Run: 2026-09-23-01M36R650JT4JHYC9CX4DZZCCD

Molly spread a map of the party across the table of the Closed Casket Café. The map was a napkin from the bakery next door, but it showed a cake with alarming accuracy. Bill leaned over it, wearing a paper crown marked BIRTHDAY PRINCE. His mustache curled at the ends like two question marks regretting their punctuation. “We enter at dusk,” Molly said. “The children will be distracted by cake, balloons, and whatever noise a piñata makes when it senses danger. Especially if it has a tiny hat.” “And we leave with every present?” Bill asked. “Every present,” Molly confirmed, “including the suspiciously large one shaped like a pony.” Bill traced the route with a breadstick. Their plan involved no locks, no alarms, and no machinery, because Bill had once mistaken a smoke detector for a tiny moon and apologized to it for three days. Instead, they would walk through the front gate during the party, carrying a gift so convincingly wrapped that even Molly didn’t know what was inside. “It’s probably a toaster,” Bill said. “I wrapped it in the dark. It has a handle, somehow.” Molly inspected the parcel. It had a label reading TO: SOMEONE IMPORTANT, FROM: BILL, and a ribbon tied in the shape of an anxious octopus. She tapped it. The box produced a faint clanking sound, followed by a smaller clank, as if the contents were arguing about the journey. “What is in it?” Molly asked. “A surprise,” Bill said. “For whom?” “The person who opens it.” “That’s usually how gifts work.” “Is the toaster plugged in?” Molly asked. “Not emotionally,” Bill replied. The party began at six in the community hall, a place whose windows displayed paper stars and whose door displayed a handwritten sign: NO GROWN-UPS WITHOUT A CHILD. Molly frowned at the sign. Bill brightened. Their disguise, he explained, was already perfect: they were two grown-ups without a child, which meant the sign had described them exactly. “Could we borrow a child?” Molly whispered. “Where would we get one?” “The orphanage?” “Bill.” “Fine. A cardboard cutout. It won’t ask for a cut.” “What about a puppet, then?” Molly offered. Molly pinched the bridge of her nose. The job was supposed to be simple: arrive, mingle, collect every brightly wrapped box, and depart before anyone noticed that the presents had developed legs. Bill had added the legs to the plan after watching a parade of costumed mascots and deciding camouflage meant being shaped like an animal. “What animal?” Molly asked. “A gift horse,” Bill replied. “We don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” “We don’t look like one either.” Outside, the first children arrived in a noisy flock, each carrying a balloon or a parent, and all wearing the alert expressions of people who had been promised sugar. Molly watched the door swing open. “On my signal,” Molly said, “we enter.” Bill nodded. “What is the signal?” “I say signal.” “Excellent. I’ll be ready.” He saluted with the breadstick. It snapped.