed his foot and pulled, tripping the man. Jack then sprayed a little bit of aerosol spray into the man’s eyes, making him drop his gun and rub his eyes in pain. Jack kicked the gun far away from the temporarily blinded man and sprinted up the stairs toward the front door. He knew the fat man wouldn’t be able to run after him, so Jack was confident that he would get away. He sprinted out the front door, through the woods and back to his house, making sure no one was following him as he ran. When he got home, he burned his balaclava and gloves in the backyard fire-pit and called the police tipoff-line. The police found the vase and were able to arrest the man. Unfortunately for Jack, the man saw Jack when Jack tripped him, right before the aerosol was sprayed in his eyes, and the man was able to identify Jack by his clothes as the person who broke into his home. The police also found DNA evidence at the seemingly abandoned mansion. Jack and the fat man were both put on trial and found guilty. Since Jack found the vase through illegal means, the police refused to give him any money, but the museum was more than willing to give him and his mother enough money to buy a new car for finding the stolen vase. Jack ended up getting a 5-year sentence, but at least his mother would be able to get by while Jack was locked up.
THE END