Friday Flash Fiction: Invincible

True to my promise, I'm working on writing flash fiction again for your reading pleasure! I drafted this a couple of weeks ago at the writing class I'm teaching, and spiffed it up a bit, cutting it down to 1000 words. 

I've had laryngitis all week, which is amazingly frustrating. It's a good thing I mostly don't have anyone to talk to or I'd go nuts! Anyway, the next story might need to include someone who can't speak, but thinks a lot :D

Invincible 

Marla surveyed the building while she pulled on a hairnet and tied a scarf tightly over top of that. Not a hair would escape to say she’d been there, let alone provide a DNA tracer. Gloves, long sleeves, the works. No traces.

With one last look around for observers, though who could see anything through the stygian darkness of a blackout on a rainy night was a mystery she didn’t care to solve, Marla began to climb.

Buying the blackout had been the risky part, but by the time it was done the bribes were at least four steps removed from her, and some of the steps were missing now. Compared to setting up that chain of broken links, scaling the building was easy. Architects always wanted pretty bits, never stopping to think how easy that made things for a cat burglar.

She’d collect the papers, and then she’d have the power—this was the last piece she needed. Everyone thought they knew something about the thief who had stolen a number of critical documents—no one was saying how critical—but no one who it was, and no one knew Marla. They never would. When she took over, she’d remain the mysterious unknown, the person behind the veil. She wouldn’t even let them know if she was man or woman. If they knew that, they always figured they could get you with sex. If you had none, you were safe.

No power on Earth could stop her now.

Marla climbed quickly past the second and third floors, the fourth and fifth, toward the overhang that “protected” the roof. Absurd that no one had noticed that the drain pipes that ran through were large enough for a small, slim, and determined climber to shinny up. Granted, they were grated at the top, but she knew how to fix that.

It took nerves of steel, of course. Once in the pipe, a single slip would send her plummeting to her death six stories down. What was that? A hundred and fifty feet? Even she couldn’t survive that. Good thing she never slipped.

Marla didn’t have nerves of steel. Nerves were for weaklings.

The transition from the wall to the pipe was the crux. She had to leave the wall’s secure holds and reach into the pipe, plant her hands in their magnetic gloves on opposite sides, and pull herself in until her feet could likewise contribute to the friction that would allow her to climb up.

It had taken some research to confirm that the pipes were there. They were on the blueprints; she owned the company that build the place. She’d nudged the architect to make it that way. Not that he lived to see it done.

The question was if they were in fact as designated. Not everything on a set of blueprints was the same on the finished product. The man who’d confirmed it, with measurements, had met with an accident on his way home from delivering the information. No one knew what he’d been doing over by the river at two a.m., but it was a long way from where she’d been.

She’d be up the pipe and onto the roof in a matter of minutes. She reached her right hand for the opening, and the magnet engaged just as the building began to sway, as though trying to buck her off.

“Pull yourself together!” The stern voice remained in her head, of course. No sounds. No fear, and no imagining swaying buildings. No imagination was permitted in Marla’s mind. Imagination led to fear and extra precautions that ultimately gave one away. Utter confidence was the only—

The building bucked again. For real. The night air filled with creaks and groans that her mind barely registered.

Her feet slipped, or were tossed, from their holds. In desperation, Marla clutched for the grip her left hand had just abandoned, and didn’t find it.

She was hanging by one hand from a drain pipe six stories up on a building that swayed and bucked as sirens began wailing.

Should she abort the mission, climb back down? Impossible! Anyway, an earthquake was the perfect cover. Anything she might disturb, though she wouldn’t disturb anything, would be marked up to quake damage.

Her right shoulder hurt. All her weight hung from that one magnet, and… was it slipping? Frantic, fighting the urge to flail around, which would only make her slip more, Marla jammed her left hand into the pipe.

She was the best of the best, and soon everyone would know. Well, they’d know someone had the plans, the ingredients, and the power, while she remained a mystery, beyond touching. Invincible. As the building swayed, making her body swing, she began to inch her hands up the pipe.

Something fell from the overhanging cornice and struck her right leg.

“Ow!” Who could possibly hear that? Marla gritted her teeth and pulled herself up a little farther. A little more and she could get her feet into the pipe, then she’d be on the roof and nothing, not even an earthquake, could stop her. Invincible, unstoppable.

 

When they investigated the collapse of the building after the quake, it was determined that the failure had been due to low-quality concrete substituted by the builders in the interests of saving money. There would have been a suit brought against the owner of the construction company, but she could not be found. Marla Smith had vanished on the night of the earthquake, leaving behind a number of enterprises that the police found themselves investigating.

The pile of rubble that had once been the Intelligence building was so contaminated that no one even tried to sort through it. If a stench of rot was noticed around the ruins, everyone figured there’d been plenty of rats that hadn’t gotten out in time. A fire in the rubble conveniently destroyed anything sensitive. No one ever found the rat wearing magnetic gloves and climbing shoes.

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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