Maude Sanders is a quiet, god fearing kind of folk who enjoys the basic necessities in life; a strict diet of insecurities reinforced by a life time of premature attempts of making up her own mind due to fear of seeing her own reflection flip her the bird. It’s no surprise she got involved in petty crime.
At first she would start off by taking things from houses she visits. She took a decorative soap from Mrs. Crandle’s bathroom and sister Nan’s bottle opener. She would take anything that seemed mundane and its disappearance unnoticeable. That way the victim would never suspect foul play. They would give a puzzled look and cross themselves. Where the hell could it have gone? Margaret her next door neighbor and probably her most frequent victim, would phone her a few times to ask if Maude borrowed her spare scissor, but Maude would never admit to it. No one could ever know about her little secret power.
She felt the tang of excitement when she lifted an object with the intention of removing it from its proper place. She got to the point were she had to take it while someone was in the same room as her, just to bring the stakes up higher. Maude would feel the satisfaction of knowing a secret about a person without them knowing she knows. The problem was she had no need for these objects. Soon she was running out of places to stash these trophies.
Maude did what she deemed best. One night, when she knew Herald would be down at Scoop’s bowling alley she collected her tiny treasures in plastic garbage bags. She loaded up the sedan and drove out to the docks to dispose of her bootie. She had to be extra careful not to be noticed. She tried to create an answer if she was ever caught like that one time Tiffany, her little dumpling, found Mrs. Crawl’s vibrating massager. Lord knows if it wasn’t for Herald’s arrival she would have had to hurt her way out of that one.
Still…she still has no answer-truth or lie. She doesn’t know why she has to steal, she just knows that she feels most genuine the moment she gets away with it. Walking away waving good bye and the whole time she has a part of them that they don’t even know they lost. She was the only one to know. It wasn’t until she misplaced one of her own objects that she started to feel guilty. That’s why she chose to stop this whole snatching business and disposed of all these trinkets she grew to obsessively love.
She found a nice secluded spot at the edge of the dock. One by one she slowly dropped the bits and pieces of her success. 23 pairs of keys, 3 bras, 56 lighters, one urn filled with the remains of Gladys’s pet squirrel, she never did like the rodent. All and all she filled 3 large bags worth of stuff. When she was done she felt a bit liter on her feet, she even skipped a little back to her car. Along the way she found a pair of shoes that must of belong to one of the boaters. Looking left and right she quickly picked them up and stuffed them in her purse and continued to skip her way home.
