I Am The Thief

• Chloe Mcgoldrick, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

By the time you find this, everything I have ever known will be gone.


Do you know what it’s like to be stolen? Taken from everything that belonged to you, to a place you can never call home? I do. I am the thief.

There is more than one side to every matter. Here is mine: If you don’t challenge what I say, you won’t get hurt. You will not be forced to change. I am the thief.

Why is this world overrun with crime? Why do good people haunt their own nightmares? I have nothing to hide. They were stolen. They were stolen from the side that doesn’t steal, and doesn’t kill, and doesn’t hate, to the side that does, and loves every minute of it. Blame the thieves. You know you’ll never find us.

I have been engineered to have few ideas, no thoughts on right and wrong. I live among those who want peace. I work for those who want money at any cost. There are two sides of every matter. One on either side of mankind’s blurry line. Is humanity better when it’s at peace? Look at the lengths to which we have gone to achieve it. What kind of categories are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? If you think too much about them, they no longer mean anything. Something tells me that I should worry about the world I am allowing to prosper, but I don’t. I can’t.

I heard that there was a time when people stole for the sake of others rather than themselves. Now law is a game, and these are the rules:

When crime is down in numbers, it’s our job to kidnap Sherlock Holmes and transform him into Professor Moriarty. We are the the thieves.

We cannot afford to make mistakes. Changing your mind about everything you have ever worked for doesn’t happen overnight. If we didn’t exist, it wouldn’t happen at all. Your sense of justice will always bring you back to where you were before. Our job is to make sure it doesn’t. It’s exactly the same as truth serum, but reversed. You will only ever lie to yourself again.

If you don’t challenge what I say, you won’t get hurt. You will not be forced to change. We are the thieves.

It’s a game, and thieves chose who play. Perhaps that makes it anything but a game. You need to decide for yourself.

Maybe you’ll turn your back and burn these reminders of our past. I hope you do. You are here because the thieves have changed. Discovered that they couldn’t change people, the good in the world deserved to stay where it was. We couldn’t change beliefs, ideas on right and wrong. I couldn’t understand them, but they belonged where they already were, with what they already loved. Not even hate can change love. Maybe something in me was telling me what was really worth loving.

Am I the thief?

I hope you understand.