Theobald
My name is Lisa. I’m 19 years old, and my life has been shitty—no, it’s been shit—from the day I can remember. I’ve got about 40 hours of stubble growing on my previously shaved head, nearly browless, a sign of my last-ditch effort to escape… something. Maybe myself. Now, I’m sitting in a cold, grey jail cell, waiting to hear my fate.
The charge? Manslaughter in the second degree. Or whatever else the prosecutor decides to pile on.
They told me I could try for a plea bargain. Great, I thought—until my so-called boyfriend, my partner-in-crime, the one person who was supposed to have my back, decided to throw me under the bus. He was quick, too. Beat me to the deal and painted me as the mastermind. The leader. The cold, calculated planner of our “crime spree”, the one who had insisted that he shave my head.
Leader? That’s a joke. I’ve spent my whole life being dragged along, used, or ignored. But here I am, the scapegoat, the villain of the story. And now I’m stuck with my thoughts—those endless, gnawing, taunting thoughts.
It’s almost funny, in a sick way. I didn’t even want to go along with half the things we did. But I went anyway. I thought I had nothing left to lose. Turns out I was wrong.
I had always lived in a trailer park. At school, I was known as “trailer trash.” For a long time, I thought that was my actual name—I couldn’t figure out why my mother kept calling me Lisa. School was hell, though not worse than home, just a different flavour of misery. Truth is, I hated school. I hated a lot of things, really.
By the time I was 16, I’d had six different “fathers.” Some were worse than others. None of them stuck around long enough for me to care.
When I was 12, “father” number four caught me smoking under our trailer. He dragged me out by the hair, yelling like I’d just burned the place down. My mother was in one of her usual drunken stupors, slumped over on the couch with a half-empty bottle. He asked her what he should do with me. Punish her, she said. Beat her, shave her head—whatever it took to “teach her a lesson.”
She waved him off like I was nothing. “Do what you want,” she slurred. “Just deal with her.”
So he dragged me down the dirt road to Old Tom, the trailer park barber. Tom was in his seventies, probably blind in one eye, but still the go-to guy for anyone who needed a cheap haircut. Before I knew what was happening, I was in his creaky old chair, and my hair was gone. Every last strand. When he was done, I looked like a plucked chicken.
It didn’t stop me from smoking, but it sure taught me to be sneakier about it.
After that, the kids at school started calling me “bald trash.” It didn’t bother me as much as it should have. I’d learned early on to tune people out. But I did get my mom back for it. A few days later, when she passed out on the couch, I poured some kind of chemical goo on her head—I don’t even remember what it was. She woke up screaming when was stuck to the cushion. They had to cut her free and ended up having to shear her hair as short as mine.
That was the last time she ever let a man punish me.
I didn’t do well at school—not on paper, anyway. But numbers? Numbers made sense. From the time I was little, I could add and subtract faster than most teachers could write equations on the board. It’s funny, really. Everyone thought I was just some dumb kid from the trailer park, but when it came to numbers, I was faster, sharper. Better.
Too bad numbers don’t fix everything.
I flunked out of school after the tenth grade. Not that anyone was surprised. I didn’t care enough to stick it out, and no one cared enough to stop me. So I took the first job I could find—at a greasy diner on the edge of town. It didn’t take long for everyone there to hate me. I kept dropping plates, forgetting orders, and pissing off customers. After about a week, they demoted me to dishwasher.
Washing dishes wasn’t any better. The industrial-strength detergents burned my hands raw, and I ended up with red, cracked skin that bled if I so much as touched hot water. I complained. They shrugged. A few days later, I was out of a job.
I floated between a few other menial gigs after that. Cleaning, stocking shelves, you name it. Nothing stuck. Then one day, I caught a break—sort of. My knack for numbers finally got me something better: a cashier job at a large general dealer. It wasn’t glamorous, but at least it didn’t involve burned hands or carrying trays of greasy food.
At first, I tried to be the perfect employee. I needed the money. But then I noticed something: no one was paying much attention to the cashiers. The supervisors cared more about inventory and customers than about what we were doing at the registers. That’s when I came up with the scam.
It was stupidly simple. I’d stick a Snickers bar code to the palm of my hand, hidden just right. When an elderly customer bought something not too expensive—not like a TV or a cartload of groceries—I’d scan the Snickers code instead of the real one and then make sure they did not see the register price but accepted the price I gave them. The system thought they were paying for a candy bar, not the item they had bought, all the better if I could lose the cash slip and I’d pocket the difference.
For a while, it worked like a charm. A little here, a little there. Enough to keep me going. Nobody noticed, and I started feeling like maybe I’d finally outsmarted the world that always seemed to be one step ahead of me.
But scams don’t last forever. One day, an elderly woman came in, dripping with money. She was buying baby stuff for her granddaughter, who was expecting. Diapers, clothes, toys—the works. Then she picked up a fancy stroller. It was $300, easy. My eyes lit up. This was my biggest haul yet. I scanned the Snickers bar code, pocketed the cash, and sent her on her way, feeling invincible.
Then the wheels came off—literally.
A few days later, the woman came back. Turns out, one of the stroller’s wheels had fallen off, and she wanted to exchange it. Only problem? Her receipt didn’t show she’d ever bought a stroller. She was furious, and the manager got involved. It didn’t take long for them to trace the purchase back to me. My name was on the register slip.
The investigation was quick and brutal. They found the Snickers bar code in my drawer. The scam unravelled like an old sweater, and I had nothing to say in my defence. I was fired on the spot. No wages, no severance, no cops. The manager didn’t want the scandal—said it would give the other cashiers ideas.
I walked out with my head low, my pockets empty, and a feeling in my gut like the universe had punched me, hard.
I snuck into my boyfriend’s house after getting fired. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was lucky not to get arrested, but I knew I’d been blacklisted. Word gets around fast in places like this, and no one was going to hire me now. By the time he came home, I was curled up on his old, lumpy couch, wallowing in the mess of my life.
When I told him what had happened, he barely reacted. He didn’t have the luxury of falling apart—he was barely keeping it together himself. His job didn’t pay much. Most of what he earned went toward the rent and keeping his beat-up Toyota Camry running. My contribution had been food and the other basics that kept us afloat. Without that, we were sunk.
We talked late into the night, weighing every option. None of them were good. The numbers didn’t add up—not even close. By the time dawn started creeping through the curtains, we’d made a decision: we couldn’t survive legally. The system wasn’t built for people like us. If we wanted to keep a roof over our heads, we’d have to turn to crime.
Robbing convenience stores seemed like the easiest option. The hours were right, the cash was accessible, and most clerks weren’t willing to put up a fight. The plan started simple: he’d drive, I’d go inside, and grab whatever we got. But we knew that wouldn’t be enough. We needed to avoid getting caught, and with all the CCTV cameras around, that wasn’t going to be easy.
That’s when he came up with the crazy idea.
“You could pose as a guy,” he said, staring at me like he was already picturing it. “You’re…you know, not super girly-looking anyway.”
I should’ve been offended, but I wasn’t. He wasn’t wrong. I’d always been a little too square in the jaw, a little too broad in the shoulders. Pretty wasn’t a word people used for me. But he wasn’t done yet.
“We shave your head. Like, totally bald. You’ll look like a dude from the cameras’ point of view, and I’ll wear a cap or something. After the job, we switch plates, you slap on some makeup and a wig, and then park and make out.”
I didn’t laugh. It was ridiculous, sure, but it was also smart. No one would connect the bald “man” robbing stores to the woman making out in the back seat of a car, dress pulled up, hair mussed up and makeup half-smudged in the heat of the moment.
So that’s what we did.
The first time we shaved my head, it felt…different. Not like when it was done to punish me as a kid. This time, I was in control. After he had cut off all the hair he could with the small scissors, he took the razor, and I watched in the mirror as the last strands of my hair disappeared. He smoothed the blade over my scalp until it was slick and shiny, then oiled it to a perfect sheen. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but I did. The sensation was electric, intimate in a way I’d never experienced before. When he was done, I ran my hands over the smooth surface of my scalp and felt powerful, like I was shedding my old self along with my hair. He also plucked my eyebrows, leaving me with a thin line and starters, the idea being that I would paint on thicker brows for the guy look and wipe them off for being a girl. I might add, it made sex sensational, rubbing his hands over my smooth head felt so good. When we shaved my pussy to match my head it was even better.
We carried out the first job two nights later. It went off without a hitch. He drove, I walked in with him just behind me, my head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. The clerk didn’t even hesitate when I shoved the gun in his face. We were in and out in minutes, switching plates and transforming me in the backseat of the car. By the time the cops showed up in the area, we were parked a few blocks away, me in a low-cut dress with a wig, straddling him like we didn’t have a care in the world.
It worked. Many times.
Between jobs, I kept my head smooth, razor-shaved and polished to perfection. I wore a wig when I was out, though. Bald women aren’t exactly common, especially not around here. I couldn’t risk someone remembering me. My boyfriend loved it and it made me feel great.
For a while, it felt like we’d beaten the system. We weren’t rich, but we were surviving. We had food on the table, gas in the car, and a little extra to spare. But deep down, I knew it couldn’t last. Things like this never do.
We were halfway through another job, and everything was going according to plan. The cashier’s hands were trembling as he fumbled on the keys to open the register. I could see the fear in his eyes, the sweat dripping down his temple. It was the same look I’d seen on every clerk we’d hit before. It was almost routine by now. Almost easy.
Then, everything went to hell.
“Freeze! Police!”
The voice came from behind me. Sharp, commanding, and way too close. My stomach dropped. I spun around, instinct taking over, and pointed my revolver toward the sound. My hand was steady, but my heart was pounding so loud I could barely hear myself think.
In that split second, the cashier made his move.
There was a deafening boom. The shotgun he’d pulled from under the counter went off, the blast spraying pellets in all directions. I felt a burning sting in my shoulder, but the officer behind me—he took the brunt of it. His face was gone before his body hit the ground.
Time froze.
I stared at the crumpled figure of the cop, his blood pooling on the dingy tile floor. My shoulder throbbed, but I barely noticed. Everything felt distant, like it was happening to someone else. Then the sound of screeching tires snapped me back to reality. A patrol car had pulled up outside, its lights painting the store in flashing red and blue.
There was no escape.
We didn’t even try to run. The cops were on us in seconds, yelling commands, shoving us to the floor, cuffing our wrists so tight it felt like they’d snap. The shotgun-wielding cashier was screaming incoherently, his voice blending with the chaos. My shoulder burned like fire, and when they dragged me outside, the cold night air made it worse.
The hospital came next. I don’t remember much of the ride—just the crushing weight of what had happened. By the time I was cuffed to the bed, my shoulder stitched up, the reality of it all hit me like a freight train.
The cop was dead.
I didn’t pull the trigger, but it didn’t matter. We’d set the chain of events in motion. We’d caused his death, and the law wasn’t going to split hairs over who fired the shot. It didn’t help that they found everything they needed in the Camry. The wigs, the make up, the license plates. It wasn’t hard for them to connect the dots, to link us to every robbery we’d pulled off.
And now, here I sit.
The cell smells awful, the walls are a sickly shade of grey, and my shoulder throbs every time I move. I’ve been charged with a serious felony. Manslaughter, they’re calling it, or maybe something worse. It doesn’t matter. I know what I’m looking at. Twenty years. Maybe more. Half my life, gone.
My boyfriend’s already pleaded out. Said I was the mastermind, the leader. He might get a lighter sentence, but me? I’m the scapegoat. They’ll make an example out of me.
They say there’s no honour among thieves, and I guess they’re right. I thought we were a team, now I’m facing decades behind bars, and he’ll be out, laughing, while I sit.
About twenty years. It’s a long time to think about your life. Far too long.
