Tricky Trickster Tricked

For Mike it had always been easy, a quick flick of the wrist, a stealthy sleight of the hand and wallets, watches, glasses, rings and any article that could be sold for any kind of money would slide straight into his skilled hands. Others called it luck, he prefered to call it a "blessing".

From what or whom? Mike didn't have the slightest idea, or so he said.

He leaned against the wall on the corner of a street packed with tourists, an amorphous sea of white and red all craving consumers that hopped off luxurious cruise on the docks. Coffee and a cigarette was his oral hygiene routine for every morning, "Keeps away the street preachers", he would often say.

He wasn't a local, he considered himself to be one, but after twenty years living in the island who wouldn't consider himself to be a local? His skin wasn't as pale as the tourist's but compared to the brownish tanned locals he looked like a cotton ball. A thin black moustache seemed to be suspended over his almost non existing lips, he combed it with his finger every now and then.

The thin line of smoke floated upwards unbothered, the ocean breeze seemed to have gone elsewhere that morning. He took a drag, then a sip of coffee, he let the smoke out with a sigh. There was something about these people that made him literally sick, he felt the urge to spit away his coffee. He put the cigarette out against the wall.

"Let's get to work", he whispered to his hands. His eyes glistened with the spark of whom is about to experience something amazing, an spectacle.

Mike took a another sip of his coffee and gracefully swam across the sea of people. He liked to stalk on his preys for a little while before pouncing on their belongings. He squinted his wrinkled eyes to have a better look, the sun was always scorching in this part of the island. He moved under a coffee shop's canopy, the shadow was cool and he got a good view of the whole street.

His hands twitched nervously inside the pockets of his jacket, it was as if they craved to come out. They scratched against the fabric as trapped spiders, he struggled to keep them in.

"Patience", he thought to himself.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, he whistled as air came out of his mouth.

For a long moment there was only pitch black darkness on his mind. Then it happened, "the magic" as he called it. Dim glowing orbs moved in front of his darkened vision, the glow intensified as long as he kept his eyes shut. After half a minute the formless glow took shapes, the shape of a watch, shape of a wallet, shape of a recently bought expensive souvenir, shapes of possible preys floated all around him. He opened his eyes and the glow stayed in his vision, if you could have seen through Mike's eyes, it was a marvelous sight.

Rainbow colored strokes swirled around and through the crowd, imagine giant strokes of multicolored aquarella floating gracefully in the air. The ray's of the sun dimmed to a more tolerable level. "Exquisite", was Mike's description of it.

"Ok girls, your turn!", Mike said and pulled his hands out of the jacket.

He took a step into the street and everything around him slowed it's movement in a dramatical way. It was like watching a movie in slow motion.

An old european guy passed him by, his right hand swiftly slid in his glowing right pocket and took his cellphone, not even a second passed between the moment his hand sprinted out and when it was putting the phone it away in the safety of Mike's jacket. In the blink of an eye his left hand was picking a couple american dollars out of a woman's purse, then from her husband the wallet.

Next to them a Korean couple would miss their professional camera terribly. The same would happen with the hipster chick that had just lent him her phone indefinitely. His fingers moved faster and faster, sometimes they'd take strange angles, non human movements.