I still remember my first score as a porch pirate. Wasn’t even a criminal at the time, oddly enough. My neighbor, Josh Flanagan, had borrowed my push mower and didn’t bring it back for a few weeks. The grass in my yard was getting high and city code enforcement had left a few sweet notes taped to my front door telling me if I didn’t get it mowed, they’d start fining me.

In frustration, I headed over to Josh’s house next door to retrieve the mower. As I walked up his cracked cement driveway, I was confused when I realized his grass was nearly as tall as mine. A few patches in the backyard were shorter than the rest, but it didn’t look like he had put my mower to much use. I banged on the door. My ears felt hot with frustration at having loaned him the damn mower for it to just sit unused at his house.

“Yeah?” I could hear him shout through the door before he had even opened it. The sliding of chains and the sliding of locks sounded from the other side. “If it’s a damn salesman you can go on and… oh, hey! Mikey! How’s it going?”

“Not so good,” I said flatly. “City left me a code violation notice on the door yesterday. Said the grass is too high. Gonna need to get the mower back before they send me a bill.”

Josh smiled and tucked his hands behind his head, interlacing his fingers. His eyes drifted down toward the ground. Alternating, his feet lifted from the ground and hammered the toe of his tennis shoe against the ground like a fidgeting toddler.

“Sorry, Mikey,” he said, eyes still aimed at the floor. “Been meanin’ to talk to ya about that. The mower is busted. Kinda hit the blade on a rock and I think the crankshaft is broken. Been meanin’ to get a replacement for ya but money’s been tight.”

“You broke my damn mower?” I spat. “Were you gonna tell me?”

He shrugged his shoulders and continued fidgeting childishly in his doorway. Over his shoulder, I could see walls and shelves full of Star Wars memorabilia. Having never been in his house before, I didn’t know he was a collector. The guy didn’t own a lawnmower, but the value of his toy collection was staggering.

“Look,” I said angrily. “I bought it at a yard sale for a hundred bucks. Give me fifty and we will call it even.”

“No can do, Mikey,” he said, finally making eye contact with me again. “It's like I said, money’s been tight. Soon as I got a little extra cash, I’ll hit you back.”

He never repaid me. Wasn’t much of a surprise. Josh and I weren’t big buddies or anything. Having a pissed-off neighbor wasn’t a problem for him. He ducked me at every opportunity. Whenever I would knock on the door to try and recover a paltry amount of cash for the mower, he just wouldn’t answer.

The only time I saw the lousy bastard was when a UPS driver would drop a package on his porch. Probably some damn toy he bought online with the money he said he didn’t have, I’d tell myself. It’d serve him right if you took his next package and sold it. Get your money back.

That thought festered in my head for a few weeks. Those packages would sit on his porch for hours. Just leaning up against the red brick wall of that asshole’s house. My eyes would scan the neighborhood for signs of onlookers, but it was always quiet in the middle of the day.

No one would see me.

And no one did when I finally went through with it.

Snatching that first package was a blur. I don’t really remember the details. I know I’d watched Josh pull out of the driveway in his rusty coupe about five minutes before the UPS driver leaned the brown box against his door.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting at my kitchen table. Brown paper and bubble wrap sat crumpled around an opened box. Inside sat a small figure on a rectangle of cardboard.

A vintage, unopened Boba Fett action figure from The Empire Strikes Back lineup made in 1979. The card back was slightly creased with a few scratches, but to a collector, the thing was worth its weight in gold. At least that’s what the comic shop owner said a few towns said. Sold it to him for two thousand dollars. I now know he sold it for double that amount, but there's not much you can do when dealing with a fence.

I hate dealing with fences, but not much I can do about it. A fence, for those of you who aren’t criminally inclined, is someone who buys stolen things knowing damn good and well they are stolen. You are not going to get the total value of the goods since the fence is looking to make a decent profit, but it’s the safest way to make a buck when you’re dealing in hot goods.

Pawn shops ask too many damn questions. They are the first places that the cops go when something valuable is stolen. You can find a pawn shop or two now and again that does some shady dealings, but most of them are on the up and up. Keep their books clean. Good records of purchases and sales. They may put a hell of a markup on your used junk, but that’s as dirty as most of them get.

eBay is a risky bet, too. I’m not sure how closely cops keep an eye on it, but it sure would be weird if one account just happened to be selling all the random assorted items stolen from porches around town. A quick warrant to the site and your fun and games are over.

So you’re stuck selling to fences.

_________________________

A combination of the adrenaline rush from grabbing the packages mixed with the easy money and I was hooked. None of my day jobs had ever paid nearly that well. You had good weeks and bad weeks, but given enough time and enough unwatched packages, you would always make enough money for your bills.

The best time of year to pick up packages was always around Christmas. Christmas Eve, as a matter of fact. All the last-minute shoppers ordering their Amazon shipments end up creating a bottleneck for parcel delivery services. You can hardly walk a city block without seeing those brown boxes with smiley tape leaning against the doors.

There is a trick to finding which houses to snag the packages from. First, you snatch during daylight. Someone is going to spot you. Second, no apartment buildings or complexes. Same issue. You’ll never make it out without someone spotting you. Last, do the best you can to find a house without one of those damn video doorbells.

To blend in, I always wear slacks, tennis shoes, a button-up, and a winter vest. All brown. Makes you look like a UPS delivery man. No one gives you a second look in that getup. How many times have you given a UPS driver a double take?

Last but not least, I rent a Penske truck from about three cities away. If you’re going spend all night snatching packages, you need something to haul them in. A mid-sized sedan won’t cut it. Those box trucks paired with the UPS lookalike outfit help me all but fade into the background of the evening.

As soon as the sun goes down, I get to work.

The system has run flawlessly for years. Until earlier tonight.

Just after sunset I jumped into the Penke truck and started making my rounds. It had been a decent night. About three dozen packages. My mind was swimming with the possibilities of what waited inside as I continue down the lonely streets.

It was nearly ten at night when I decided to wrap things up. Staying out any later than that made it difficult to maintain the illusion you were a delivery man. Video doorbells were at an all-time high as well, which had caused a significant drop in easy-to-hit houses.

I was walking back to the truck with what would be the last packages of the night when I heard something moving behind me. My body froze in place as I waited for someone to open the front door and call me down. Slowly, I turned my head over my scheduler and gazed back toward the door.

Nothing. The house was pitch black. Doors and windows closed up tightly.

I turned and began to head back toward the truck, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me in the inky darkness. When I reached the back of the box truck, I raised the rear gate just enough to slide one package in and rolled it back down as quietly as possible. I slipped a smaller package into my pocket and I worked to secure the door.

The lock has just engaged when I heard someone call from the darkness.

“What have you got there?” I booming voice called. Panicked, I spun around and scanned the dark row of houses but couldn’t find the source of the voice. “Up here!”

My eyes drifted up and made contact with a dark silhouette. Its broad, stocky frame lorded over the roof of the house where I had just stolen the package. There was no second-story window to have crawled out. Panic gave way to confusion.

“Good evening!” I exclaimed the silhouette. “Just out dropping off some last-minute packages! Took this one to the wrong door earlier so I had to come back and get it. Merry Christmas!”

I began to walk toward the door of the truck when the sound of multiple footsteps on the roof drew my attention again.

“You must have dropped off a lot of packages at the wrong door, young man,” said the voice from atop the house. “I’ve seen you picking up a lot of boxes, but you haven’t left any behind. It seems like we’re on the same route tonight.”

An angry, nervous lump bulged in my throat. Knowing someone had watched me throughout the course of the night filled me with equal parts dread and rage. I had managed not to get caught all of these years and the sudden notion that someone had been keeping tabs on me throughout the evening made me feel like… an amateur.

“Look here, buddy,” I said, turning back toward the voice. “Mind your own damn business. If you’re creeping around behind me and haven’t called the cops, you can’t be up to anything too great yourself.”

The dark silhouette on the roof began to below in laughter. Butterflies erupted in my guts at the sound. I don’t know if it was the unsettling tone or if I were scared he would wake up the residents of the house, but dread filled my body.

“One of us is leaving presents and one of us is taking them away,” the voice said. “For shame, Michael. Put them back or I’ll have to add you to my ‘naughty list.”

“Naughty list?” I questioned as I began to crawl into the cab of the truck. “Who the hell do you think you are? Sant…”

The name died on my lips.

“Michael,” the voice said. “put the packages back or one of my helpers will have to stay behind and… inspire you to do the right thing.”

“Piss off!” I shouted as I settled into the seat. “You’re gonna get the cops called on both of us, you weird piece of…”

Before I could finish, something fell from the roof and into the bushes in front of the house. As my eyes tried to focus on the thing in the foliage, a massive object lifted away from the dark roof and drifted into the night sky. I rubbed my eyes, having a hard time coming to terms with what I had seen.

Confused, I cranked the key in the ignition and the heavy engine rumbled to life. Shifting the truck into drive, I was preparing to pull away when something clambered out of the bush in front of the house. Panic thundered in my heart when it made eye contact with me.

Twenty feet away and standing just outside the bushes was a squat, stocky thing wearing a crimson robe. It couldn’t have been more than three feet tall, but it still looked… massive. Dangerous.

Silver bells dangled from the end of the pointy hood and the green felt shoes on the thick, wide feet. Pale hands, wide and veined, protruded from the robe sleeves. A set of burning red eyes pierced out from the darkness of the hood. A leather belt with archaic carpentry tools nearly drooped to the ground around the thing’s bulky frame.

Before I could slam my foot onto the gas, it bolted toward the truck. I hammered the pedal, but it was too late. It slammed into the passenger side door like a wrecking ball. The tires on the right side of the truck left the ground as the glass exploded into a rain of shrapnel. Squealing, crunching metal broke the silence of the night.

The tires hit the ground, rebounded, and the box truck bounced in place for a moment. Shocked and bleeding from the peppering of broken glass, I looked through the missing window in a daze, trying to spot the creature, but it was nowhere to be seen. Silence had returned to the night for just a moment. Just a moment.

In the distance, I could hear the low swell of sirens.

My mind was starting to come back into focus when the truck began to rock again. Shooting a glance back to the broken window, I saw a set of beefy white fingers grip the top of the door, lifting the red-robed head to peer over the opening. As the two glowing eyes made contact with mine, I screamed and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

A look of malice pierced me and the… elf… thing reached out with one hefty arm toward me. Just ahead, I saw a gnarled oak growing just beside the sidewalk on my right. The creature had nearly pulled itself into the cab of the truck when I jerked the wheel, sending the right side of the truck onto the sidewalk and raking the side against the colossal tree.

“Give me the…” the creature rumbled in a heavy, hoarse voice before it the trunk of the tree hammered into its side. The pale hands loosened from the doorframe and it wailed as it tumbled to the concrete below. I felt something large go beneath the rear tire; hopefully the creature.

The side mirror had been torn off as I grazed the tree, so there was no way to know for certain.

Feeling slight relief, I looked down to see that I was driving nearly sixty miles per hour in a residential neighborhood. The sound of sirens was growing closer by the moment and I knew that the overwhelming roar of the truck’s engine paired with the damage on the right side would draw the cop’s attention quickly. I slowed the truck down to match the speed limit and crawled slowly through the neighborhood, praying silently that the police would take no notice of me.

I was nearly out of the neighborhood when I saw the lights of the patrol cars. They danced between the houses from the next block to my left. I missed them by one city block as they headed toward the emergency call. My pulse was finally starting to lower and I thought things were going to be okay for just a moment.

That was before the truck fishtailed and tilted onto its left side. My door and window hammered against the ground sending shards of glass and sparks spraying into the cab. The seatbelt cut into my neck and my body weight pulled me toward the broken window.

After what felt like an eternity, the truck screeched to a halt. Slamming and the tearing of metal filled the cab and I scrambled to unfasten my safety belt. When it unclipped, I fell hard against the concrete and broken glass, burying the shards deep into my shoulder. Pushing myself up, I kicked the ruined windshield out of place and pushed myself through the opening.

I ran as hard as I could, lungs burning and muscles aching. As my feet hammered against the concrete, I imagined the robed nightmare rumbling behind me. Growing closer. Closing the gap, Reaching out for me.

My anxiety overwhelmed me, causing me to turn my head over my shoulder to see how close the creature was. Heart thundering, I scanned the area behind me. My legs slowed, finally stopping and allowing me to turn.

Far behind me at the overturned truck, the robed creature pulled the package from the ruined cargo area. It gently placed the packages into a pile, paying me no mind.

I turned and began running again. While the creature may have lost interest in me, the cops would have a few questions once they connected the truck to me. There wasn’t much time to try and find a place to lay low.

First, I needed a bit of sleep.

_________________________

It took me nearly two hours on foot, but I finally made it back to my house. The clicking of the locks and latches of the door filled me with comfort. I knew there would be police interviews in the coming days. Probably charges and some jail time. It would be a small price to pay for having made it away from that damn… thing.

I sat in my recliner facing the open window. Streetlights flooded the lifeless pavement outside. My eyes were getting heavy and I snickered to myself thinking of that mutant creature waddling through the dark, putting the stolen packages back on people’s porches.

That’s all the damn thing had wanted. The packages. It had nearly killed me getting them back, but once it had them, it was over.

I smiled a weary smile and tilted my head back onto the top of the chair. My eyes closed and I slid my hands into the vest pockets as I began to drift off to sleep.

I was almost under when I felt the crinkling of a wrapper in my right pocket. Pulling the object out, I opened my eyes and looked down.

A small shipping package from the last house. I had forgotten that I shoved it in my pocket. It had been so small, it had slipped my mind.

It had wanted the packages. All of them.

Bile rising in my throat, I looked into the streetlight-flooded road.

Two red orbs peered back at me through the blinds.