I’ve never considered myself to be a bad person. I do believe that most rapists consider themselves to be of firm moral standing. Regardless, I think that anyone would have done the same as I did. To be honest, I only feel guilty because of the cashier. He was a middle-aged man, the kind of man who has no real business working at a gas station. Aged at somewhere over forty, he was balding and had a perpetual look of defeat in his eyes. The newspaper in his hands was at least two days old. Everything that happened did so between his reaching to turn the page and the contact of his fingers with the newsprint. In that silent instant, every valuable item in the store vanished. Theft and I have an interesting relationship. As a small child, I’ve stolen things. Admittedly, my deeds had gone largely unnoticed to anyone but my now estranged mother. After an hour in the grocery store seemed to stretch on for ages, I’m told that I used to snatch up the candy that they would display before the checkout counter. This seemingly harmless tendency grew in my adolescents, and I brought it in check come early adulthood. These kinds of tendencies always seem to bubble up, though. I digress. I think that it was a Tuesday, I know that I was on my way back from work; I had recently requested a transfer to the late shift. Why is it that the cutest girls always keep the strangest hours? I had no intentions of becoming a thief that night, but on the long walk home I pass by a Seven Eleven. I stepped through the automatic sliding door and looked to my left, to the checkout counter. The aforementioned defeated man was in his aforementioned defeated position. He looked bored, like he hadn’t had any customers all night. A typical night for him might include two customers, in because they had forgotten to pick up milk or bread or some other essential grocery. It was at this point that I had forgotten why exactly I entered the store. Temptation washed over me. Guilt was closely in tow, but not closely enough, it would seem. Imagine sitting at that desk reading the paper and hardly paying attention to the store. You look up once, everything is normal. You feel a slight breeze which causes you to look up again but everything is gone. Bare shelves gleamed under the fluorescent lights. It’s kind of surreal how much bigger a room looks when it’s empty. Later that week I watched the story on the news. Some kind of primal force had me take the cameras in addition to the merchandise and contents of the register. It wasn’t about the footage, there wouldn’t have been much to see. I walk the fine line between shame and freedom. It’s exciting to see how your actions can be interpreted by others. Because the cameras were nowhere to be found, the cashier was held accountable.