Who: Parker and OPEN. What: Parker is trying to be good. Where: South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa. When: Monday evening. Rating: PG, for now. Status: Open, in progress.
It had only been fifteen minutes. Fifteen long, torturous minutes in the middle of a crowded place without stealing anything, and Parker was pretty sure she was about to go crazy. Her hands were clenched tightly into fists and shoved in her pockets, but she could still feel the maddening itch of sticky fingers in her bones. All she wanted to do was move through the crowd, idly bumping into people and slipping her ghostly little fingers into their pockets to slide their wallets into her possession. It was a compulsion, a base urge that she'd had for years, and it was going to be harder than she thought to break the habit.
But ever since that night at Paramnesia, she'd been making an effort. Getting caught by Loki had shaken her but good. In all her years of stealing, she'd never really been trapped like that, and it scared her. Fear wasn't something she was used to, and it wasn't something she liked. So she decided to fix it, and Parker had always been a fan of immersion therapy.
Today, though, immersion therapy wasn't working so well. She tapped her foot, chewed her lip, scrunched her nose... anything to distract from that craving. By the time the sixteen minute mark rolled around, Parker seemed to have given up on her attempts to not steal-- she weaved through the mass of people, picking targets at random and picking their pockets, slipping jewelry off their wrists, robbing them blind in moments.
Then she'd slip the things back into their pockets before they'd even noticed their possessions were missing. It wasn't really stealing if she gave it back, right?