What have I done?

It seemed so innocuous the time.

He stepped into the thrift store on a whim. He wasn’t really shopping, nor did he have funds for any kind of significant purchase. He was just hoping to break the drudgery of walking the city sidewalks without a destination.

Browsing with no definitive purchase in mind, he came across a little black notebook, with someone’s scribbles in the front few pages.

“I can tear those out and use it for my own notes”, he silently mused, digging for change so cover the miniscule cost, all the while regretting the financial circumstance that led him to where he needed a used notebook instead of being able to buy a new one of his own.

As he made his way to the bus, he began to read the seemingly unintelligible scribbles.

Why not? He was going to toss those pages anyway, and he wanted to occupy himself as he made his way back to the dingy apartment that he shared with two people he met when he answered the flyer stapled outside a laundromat.

Among other entries, there were passages in odd languages that he had no idea what they were Passages like,

Cum vita vestra, ego divitias, lucrum; Με τη ζωή σου, κερδίζω πλούτο; Со вашиот живот, јас се здобијат со богатство; and Med livet ditt, jeg får vell interspersed within legible but incoherent words and phrases.

“Weird”, he thought, trying to sound out the first one, since it was closest to what he could read.

He was still sounding the strange words out as he walked from the thrift shop.

As he walked past a nice elderly woman who smiled at him, he suddenly felt additional weight in his coat pocket. Reaching in, he found large wad of cash, most of it in medium to large bills. And stopped in his tracks.

While staring in confusion at the money, from the corner of his eye he noticed the elderly woman clutch her chest and collapse to the sidewalk.

While not exactly ignoring someone in distress, he was so baffled by the sudden appearance of the money he longed for, it simply didn’t register.

The city bus arrived, and he felt a bit of excitement at not having to rummage in his pockets in search of change to pay for the ride. Particularly thrilling when he realized the change he once had was used to buy the little black notebook.

Finding the denomination, he sought, he handed it to the driver and took a seat near the back of the bus, still trying to piece together how he came into possession of that much money.

As he rode toward the shared apartment in the run-down tenement building, he began to imagine his good fortune at letting his flat mates that he would be able, not only to catch up on his share of the rents, but probably buy foodstuffs for a few days.

Still thumbing through the incoherent scribbles of the notebook, some he could read but made no sense, while those others still drew his eye, he began to grow curiouser. What did those words mean? Why do those odd characters in the passages keep drawing him back to them?

He climbed the stairs in the three-story walkup to the middle floor, found the key in his pocket and opened the door to his apartment in the hall of peeling paint, worn carpet, and a lingering smell of mildew, and was greeted by the accusing eyes of the two others who shared the space.

She looked at him with accusing eyes, as though he were a blight with which she has no alternative than to accept.

Her brother, the more accepting of the two, still sneered at him before turning back to the flickering television, taking a long pull from the can of beer in his hand. From the litter around his chair, this wasn’t the brother’s first.

He was going to explain about the little black notebook and the strange writing, but suddenly felt an odd sense of ownership. Selfishness? Jealousy? He wasn’t sure, but it was persistent, so he kept that part to himself as he extracted the bills and laid them on the kitchen counter, the only piece of furniture separating the single large room, giving the illusion that the kitchen was separate.

As he turned to the sink behind him to get a glass of water, he heard the two of them scramble toward the counter, a hungry light in her eyes, reflected in the greedy glint in her brother’s.

So, he regaled them with a tale of found bounty and luck that it was unclaimed.

After catching up on what was owed for his share of the household expenses, and allowing the siblings to a sizeable share to go to the shops in order to stock the bare cupboards and refrigerator, he left the apartment with a good feeling for the first time in recent memory. Or even distant memory.

But the little black notebook nagged at the back of his mind, and the unintelligible script that he has been unable to bring himself to discard.

He decided to see if the local library could offer any insight.

It was a nice enough day that he decided to walk instead of taking the bus, since he suddenly had reason to appreciate the brisk breeze and the warm autumn sunshine. He thumbed through the few pages with writing, silently attempting to make sense of the scribbles while he walked, but the jostling crowd made that difficult.

As he walked up the marble steps to the library and through the glass turnstile, he was truly beginning to feel his mood improving.

After inquiring of the dour librarian in behind the main counter, she pointed him in the direction she seemed to believe he needed to look, all while looking over the top of the tortoise shell-rimmed half-glasses perched on a beak of a nose.

The library was crowded. School had recently been let out, people were stopping by after work, study groups were gathering.

He found the language book in the stacks, the first of the strange passages appeared to be Latin, according the librarian, and took the book to a reading table among many such tables in the center of an open space between bookshelves, and began to search the text.

After a bit of time he was able to piece together the Latin words. He spoke them aloud.

“With your life, I gain wealth”.

That was when he heard the disturbance behind him.

As he turned to see what was happening, he felt the weight in his pocket again. Not just his coat pocket, but all of his pockets.

Shocked, he watched as coins and bills fill and then overfill his pockets. He looked up to call for help, only to see the entire crowd in the library collapsed. All of them.

Staring with glazed eyes, the librarian at her desk. The study group he passed. The school children who apparently stopped in to loiter while avoiding going home. All of them.

They fell where they stood, as marionettes would whose strings were abruptly severed. All of them.

And the money continued to appear.

No matter how fast he attempted to empty the pockets, the just filled faster. Shrugging out of the jacket, he tried to walk away from the ever-increasing pile of cash, but found the weight had increased enough to drag him to the floor. Even an attempt to take off his trousers was to no avail.

Slowly, as the pile began to cover him, he came to the horrific realization of what those passages meant.

Later, as the first responders arrived on scene to the inexplicable horror of dozens of people suddenly dead, and one man apparently crushed beneath an unbelievably large pile of money in all denominations, no one could explain the sight.

One of the personnel that had arrived happened to notice a little black notebook lying on the reading table nearest the man under the pile of money. On a whim, he picked it up and began to thumb through it, noticing someone’s scribbles in the front few pages.