Into The Fire

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The rock disappeared from sight as it arced through the darkness, becoming visible again as it struck the window. The glass shattered with a sharp, cracking sound, which was immediately drowned by the burglar alarm, whose wailing split the silence of the night.

The noise would normally have been enough to send a vandal running. The dark-clad figure who had launched the rock was a vandal with a cause, however, and wasn’t about to let himself be driven away by a bit of noise and the possibility of being arrested.

Even if he hadn’t considered arrest a small price to pay for exposing what was happening there, he wouldn’t have run from the siren. There was no-one nearby to hear the alarm, he knew that for a certainty, and it would take some time for the police, or anyone else, to respond to it.

Since he had time, and he didn’t care about being arrested – as far as he was concerned being arrested would only bring more attention to what he had done and what he was trying to do, and that was all to the good – he stayed there, throwing stone after stone at the building.

There were few windows on the ground floor but plenty on the first floor, and soon enough the ground around the building was covered in shards of glass as each stone that left his hand found a pane of glass.

Once all the windows had been broken he turned his attention to the rest of the building. The main doors were protected by steel shutters, and nothing he did shifted them, nor was he able to get the fire door open, even using the crowbar he took from the boot of his car. After a couple of minutes of trying he gave up.

As much as he wanted to get into the building and do as much damage as he could – smashing the windows just wasn’t satisfying enough for him – the effort wasn’t worth it, not when the alarm continued to disturb the night.

Frustrated he threw the crowbar into the boot and grabbed up a can of spray paint. It was bright red, a colour he considered highly appropriate under the circumstances, and it showed up well on the wall of the building as he began spraying. How graffiti artists created the images they did he couldn’t imagine; he had enough difficulty just making what he was writing legible, even though each letter was a foot tall.

It took him ten minutes to finish, by which time he had decorated the building with a dozen words which couldn’t be missed by anyone who came within a hundred feet of it.

It was time to go he decided once he was done with his graffiti. He had done all he could just then, or almost all; taking out his phone he took photos of everything he had done. He wanted a record of the action he had taken, for his own pleasure, but also for the furtherance of his goals.

Satisfied with his night’s work, if not the reason behind it, he took a last look at the fruit of his labours and then got into his car.

He had gone no more than a quarter of a mile from the trading estate when he saw, on the road that ran parallel to the one he was on, the flashing lights of the police car responding to the alarm set off by the damage he had caused. They had taken even longer to answer the alarm than he had expected.

He was tempted to turn around and head back the way he had come, so he could see the reactions of the police officers when they saw what he had done. The graffiti especially, he was sure, would get a response of some kind. He resisted the urge, however, and kept going.