The First Stupid Thing

By Jamie F. Bell

In a grimy, rain-drenched alley, Devon's desperate cash job spirals into failure, only to be punctuated by a chilling phone call from Simon that reveals the true, suffocating extent of his control.

The rain wasn’t just rain. It was a statement. A cold, miserable, ongoing argument from a sky that had clearly decided Devon was the problem. Each drop hit the thin nylon of his jacket with a sound like a wet finger flicking a drum, a constant, irritating percussion that did nothing to drown out the city’s deeper groan. He was folded into the tight confines of a service alley that smelled of things rotting in stages: sour beer from the pub next door, the pulpy decay of cardboard boxes turning to mush and old grease bleeding from an overflowing dumpster. The stench clung to the damp air, thick enough to taste.

He was on his knees, one shoulder pressed against the grimy brickwork for leverage, wrestling with a cast-iron grate. It was a stubborn, corroded beast, sealed shut with years of filth. Below it, the drain for the noodle bar was choked, turning the back entrance into a shallow, scummy pond. A real plumber would have a pry bar, specialized hooks, a truck. Devon had a coat hanger he’d straightened against a curb and the kind of bone-deep desperation that made him think this was a viable solution.

His fingers were numb, the skin puckered and pale. They kept slipping on the slimy metal. With a final, grunt-fueled heave, the hanger bent into a useless V and the grate shifted half an inch before slamming back into its frame. A wave of foul, near-freezing water sloshed over the lip of his worn-out boots, soaking his socks in an instant. The cold was immediate and shocking.

“Fuck,” he hissed, the word a small, useless puff of steam in the air. He snatched his hand back, shaking it as if he could fling the cold and failure away. This was it. The absolute nadir. Hustling for a twenty-dollar cash job that he wasn’t even remotely qualified for, while the sky tried to dissolve him. The chill wasn't just in his feet anymore; it was a deep, internal cold that had taken root months ago, a permanent resident in the hollow space where his confidence used to be.

He knew the job was a bust five minutes in. The blockage wasn’t leaves and trash; it was something deeper, something structural. He could feel the lack of give, the sense of a fundamental rupture somewhere down in the guts of the building’s plumbing. But he’d stayed, hunched in the downpour, scraping and pulling with the bent hanger, performing a pantomime of competence for the benefit of the owner. A woman with a face etched with the same kind of exhaustion he felt, who would watch him through the steamy kitchen window with a pity he couldn't bear.

She’d give him a ten, maybe. For the effort. For showing up in this deluge. Ten dollars. It wouldn’t even cover a decent meal, let alone the gaping maw of his debt. It was an insult. A tip for a failure. He let his head fall forward, his forehead resting against the cold, wet brick. The rough texture scraped his skin. He closed his eyes, listening to the water drum on his back, the distant shriek of a siren, the clatter of pans from inside the kitchen.

Defeated, he pushed himself up. His knees cracked in protest. Water streamed from his dark hair, plastering it to his scalp and forehead. He probably looked like a half-drowned stray, the kind of person you cross the street to avoid. The thought was so pathetic it was almost funny. A bitter, airless laugh escaped him, lost immediately in the noise of the storm.

He was turning to go back inside, to deliver the bad news and collect his pity money, when his phone vibrated. It was a jarring, aggressive buzz against his thigh, a summons from the world he was trying so desperately to outrun. He froze. A cold dread, sharper and more potent than the rain, washed through him. He didn't need to look. He knew.

His stomach clenched into a tight, painful knot. Every muscle in his body screamed at him not to answer it, to hurl the cheap piece of plastic against the brick wall and watch it shatter. But that was a fantasy. In reality, his hand was already moving, slow and reluctant, fishing the phone from his pocket. The screen was slick with rain, the light from it unnaturally bright in the gloom of the alley. And there it was. The name, glowing in stark white letters.

SIMON.

No last name. No picture. Just the five letters that held the deed to his life. It wasn't a name; it was a verdict.

His thumb trembled as it hovered over the green icon. He could feel his heart starting to pound, a frantic, panicked rhythm against his ribs. He pressed down. The screen changed, a timer starting to count the seconds of his subjugation. He lifted the phone to his ear, hunching his shoulder to shield it from the worst of the rain.

The alley, the storm, the city—it all receded into a dull, background hum. There was only the faint crackle of the connection, and then the voice. Calm. Clear. A perfectly modulated baritone that was completely devoid of static, as if it were being broadcast from a soundproof room miles away from the chaos of the world.

“Devon.”

Just his name. A statement of fact. An assertion of ownership.

“You answered,” Simon continued, the tone utterly neutral. It wasn’t praise; it was an acknowledgment that the universe was proceeding as expected. Simon always expected. And Devon, one way or another, always complied.

“Simon,” Devon croaked, his own voice sounding alien and rough in his ears. He cleared his throat, trying to find some semblance of control. “Hey.” He jammed his free hand deep into his pocket, his numb fingers closing around the cold, useless metal of his apartment key. An anchor. He needed an anchor.

“The clock’s run out,” Simon said. No preamble. No small talk. Just the cold, hard edge of reality. “Midnight. Tonight.”

Devon’s breath hitched. Of course, he knew. He had lived with that deadline branded on the inside of his eyelids for sixty-seven days. He’d watched it approach with the numb horror of a man strapped to a set of tracks, watching the headlight of the train grow from a pinprick to a blinding sun.

“Yeah,” Devon managed, the word sticking to the roof of his mouth. “I know. I-I know that.” His eyes darted around the grimy confines of the alley, a cornered animal searching for an escape route that didn’t exist. The brick walls seemed to press in closer.

“So don’t tell me you’re coming up short,” Simon said. It wasn’t a question. It was a command disguised as a statement, and there was the barest hint of something in his voice—not anger, never anger. Something colder. The flat, dispassionate certainty of a banker about to foreclose on a house. He already knew the answer. This was just part of the ritual.

Devon squeezed his eyes shut. The rain dripped from his eyelashes onto his cheeks. He could feel a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck, a stark contrast to the icy water soaking his clothes. He was transparent. A pane of cheap, dirty glass that Simon could see right through.

“No,” he whispered, the admission tasting like bile and defeat. “I don’t have it.” He forced himself to add more, as if the details mattered, as if any excuse could possibly be enough. “Not all of it. I’m… I’m on a job right now, it’s just… it’s not going to pan out.” The pathetic bleating of his own voice made him want to retch. He was already begging, and Simon hadn’t even applied any pressure yet.

A silence stretched over the line. It was only a few seconds, but it felt vast and heavy, charged with all the things Simon wasn’t saying. In that silence, Devon could hear his own heart hammering, a frantic, desperate drum against the steady, patient rhythm of the rain. He could picture Simon perfectly: sitting in a leather chair in his minimalist, penthouse office overlooking the glittering, rain-slicked city. Untouchable. Dry. A faint, knowing smile playing on his lips as he listened to Devon unravel a thousand miles away in a filthy alley.

The image was so clear, so infuriating, it almost choked him.

“A job that didn’t pan out,” Simon repeated, his voice a silken thread of condescension. He made the words sound foolish, juvenile. “Devon. That’s an inconvenience.” Another pause, this one shorter, sharper. “We had a deal. A very simple arrangement. And I have been, I think you’ll agree, extraordinarily patient.”

Devon swallowed against the lump in his throat. The 'deal.' The 'patience.' It was their script. The carefully constructed cage Simon had built for him. Simon hadn’t just loaned him money. He’d bailed him out of a catastrophic mess involving people far more volatile and less predictable than him. He’d appeared like a savior, calm and collected, and had purchased Devon’s life, piece by piece. Every meal Devon ate, every night he slept in his shitty apartment, felt like it was on Simon’s dime, on Simon’s time.

“I know. I am trying, Simon, I swear,” Devon said, and he hated the raw, pleading note that tore out of him. He hated that this man could reduce him to this with just a few carefully chosen words. It was like Simon’s voice had its own gravitational pull, warping the space around him, compressing his lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“Trying doesn’t put the money in my hand,” Simon replied, the manufactured patience in his tone wearing thin, replaced by a hard, flat finality. “And my patience, while considerable, has a limit. We’ve reached it. You understand what’s at stake here. It’s not just the number.”

He did. Oh, God, he did. It was never just about the money. It was about the principle of the thing. It was about Simon’s absolute control. Simon could make a few calls and Devon’s landlord would suddenly find a reason to evict him. The temp agency that occasionally gave him work would suddenly have nothing available. His life, as precarious as it was, was a house of cards, and Simon’s hand was hovering right over it, ready to bring it all down with a single, casual flick.

The panic was a living thing now, clawing its way up his throat. His vision started to swim at the edges. The pulse in his temples was a violent, painful throb.

He wanted to scream at him. To tell him to take his money and his patience and shove it. He wanted to hang up, smash the phone, and disappear. But he was paralyzed. Because Simon was the devil he knew. Simon was predictable in his cruelty, methodical in his control. The alternative, the chaos Simon had saved him from before, was so much worse.

“What… what do you want?” Devon asked, the question a choked whisper. It was the ultimate concession, the final, pathetic surrender. He was handing the reins over, admitting he had no move left to make.

There was a shift in Simon’s tone then, a subtle softening that was more terrifying than any threat. It was the voice a tamer uses on a spooked animal, a deceptive calm that hides the leash and the cage. “There now. That’s the right question. You see? We can solve this. We always can.”

Devon’s entire body went rigid.

“I only ever want what’s best for you, Devon. You know that,” Simon continued, the lie so smooth it was almost believable. “And what’s best, right now, is for us to settle this. For good.” A beat of silence, calculated and cold. “So we’ve got a problem. And you know how I feel about problems. I don’t like leaving them overnight. It’s untidy.”

Devon felt a profound nausea roll through him. His head was swimming, the alley tilting around him.

“I’m sending someone to collect you,” Simon said, his voice dropping to an intimate, conspiratorial level. “He’ll be at your apartment in an hour. Just be there.”

Collect you. Not ‘pick you up.’ Not ‘meet you.’

Collect you.

Like a piece of evidence. Like a delinquent asset. Like a thing to be retrieved and stored. The word struck him with the force of a physical blow, knocking the last of the air from his lungs. The implication of total ownership, of being nothing more than an object on Simon’s balance sheet, was absolute. Collect him for what? A conversation? A new payment plan that would bind him even tighter? Or was this it? Was this the part where the polite phone calls ended and something else, something much worse, began?

A primal, animal terror seized him. This wasn’t about debt collection anymore. This was about possession. Simon’s quiet, unrelenting presence in his life had never been about the money; that was just the mechanism. It was about this. This moment. The complete and total subjugation of Devon’s will.

Simon’s composure, his unnervingly calm voice, it was all a performance designed to dismantle him, to make him feel so small and powerless that he would simply acquiesce. And it always worked. It was working now.

His gaze dropped from the slimy wall to his soaked boots, then lifted to the mouth of the alley. Through the downpour, the streetlights smeared into long, hazy streaks of orange and white. Taillights bled red into the wet asphalt. It was a world in motion. A world of escape.

He couldn’t go back to his apartment. He couldn’t wait to be ‘collected.’

If he went back, it was over. Whatever freedom he thought he had would be revealed as the illusion it always was. This was the final move in the game. And his only choice was to knock the whole board over.

“Devon?” Simon’s voice cut through his panic, sharp with impatience now. “Did you hear me? I said be at your apartment.”

A single, ragged breath tore from his chest. He knew the consequences. He knew Simon’s reach was long and his memory was longer. Defiance would not be forgiven. But the thought of sitting in his damp, lonely room, waiting for the sound of knuckles on the door, was more terrifying than any uncertainty.

He wasn't a package. Not yet.

He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. There was nothing to say. No argument to make, no plea to offer. There was only the choice. Compliance or flight.

He stared at the blurred lights of the passing cars, a river of possibilities. With a surge of adrenaline so potent it made his vision sharpen, he pulled the phone away from his ear and his thumb stabbed at the red icon on the screen.

The line went dead. The sudden, absolute silence where Simon’s voice had been was deafening. There was only the rain, the city, and the frantic, wild thumping of his own heart. He’d done it. He’d actually hung up on him.

For a full ten seconds, he just stood there, phone in his trembling hand, the finality of the act washing over him. It was a dizzying, terrifying cocktail of freedom and pure, gut-wrenching fear. He had just declared war on a man who never lost.

A brutal gust of wind tore through the alley, snapping at his wet clothes and driving the cold deep into his bones. He shivered, a violent, full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the temperature. He had no money. No plan. No destination. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and a target now painted squarely on it.

He could feel it already—Simon’s response. It wouldn’t be loud or flashy. It would be a quiet, systematic dismantling of his world. A shadow falling over him that he would never outrun.

He looked at the street again. The cars kept moving, oblivious. He didn't know where he was going. He just knew he had to join them. He had to move. He took one last, fleeting look at the clogged drain, at the miserable little prison of the alley, and then he bolted. He scrambled over a pile of slick, collapsed boxes, his foot slipping, his knee banging hard against a metal bin, the pain sharp but distant. He didn't slow down. He hit the sidewalk, the sudden open space a shock after the tight confines of the alley, and without looking back, he started to run.