Lighting Story: The Prize

Lightning story rules: Set a timer for 60 minutes. Write. See what comes out. No more typing or editing allowed after the timer runs out!

A floorboard creaked.

Boris Faust could have imagined it. Or it could just be the house settling into the night. Or… He strained his ears and heard it again, a definite crrrrk of a floorboard upstairs.

No one should be home. He had watched the only car in the garage pull out two hours before, loaded with suitcases. No lights had winked through the windows after dark.

Boris tugged his hat lower over his brow and turned back to unhooking the Xbox from the TV. Why did these things have to have so many cords?

A thundering shudder rolled through the house, originating from the squeaky floorboard. It was followed by a noise like a saw running back and forth over a washboard.

Boris flattened himself to the floor behind the TV. It was a beautiful television, 72 razor-thin inches of LED, but too big and obvious to carry out on his own. He’d be lucky to get out with anything if someone was home and moving about.

The thunder continued down the stairs, then the piano sounded with a discordant crash. Ok, what the actual fuck.

Boris crouch-crawled toward the parlor and peeked in. The piano was uncovered, but there was no sign of a player. Nevertheless, he felt the creepy-crawly sensation of someone watching him. This was some serious psycho-ghost-bullshit.

The feeling turned into a prickling on the back of his ankle, in the gap where his pants high-watered above his sockless sneakers. It was wet and rough, like waterlogged sandpaper.

He reached down to scratch at it and brushed aside a lapping tongue. Twisting his head to look back over his shoulder, he saw the fattest cat ever. It looked like a bowling ball with fur and little protrusions that might be legs.

“Oh, thank god,” Boris sighed. Of course it was only a cat. He’d never had a pet before, but all the signs added up. He reached out and patted the cat somewhat awkwardly between its ears. The feline squinted its eyes and rumbled.

“I will call you Fatty McFatterson,” Boris proclaimed. It seemed like a good name. He had heard it used before in school hallways, though not targeted at his scrawny frame.

“Incorrect,” the cat said. “My name is Princess.”

Boris could have sworn the cat just spoke.

“Are you stealing their stuff?” the cat continued. She swiped out a paw to bat at a cord that trailed out of Boris’s sack.

He had heard right.

“I… um. Yes?”

“Ok, I’m cool with that. They’re horrible people,” Princess said. Her voice wasn’t a meow, really, more like an echo heard in the back of the brain. “I can show you where the real valuables are at.”

Boris didn’t know how to react, so he simply nodded his head.

Princess waddled through the house with Boris trailing. She twitched her corpulent neck to indicate a cabinet recessed into the wall.

“Jackpot, there’s not even a lock on it!” Boris whispered. He swung the cupboard open and shone his (stolen) iPhone’s flashlight inside. The cupboard’s contents glinted and glittered.

“Oh yeaaaaaaah,” Princess purred. She did a happy little shuffle around Boris’s legs.

“These are just fucking cans of tuna,” Boris hissed. There were, like, over one hundred of them.

“Just tuna?” Princess said. She was now rolling on the floor in ecstatic expectation, her back fat in a pool beneath her. “Did you know that a single tuna can sell for over a million dollars in Japan?”

Boris leaned in closer to the cabinet with the flashlight. “Yeah? And how much does a can of Chicken of the Sea go for?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Boris could do the math in his head, and he knew what would be worth more than the finest tuna ever caught.

Without further ado, he leaned over and scooped up Princess, heaved the now much-heavier and wriggling sack over his back, and walked out of the house without a backward glance.

Thanks for reading! I think this is this first time I've ever published fiction online. This was also my first lightning round and I was super surprised that not only was I able to come up with an ending out of thin air, I even had a whole four minutes for editing!
- Katie, @therovingreader