Abyss

Life hadn’t been very kind to Harold Kyle. As a child, Harold was unremarkable and never really had any true friends. People would come up to him and ask to be his friend, but he knew that it was only because they wanted to be polite. You see, Harold moved from the metropolitan area he was born in while he was 4 and moved to a small town about 3 hours away from his former home and family. Something about severing ties with their past and starting with a clean slate(and as he suspected, none of his “friends” made any attempt to keep in contact with him). Although Harold was young, he was old enough to understand that his parents and his family had a falling-out and were no longer speaking. He was never that close to his parents and as soon as he was old enough, he was out of the house. One day when he decided to go back to his old house to visit his parents, another family was in their place. They had moved without telling him. ‘Oh, well’ Harold thought. ‘They can handle themselves.’

A couple of failed relationships and a copious amount of exes later, he dropped out of university and he was still stuck in this rut other people had dug for him. He used to feel sorry for himself. Now he felt absolutely nothing. He worked as a janitor in a chain pizza/burger restaurant and suffered way too many paycheck cuts for him to complain. At first, he would complain to HR, but after the fifth paycheck cut, he just didn’t care anymore. He used to have a decent enough rental house too, until about the 7th paycheck cut. He was then evicted from his house and settled for a tiny apartment. He was sandwiched in between a sweet old lady and a dangerous alcoholic and cigarette addict in the other. Harold never found out the true gender of the alcoholic, but then again, did it matter? No. And did he care? No.

His room(which like him, was also unremarkable)had a single, stiff mattress, pushed far as physically possible to the front left of the room. To the right of his bed and in front of the window, suspended on the wall was a shelf with a singular potted flower and his three university textbooks that he hadn’t bothered to sell or give away yet. On the far left wall, was a small dark fir desk with 2 drawers on either side. Pushed into the desk was a small, very beat-up, swivel chair. The chair was decorated with two of every article of clothing he needed. Two shirts, two jogging pants, two pairs of boxers, two pairs of socks and one hoodie. On top of the desk was a 5-year-old microwave that he had gotten from his parents after he moved away. Off to the side of the desk was a mini-fridge and a wastebasket, side by side. The fridge was stocked with frozen dinners, 2-litre bottles of pop and tubs of ice cream, with each shelf being home to a different type of food. His room was decked out with ugly, puke green wallpaper with parts of it peeling, the room smelling of glue. The floor was carpet, but it was very obvious that the carpet was over fifty years old. Some parts of the mildew-splotched carpet were so worn out you could see the floorboards underneath.

Every time Harold entered his apartment, the smell of mulch smacked him in the face. Harold was sure that his apartment was one of the least pleasant places in the country. That was another reason he made no attempts to gain new friends. After one of his shifts, he returned to his apartment at one in the morning and he laid on his bed and let his head run wild with thoughts of his life, reviewing and inspecting every inch of it, from the oldest memory to the latest misfortune. And for the first time in over ten years, a single tear rolled down his cheek.

…

Halfway across the city, a 22-year-old man was racing down the streets in a plateless red 2006 Honda Civic, going 70 kilometres per hour, with $20,000 in cash and a leather-bound book in the backseat, an anxious expression on his face. Sirens filled the regularly scheduled nighttime silence and the city flashed red and blue. The man was intent on racing to the park. He was almost around the last corner, but a cruiser whipped out from around a corner up ahead and shot pellets at the oncoming Honda Civic. Five pellets made contact with the vehicle. Two pierced the wheel and three entered the roof and windshield, forcing the man to pull over, onto the park grass.

Grabbing the money bag and the black and leather-bound book from the backseat and throwing open the door, the man (Simon) hopped out of the seat and booked it into the park. Lights flashed throughout the trees and they were blinding, but they weren’t going to stop Simon. He ran and ran. He ran until he had the worst stitch he’d ever experienced in his life. Finally, he reached a small building that looked 70+ years old. Not knowing what to do, Simon dove over the bushes bordering the park and separating it from the street, and landed on the sidewalk. With the money in hand, Simon ran into the alley that was in between the apartment building and a ratty old bar. There, making no stops, he bowled the money under a dumpster, making sure not to stop too long. In the adrenaline-pumped decision, he had accidentally let go of his black book. Without stopping, he wondered if he could go back for it, but ultimately decided not. Besides he was already too far away. Simon decided that he would come back in a couple of hours to retrieve it.

“After all,” Simon thought to himself. “Who would go looking under a dumpster? Homeless people might, but they usually look IN the dumpster not UNDER.” Satisfied with that answer, Simon sped away into the night, being careful to look for landmarks and tracking all of his turns.

…

About seven hours later, Harold woke up. His eyes were filled with sleep crust and drool was dripping from the corner of his mouth which was reeking of morning breath. He looked at his reflection in the window and tried to see the good. He struggled. He decided once he got to work, he would go into the bathroom and wash up there. He peeled off his sweaty clothes and slapped on one of his other outfits. He forced himself out of his apartment and down the stairs, taking the trash with him. Around back he hefted his trash up into the dumpster when suddenly, something caught his eye. Through a rusted-out hole in the bottom of the dumpster, he could see another garbage bag and a book.

“Oop,” he said out loud. “Someone’s lost their trash.”

Harold bent down to pick up the trash bag and the book from under the dumpster. As he was lifting the bag, he dropped the book, and it opened to a page. Curious, he bent down and picked up the leather-bound journal and started to read;

“0765299. Life’s pressure is too much. I am sick of being beaten down by the rich and the middle class. I am always treated like human garbage. Well, that is no more, Today, a large sum of money will be graciously gifted to me, but not out of the kindness of the gifter’s heart. They will be held at gunpoint. I will demand the money or the teller’s life. Either way works for me.”

Harold’s heart lept into his throat. Gunpoint? He ripped open the black trash bag, and lo and behold it was filled to the brim with fifties and hundreds. The glorious colours of brown and red reflected onto the inside of the bag, courtesy of the pale morning light. As the book said, he would no longer be treated like human garbage! He started to run out of the alleyway, then stopped dead. There was the fact it was stolen. He felt a giant lump in his throat form. He sat there, frozen in the alley, contemplating his next move. He ultimately decided to wait until next Friday when the lottery winners were announced, so it wouldn’t look like the money came out of nowhere. Feeling satisfied with that rationale, he continued with his day. The next four days were absolute Hell as he felt self-conscious about every decision he made, hoping he didn’t sound too conspicuous. He also was worried that the bag of money that he stashed back under the dumpster would get found and get turned in.

Every so often he would find himself hyperventilating and would have to calm himself down to make sure nobody got suspicious. In his free time, he read more of the black leather-bound journal. Slowly a story about a guy named Simon unfolded before Harold. The story of Simon was a long and tragic one, much like his own. He felt like the author of this journal was reaching from the ink on the pages, trying to pull him in. The story was a bit unbelievable in some instances, and it lead Harold to believe that this was an elaborate marketing campaign. It wouldn’t surprise him. So that’s what he partly treated it like. An ARG.

On the eve of Thursday, he looked back over the past week and wondered to himself how he managed to survive that long without screwing it up for himself. A good seventy-five percent of him was very relieved but the remaining twenty-five percent weighed him down with guilt and anxiety. He took twenty deep breaths and stared up at his ceiling, splotched with different mystery stains.

Tomorrow he would be home free.

…

Simon didn’t understand. Where was the cash? It was supposed to be under the dumpster here he’d left it. He cursed. “One of the trash-raiding bums must’ve taken it. Damn it.” he thought. He then scolded himself for being cruel to the homeless. After all, he was once one of them. He then realized that he was free in a weird way. He may have been back to where he’d started, but he was at least free of blame. Nobody could pin it on him.

“And besides,” he reasoned with himself. “It’s more likely that the Police found it. It wasn’t even hidden all that well!” He chuckled to himself as he strolled down the alley, whistling. A few days had passed, and he no longer had the calm attitude he once possessed. Every time the news came on, he would flip in-between hundreds of different news channels looking for a single mention of a bank robbery. Nothing. Slowly, anxiety and depression started to grasp him, trying to pull him deeper into the abyss he had created. Several times he thought about ending it all, but he couldn’t. He had to see this through to completion.

When Friday rolled around, Simon frantically switched on the TV, flipping through all of the news channels, looking for any mention of stolen money. Finally, after flipping through channels for five minutes, he found something. He tuned in. The report said;

Disgruntled janitor stole $20,000, tried to pass off as lottery money, is fatally shot.

Earlier this morning, an unnamed man was fatally shot at a high-end apartment complex. Police were called to the scene after the man attempted to purchase a luxury condo with the stolen money he claimed was lottery money. Police asked him to hand over the money, but the man refused and eventually ran, leading to him being shot five times in the back. More on this story after the weather.”