Bank Robbery

José Alves de Castro
The Coin Man
Published in
1 min readJun 19, 2017

The man approached the bank counter and handed a note to the teller.

The teller read it.

It was clearly a robbery.

The teller slowly looked up to assess the robber.

He slowly got up, handed the paper back with one hand and picked a wrapped candy from the desk with the other.

- Sir, I must inform you that the New Bank of England abides by the 121st amendment.

He began unwrapping the candy.

The robber paused for a bit.

- That… doesn’t change anything.

- It might… I’m one of the new employees.

The man paused again, trying to assess the seriousness of that affirmation.

- You…

- I have multiple personalities, yes.

- Still…

- One of them is extremely dangerous.

- I have a gun.

- Then you’ll probably kill me. You’ll have to, if you want to save yourself.

The man’s voice trembled:

- No, no, no. I read! I know! Your other personalities can only arise to save you, not to doom you, and if that other personality arises you will end up dead! I will shoot you!

- It will arise nonetheless.

- You can’t! You can’t switch personalities at will!

- You’re right; I can’t.

The teller put the candy in his mouth.

The man smiled.

- Then I get what I want.

- Oh, I just said I couldn’t switch at will, I didn’t say I couldn’t change at all.

- But… How could you?

The teller slowly put down the candy wrapper and swallowed.

- That’s what the pill was for.

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José Alves de Castro
The Coin Man

VP of Engineering by Day, Evil Magician by Night, now writing Science Fiction short stories by Twilight. https://www.patreon.com/CoinManStories