Marcus Makes A Mistake.

 Marcus had always tried to take the easy path in life, chase the easy buck, and do as little as he could. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. At 35, he was unmarried, living in a poxy little one-bedroom flat in a dilapidated house on Ordnance Street in Chatham, just a minute's walk from Chatham Railway Station and ten minutes' walk from the site of his old school, Highfields Secondary, which was now Balfour Junior School. Well, at least half of it is; the rest has been ripped down and turned into a mini housing estate.

The flat itself was a monument to his philosophy. The landlord—a miserable bastard named Mr. Denham who lived in the ground-floor rooms—hadn’t decorated since the early '90s, and Marcus sure as hell wasn’t going to waste his own money on improving someone else's property. The walls were nicotine-yellow, the carpet a threadbare brown that hid the stains well enough, and the kitchenette had a smell that no amount of cheap bleach could shift. Marcus told himself it was "character." Everyone else called it a shithole.

His latest scheme involved reselling knock-off electronics he'd bought from a bloke in a pub car park in Gillingham. The guy swore they were "grey market" iPhones, not stolen, but Marcus knew better and didn't care. He'd shifted three of them on Facebook Marketplace for a tidy profit before the fourth buyer messaged him, calling it a brick in a fancy box. Marcus blocked the bloke and deleted the listing. Easy come, easy go.

Most days, he woke at noon, brewed instant coffee, and stared at his phone for an hour before deciding which minimal-effort task might yield the maximum return. He'd tried online poker, matched betting, and even filled out those survey sites that paid pennies. For a while, he'd been convinced he could make a killing on cryptocurrency after watching a YouTube video at 2 am. Lost £400 he couldn't afford. Now he just watched the coins he'd bought at their peak continue their slow march to zero, telling himself he'd "hold until it recovers."

The railway station was his escape route, but it never led anywhere. He'd listen to the trains sometimes, thinking about just getting on one. Starting fresh. But that required planning, effort, rent deposits, and job applications. Easier to stay put, let the world move around him while he stayed still.

 He wasn’t a bad-looking bloke, kept pretty fit, that was easy without a car, having to walk everywhere. He never had trouble pulling birds, but they clocked his laziness fast and dropped him just as quick. The last girl he’d shagged lasted a month before she sussed him out. He’d borrowed two hundred quid off her for "a sure thing," paid back fifty, then ghosted. That was coming back to bite him now.

 His rent was due, his Universal Credit blown, and he owed John Fowler. Fowler was a nasty bit of work—a bully from Marcus's school days, now an even bigger one. It was because of this debt that Jonas found himself sitting under the M2 at Borstal, trying to keep dry from pissing rain.

Fowler had scooped him up earlier in his flash Bentley and said he wanted a chat. They chatted all right. Fowler leaned across the leather seats, told him he'd break his fucking arm if he didn't return the hundred and fifty quid he'd borrowed from Fowler's cousin. Turned out that the girl Marcus had ghosted was family. Small world, eh?

Then Fowler had driven him to a quarry in the arse end of Wouldham and left him there. A fucking two-hour walk. Marcus had only made it as far as the motorway before the sky opened up. Now he sat under the noisy concrete bridge, rain dripping down his neck, wondering which would come first—Fowler's fist or eviction. Probably both.

 Eventually, the rain stopped, and darkness settled in. Marcus continued his walk home, watching lights flicker on in the houses along Borstal Street as he headed toward Rochester. The houses grew bigger and flashier the further he walked, but one property caught his eye—a massive Victorian house, detached and completely dark. While every other home glowed with early evening warmth, this one sat in blackness, a void among the lights. Something about it pulled at him.

He slipped down the side alley, rounded the corner into the dark back garden, and tried the back door. Locked. Through an old wooden sash window, he peered into a dark room. When he tested the window, it rattled loosely. Someone had wedged it shut after the sash cord broke. He pushed the bottom pane up as far as it would go and let it drop. The wedge shifted, and the top pane crashed down with a bang that split the quiet night.

Marcus bolted for the bushes, crouching in the shadows for a good ten minutes, waiting for someone to investigate. Nothing. He crept back to the window, peered inside, then clambered over the fallen pane and into the house.