“Put your hands up!” The masked robber’s steel voice was absorbed in the crowded bank vault, but his orders were followed nonetheless.

Two of the three tellers raised their hands. The first, Meranda, were raised high and shook with fear. The second, Linda, raised her hands to eye-level and stared straight ahead, as though facing a firing squad. The third, Patricia, only rolled her eyes.

“Really?” Patricia scoffed. “You’re going to say that? I mean, how many times have you already had to say that specific cliché? Like, if this was a book and that was the opening line, I’d just slam the thing shut and ship it out to the nearest second-hand bookstore.”

Linda, standing to the right of Patricia, took a slight step back from Patricia.

“I mean, like, come on,” Patricia continued. “This is my first time getting robbed in the bank, and I never thought it would happen, so, like, can we make it memorable at least?”

“Can you shut-up?” One of the masked men shouted.

There were six robbers in total. Two were out at the front of the bank, raiding the drawers and keeping a lookout, and three were inside the vault. Of the three inside, one was pointing a gun at Linda, Patricia, and their co-worker Meranda, another was standing in the doorway to the vault guarding the entrance and the last robbers was pillaging the lock-boxes inside the vault.

If Linda were the speaking type, she would certainly oblige the robbers and tell Patricia to shut-up. But Linda lived her life as quietly as possible. Speaking to someone like Patricia ruined any chance of that, and Linda knew Patricia would never listen to her anyway. Patrica only listened to her own echoes.

“Okay, okay,” Patricia sighed, holding up her hands, palms-up, towards the robber holding the gun. “Listen, I’ll shut up if you talk a little more originally, okay? Like, no more cliché lines.”

Linda was distracted once again by the blatant stare of the robber in the doorway. As much as she tried not to, Linda couldn’t help but look back at him. She thought there was something familiar about the blue-green eyes staring blatantly at her, and the recognition did not bode well.

“Take off your bras,” the robber from the doorway said.

“What?” Meranda squeaked.

“Hell yes!” Patricia roared, ripping off her uniform-compliant blouse, and freeing her bounteous breasts with an emphatic sigh of relief. “God, that feels great! Did you know I used to be a nudist? If it wasn’t for the whole ‘You gotta meet the dress code’ thing, I would never wear a bra. Damn, I miss being a nudist, but I like having hot running water a lot more. And showers are good too. Plus, winters are a lot less rough.”

“C’mon,” the robber guarding the tellers ordered, waving his gun at Linda and Meranda. “You two, get them off.”

Meranda did as she was told, struggling to remove her bra without having to take off her blouse.

Linda didn’t move. She stood absolutely stock-still and stared at her plain corduroy shoes. They were the same shoes she wore every day, but they looked new, and Linda appreciated the detailed care she took of her shoes.

“Hey!” The robber from the vault door shouted. “I said take off your bra!”

Linda still did not lookup.

She had found a blemish on the right side of her left shoe, and she was going over the method she would use to refresh the shoe to its original perfection.

“You think I’m just fucking around?” The robber strode over to Linda in two quick steps and grabbed her arm, forcing her to look at him.

She definitely knew him.

“Hey man, c’mon,” Patrica said from beside Linda. “C’mon now look at her, she’s freezing and ain’t got any tits anyway. I mean, look, you already got the biggest girl in the whole town topless, you really need to see any other tiddies?”

Patricia probably thought she was helping Linda, but Linda thought Patricia was making things so much worse. Linda knew that if she were quiet enough, she could simply fade away and be forgotten. But it only worked if she were absolutely still and stared at her feet. And if Patricia would leave her alone.

“Take off the bra,” the robber repeated.

When Linda refused to look up, the robber grabbed her chin with his gloved hand, forcing her to look him in the eyes.

She could tell by the way his eyes squinted that he was smiling beneath the mask. She could tell by his eye color that beneath his mask was light blond hair, the stubbly beginnings of a beard, and a fairly decent smile she had last seen over a year ago.

The sound of sirens wailed into the vault, a distant sound of warning.

“Time to go,”  a voice crackled over the bank’s intercom system.

The two other robbers hustled to follow orders, but the one holding Linda didn’t budge.

“C’mon,” one of the exiting robbers called back.

“I want her bra first.”

“You’re gonna go to jail because of a bra?” Patricia snorted. “I mean, it’s probably not even an A-cup, at least go for something, you know …” Patricia trailed off, pointing at her own fulsome breasts.

“Let’s go!” The voice crackled over the intercom again.

The robber didn’t wait. He grabbed onto Linda’s white blouse and ripped it away. The buttons pinged against the metal sides of the lock-boxes and scattered across the floor. With practiced perfection, the robber unclipped Linda’s bra and ripped it from her thin shoulders, leaving her bare. “Thanks, babe.” He said, running out of the vault.

Before any of the women inside could react, the vault door slammed shut and locked, plummeting its innards into pitch black. Everyone inside was absolutely silent.

Well. Except for Patricia.

“Thank God none of us were raped, huh?” Patricia crowed.

And that’s when Miranda began to sob.