Out of Ideas

No one ever had difficulty describing The Idea Bank. The bastards always had a corner on the market of detail and substance, at the expense of the surrounding neighborhood. It didn't even matter that they ripped off the layout from an episode of The Flash. They had all the ideas, we didn't, and they wanted to keep it that way. As long as big shots like James Cameron and the guys from Shark Tank came in there, to hell with everyone else.

The building had that old fashioned Western style to it. Polished mahogany walls, lots of shiny black marble and faux gold. The tellers stood behind a shiny brass fence. Through the ceiling to floor windows, you could see the neighbors' sketchy, unfinished, minimally described buildings, desperate for ideas the bank refused to loan out. Instead of central air, the bank had old squeaky ceiling fans - bad planning, but excellent framing devices. You could smell the carpet cleaner, the donuts and brewing coffee, the whiff of warm copies spewing from inkjet printers.

The clerks, very human looking, had rich histories and personalities, but weren't allowed to talk to the customers. They even wore helmets like comic book characters to keep people from reading their thoughts and getting free ideas.

They didn't post their hours on a plaque, they had a computer display like an airport to tell you which customer could come to a teller window at which time. Nobody stood in line, they had row upon row of plastic chairs. Some people spent all day in them just waiting for a teller window. 

It should come as no surprise that customer service sucked, there wasn't any competition, and the employees took that for granted. When I was unemployed, they didn't let me in the bank at all. Now, whenever I come to make a withdrawal, it's always when I'm supposed to be doing my job at work. 

Instead of security, they had lawyers, faceless men packing copyright litigation, insult and unconstructive criticism handguns in their blazers, and, of course, my dad. Sadly, the bank was so tight fisted that I had better chances facing them down in a robbery than securing a loan.

I certainly needed ideas. I had a short story to complete at the end of the week, and I couldn't think of anything that would work. I also had a fan fiction piece, a sequel to a popular children's film, and I couldn't think of the next scene, plus tons of other things I don't have space to describe.

I'd cased the joint for a few weeks now. The bank didn't just serve the famous. A lot of literary types came in, college students, hacks that got their crappy books published at Tor, self published authors that pushed their books on family in friends, pyramid scheme style, the Oprah method of distribution. 

The bank had security cameras, and worse, detailed records about me and my idea transactions, so not only did I need help with the guards, I needed a disguise.

Fortunately, I and a few poorly developed characters mugged some people for heist plans. We got out a markerboard, plotted out a strategy:

Squirrel Woman and Owl Woman would enter the bank before myself and the others, demanding personalities because they were tired of being generic Batman-esque characters. This would provide a distraction to bank staff and the two guards at the vault. Abyssinian, the `Male Catwoman', likewise, would distract the guard at the entrance. 

I and two crack characters would then come in, attempting to bypass the wait period as well. One of them, Columbird the goose, also doubled as our `getaway man'. A team of Ninja Turtle-like owls, waiting in the rafters, would provide backup if something went wrong.

Of course, none of that planning really helped. I mean, if everything happened the way I just described it, this story would be really boring, right? I tried to do that Oceans 11 method of exposition, where I have all the stuff happen as I talk about it, but I couldn't figure out how to write it that way.

So. As previously mentioned, the bank would recognize me as a customer, so I had to go in disguise.

I wrote a science fiction story about a fuzzy alien monk. This character had no personality, just a great description. Face like a praying mantis with spider eyes, hands resembling that of a guinea pig, but with super long fingers and opposable thumbs, a long floppy dinosaur tail. The parts of his fur coat you could see beneath the burlap robe were multicolored.

Forgetting who I was, that would be essential to the success of this operation. the moment I thought about my regular earthly life, the cameras would capture me, and I'd get booted out of the bank. As I climbed the front steps, I forced myself to forget who I really was and just wear that character. I wasn't human, I didn't have a collections job, my family, friends and coworkers were strange alien lifeforms that I had no familiarity with. Of course, I had no idea about what made him tick, other than him being an ascetic, but I think that even ascetics occasionally want a personality.

In each paw, I carried a heavy suitcase, one containing a typewriter, the other that ghost sucking vacuum cleaner from Luigi's Mansion. Don't worry if you've never played that video game (it's basically like Ghostbusters), the important part I just told you about - it sucks up everything, including ghosts, and it straps onto your back. 

Sal the pointy eared alien, clad in a blue t-shirt and orange spandex opened the glass front doors so I could get the suitcases in. I thanked her, pretending like she were only a polite fellow customer instead of a `plant' to distract security and bank officials.

Feathery Columbird followed about a yard back, chomping a cigar. His keen eye for detail would be essential for alerting us to unknown danger. If we pulled this off, I'd get him his own short murder mystery, under 3,000 words...somehow.

Already it seemed as if my heist had started off on the wrong foot. A security agent, greatly resembling a villain from The Matrix films, with a stupid looking helmet, had my blue spandex clad catman in handcuffs, walking him to the door. Upon seeing me, The Abyssinian shouted and put up a fight, arguing that he deserved a personality, but the agent used his copyrighted powers to remove my superhero's mouth.

Not distracted in the least. Sunglass wearing `Agent Smith' kept a wary eye on me and my suitcase.

Squirrel Woman and Owl Woman fared no better. I saw guards pressing them up against the walls, cuffing them, but it seemed they could subdue my associates with one hand tied behind their backs. I escaped the notice of nobody.

I wished I could have teamed up with a few more characters, but it would have affected the word length of this story, so I had to make do.

I locked eyes with Sal, made a subtle wag with one of my fingers. She gave a near imperceptible nod, marching up to a desk manned by an alien octopus creature in a helmet.

"Wait your turn," the monster gurgled.

"No. I'm sick of waiting. I've seen the new Star Wars movies and they'd be better if I were in them. I just need a personality to pull it off."

"Those movies have already been filmed."

"It would be a fanfiction. I got a whole reboot plotted out, but, wouldn't you know it, I'm flat."

"I'm sorry, you're a fictional character. I can't help you."

"Are you discriminating against me? There are laws against things like that, you know."

"Ma'am, you're not a real person, so you don't actually have rights."

"You're not a real person either, but look at you!"

The arguing continued, annoying the other tellers, the Branch Manager, raised the hackles of the security team, one of them, I just noticed, in a non-metaphorical sense - she happened to be a cat in a pantsuit.

I nodded to Columbird, and he hit a teller window close to the vault, addressing a helmeted magpie in a vest. "Excuse me, ma'am..."

Columbird shifted his lit cigar to a feathery hand. It seemed his personality bypassed the no smoking sign. "I didn't get my schedule, so I wasn't really sure when they wanted me to come in for my short mystery story..."

"We sent that out to you in the mail."

He smacked his beak. "Oh yes. It's in one my pockets..." And he made an elaborate show of checking every part of his rumpled trenchcoat, showing the clerk some unpaid parking tickets. "Oops, gotta pay those..."

Now we had the staff distracted on two fronts, though it would make our getaway a little complicated.

Only about two thousand words left. Somehow we had to get what we came in for and escape down the interstate with our loot before running out of space.

Since the agents had cuffed them to the vault door and moved away, I stowed my suitcases beneath the check writing table, slipping off to aid my two female superheroes.

Owl Woman already had her wrists free by the time I got there. "During the day, I'm a librarian. I've been reading about Harry Houdini. Unfortunately the only thing my companion reads are sex books. She really has nuts on the brain."

"What is my career?" Squirrel Woman asked me. "Am I a stripper or something?"

I shrugged. "I think it should be something with more depth. We'll figure it out...in a minute. Owl Woman, help her out, and the two of you pretend to still cuffed until the guards come back and you can knock them out."

The Abyssinian and `Smith' had gone outside, but his other uniformed friends remained, detaining Sal and Columbird. As much as they argued, the distraction was wearing thin. I wouldn't get a better time to strike.

I popped the first suitcase, strapping the vacuum cleaner to my back, connecting a hose to the typewriter suitcase, which I discovered I could carry with my reptilian tail.

With a burst of alien strength and agility, I pounced on the counter, announcing, "This is an intellectual theft! Nobody move!"

I switched the vacuum on. Dozens of 3X5 index cards and small fortune cookie-like scraps of paper flew through the air, entered the hose, and my automatic typewriter went clackety clack on its own.

I neglected to mention another detail about why this wasn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill bank. You don't merely hand them a check and get money, they have a sort of slot machine at each station, giving you all kinds of random shit. For example, they once gave me the idea for a new Doctor's Night Guard, when I knew absolutely nothing about plastic or rubber manufacture, and several video games that I didn't have the ability to program. Then there were all those great ideas for doing things better at work, that management frowned upon and refused to even consider. This is all to say that I needed a lot of them.

"What the fuck is this!" Dad shouted. "You're not even doing a robbery right! You need a weapon to hold up a bank!...And what the hell is Luigi's Mansion!" 

My dad looked like Bluto from Popeye. Big messy beard and mustache, bald on top, rippling muscles, but clad in a security uniform.

Conjured up from my childhood, he towered over my like a giant, his footsteps booming thunderously. "Son, I know it's you under there. You can't fool me with that bullshit disguise."

My alien monk persona vanished, leaving me in my t-shirt and pajama pants.

I kept vacuuming.

Dad rushed up to the desk, but a curvy body in brown spandex came behind him with a wheel kick.

Squirrel woman may have been a superhero, but I remembered when dad seemed as strong as The Incredible Hulk. With seemingly n effort at all, he grabbed her by the legs, hurling her into the vault.

Thanks to her springy super agility, she flipped out just as the door slammed shut. Owl Woman pegged Dad in the head with a hardback book, but Dad just tossed her through the glass window of one of the little offices along the back wall, her aerodynamic costume aiding her flight through a second. She collapsed in a crumpled ball on the outside street.

Although the helmets were a little resistant to vacuuming, I did manage to yank one off a teller's head.

I'm pretty sure that only a few people reading this know what Luigi's Mansion is about. Honestly, the only thing important about it at this point is that the game involved occasionally using the vacuum cleaner to grab a large object (like a bomb), flipping the machine to blower mode, and hitting someone with the aforementioned object.

Even if I did have access to a bomb, I wouldn't use it on Dad. This grumpy, cynical, thirty year old version of himself was better than his current dementia suffering one. I just wanted to get my ideas and escape the bank, so I activated the blower, sending the comic book helmet sailing his way.

The helmet hit my giant dad in the forehead. He fell backwards like King David had slung a rock at him, his body hitting the floor with explosive noise, and enough seismic force to make several potted plants jump in the air.

"You're never going to amount to anything," he groaned. "This story is shit. You might as well have written three pages about some guy farting. Don't quit your day job."

Thankfully he became unconscious after that.

The feline security guard, however, had not been affected by all this. She came rushing after me. In seconds, she would have my vacuum and typed up ideas locked up in the vault.

Lucky for me, I just happened to pick up a useful idea about my Catman from one of those flying index cards. He could be summoned by ringing a bell...a special Babylonian ceremonial bell I just happened to see hanging from a teller's desk. I gave it a ring.

The Abyssinian burst through the glass front door, making a huge mess and setting off the alarms.

He roared angrily at the security agent, but she whirled around, allowing her long silky hair to blow around like some chick in a shampoo commercial. She gazed into his eyes, and he into hers, and they struck up a conversation, taking care of one problem, at least.

I continued stealing ideas.

Unfortunately, other security factors still remained in play, and I only had space for 500 words.

While I'd been dealing with Dad, security agents had escorted Columbird and Sal off the property, and now they engaged Owl Woman and Squirrel Woman in hand to hand combat, OW having previously picked herself off the street.

The ladies weren't very good at fighting. In seconds they were both out cold on the floor. I mean, c'mon. One was a librarian. 

I decided it high time to pack up and make my escape. I made a loud "Hoo" sound directed at the ceiling, and a group of humanoid owls broke through the tiles, attacking my pursuers with medieval weapons. I jumped through the hole in the glass, searching for the getaway vehicle.

A gray Peugeot had been parked in front of the bank, but instead of a feathery police lieutenant in the driver's seat, I found a scary looking cowboy in a trenchcoat hunched over the steering wheel. Mad Eye. "Get in."

I rushed to the passenger door, tossed my luggage in back. "Wait, what happened to Columbird?"

Mad Eye's silver robotic eye glittered at me. "He didn't make it."

"Can you be a little more specific?"

He shrugged his shoulders, revealing a holstered pair of six guns. "It was exactly like Reservoir Dogs. I shot the officers, but it was too late for the bird. Sal's hiding in an Area 51 warehouse...Anyone else coming out?"

When I glanced back, I only saw security agents drawing handguns. 

The moment a criticism shattered the passenger mirror ("The vehicle wasn't described at all") and another punctured the door ("I really didn't get a sense of setting or place. Your pacing was all wrong") I decided we didn't have time to wait. I jumped into the cracked uncomfortable side seat in the dead bird's little car, shouting for Mad Eye to step on it.

However, the car had two steering wheels. One for me, one for Mad Eye.

"It was smart of Columbird to modify his Peugeot," my companion remarked. "I just got shot in the stomach. If I pass out, you'll have to take over."

The cowboy had duct tape wrapped around himself, but I did notice a red stain creeping into his clothing.

"So what did you get?" Mad Eye asked as he checked the rearview for police.

I actually dreaded what I would find in there. Like I said, withdrawals were completely random.

I just shook my head.

"Columbird said this was how the story was supposed to end. Two people on the interstate, not two people and a bird."

The car sucked. It kept making noise the whole time, but we made it out of the city, buzzing down a deserted stretch of freeway in a very nondescript area of the country, miles and miles of nothing in every direction.

Mad Eye sucked in his breath. "We'd better both hang on to the steering wheel right now. I'm going to faint."

We drove like that for a few minutes, but he eventually faded, leaving me along at the wheel.

I pulled to the side of the road.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the suitcase.