A very short story (with a few vocab words thrown in)

The insomniac was truly having a hard time sleeping that night. He was the embodiment of the idea that you can’t sleep well if you are criminal. Many thought he was lacking in intellectual ability, a real cretin, though this term is a bit ugly. We should perhaps chastise those who use it, though certainly the insomniac criminal deserves punishment too. It would be presumptuous of us to claim that we know more than we do know. Perhaps he isn’t a criminal. Who snickered in the back? We won’t have any laughter here. The criminal himself is like a relic from an older time: a throwback to a by-gone era, like old pottery found at an archeological site. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but he’s not a very good criminal. It’s just hard to take him seriously. His incessant stealing is a problem. It will permeate everything he does, as a terrible stench permeates the room long after the source has been removed. There is no way to reduce the offensiveness, no palliative that will make everything better. The criminal obliges us to arrest him. The ensuing trial will be very entertaining. It won’t take place in a posh atmosphere either – the courtroom is not fancy at all. But we have to be wary of the criminal. He could get away before we know it. Perhaps we’ll find him years later, withered like an old corn husk in the hot summer heat.