The Ledger

You check your bank account. You blink. Shock doesn't come easily to you, but now it's like lightning, electrical and all-consuming. You know (somehow) that your DNA has just been altered. You've heard of people who've been struck by lightning. Actually, there was a friend of your mother's, her husband - he's depressed now. Maybe you will be too when this hallucination disappears, so you refresh your little orange app. Did the shoeless finance man ever have a chapter on mysterious lump sums of $20,000 being deposited in your daily account? You stupidly wonder whether you should move it to your splurge account. Or fire extinguisher, or smile. Speaking of which, you try to do just that because surely you must do something, and you stretch your mouth to swallow the dread that's clawing up your throat like tar. You catch yourself in the reflection; you're grimacing. You wonder if this is a normal reaction as a thought bursts into your head like when you're watching porn and one of those ads punch through your browser of two people violently fucking (they're also grimacing) and you're trying to close it, but your stupid AdBlock isn't working. There was no furious doggy this time, but the thought is invasive and won't leave, and it's like an itch you need to scratch.

Find the book.

You remember watching a zombie movie once, and everyone shuffled around with direction. This was back in your uni days when time melted like clocks, and the little lights in your brain burned so! very! bright! every time the acid sunk into the back of your hand. Zombies always have a purpose. They moan, and they amble, but they moan for something. They amble towards something. Likewise, you propel forward to the kitchen where you know the book waits, like a deeper part of you has woken up and decided to take charge of your motor decisions.

You float down the hallway with that tar bubbling and gurgling – it's reached your mouth now. It's awful. You just know the book that waits there for you is terrible, but you keep walking like one of those zombies. When you finally do crest the little chipped step to the kitchen that you always trip over when you're drunk, IT is sitting there.

It's actually just a book. But you decide within two seconds to use IT because IT has a presence like you and IT is aware.

Your hands curl and uncurl. There's all this energy coursing through you as you stare at the black book in the centre of the table. It's just bigger than the palm of your hand. You wonder if you should have a wank, expel this thrumming power that charges through your veins like an animal on heat as IT sits there, waiting to be opened. Are you on heat? Is that it? You have so much money now it's oozing out of you (like that tar which pools in between your teeth and settles into your cavities, perhaps you will choke) and furiously pumps blood down your legs until you–

Perhaps it is fear. Fear that makes you sweat but so fucking horny, and the whites of your eyes stand out like one of those horses that's about to be put down after a race, slick with terror. You're terrified now because it's like an itch that you're longing to scratch and you try to stop it but you've struck out your hand to open IT and ITS looking at you. Your chest swells and collpases and you're still looking at IT as ITS looking at you (you're reminded of that circular economy lecture you sat in on once that didn't make any sense).

But this also doesn't make any sense.

You blink again, slowly this time.

Deliberately.

Your eyes were drying out from panic but also because there is a name on the first page, and this name is so awful because you've seen it before but spelt differently. You never actually read that name; your eyes slid over it like oil on water. But you do know that to read that name is a TERRIBLE WONDER that your tiny little brain cannot comprehend. Your stubby fingers shake a little as you thumb through the pages (do not look at the name) full of vignettes, inkblots of data bleeding over the page.

IT allows you to continue reading, and you nod like ITS told you something, but IT hasn't said anything at all. Without tearing your eyes away, your arm reaches out blindly, groping the air to find the back of a stool which you drag over (never mind the scratching on the floor. You're rich now!). You sit down and stare at the ledger.

Paraskevi Shawwa

Nurse at Our Mother of Mercy Hospital

Will receive the miracle of [redacted] for the sum of [redacted] on the 16th of June.

The 16th of June. This is today.

It is a Thursday, and you are dimly aware that you should be at work pressing those little numbers into a keyboard and going to that spin class you hate and cycling until your thighs burn with lactic acid. Sometimes you think doing all these good things will atone for all those tabs open at 3 in the morning when you can't sleep. So many categories now, and you have your favourites. This name also had their favourites, and the numbers run down the page and make you dizzy because you are smart enough to realise that there has been a mistake. As you realise this you begin to nod more violently. A stupid man would scratch his head but you're not a stupid man. The knowledge of the mistake has a dreadful calm flooding you like heroin which you have never tried, but sometimes you wonder what it would be like just once (the tar congeals at the roof of your mouth).

There has been a mistake.

You are acutely aware that this ledger has been misplaced and that you are the accidental (unfortunate/fortunate!) beneficiary. You understand that Paraskevi's miracle is to wake up tomorrow and continue to work in an underpaid job in an undervalued industry while you pump yourself away in the middle of the night after punching in all those little numbers and blowing your money every weekend on those bags that make you fly so high. Is it funny or awful that her misplaced miracle will fund your decline instead? Or incline if you decide to spend the $20,000 on drugs which makes you laugh nervously. You start to leaf through the ledger again, quicker this time. Diệu Nguyen (aged care worker). Ennis Ackerman (dairy farmer). Sonam Shrestha (primary school teacher). You stop at another name. Perhaps it is funny that Peter Gibson (bus driver) will not receive [redacted] because if you wept instead of laughing for the despair of it all it would mean that the sickness is not just the porn that has you licking your lips with agitation when that little clock hand hits eleven pm, or that these people are meant to survive in a system that has them begging for scraps (just keep working hard and one day you too can live like the rest of us!). The sickness is that the name too awful to say has made an administrative mistake in the running of the shit show. Now bow, little worker bees! Wipe that spittle from your mouth and swallow that rage. Never mind it tastes like vinegar, clap and thank the audience! Aren't you lucky to be here?

IT asks if you will return it all to that name, that terrible name, or if you are going to keep it. You say that you wont keep it, that others need it more, you want to change the system (perform, perform!). But just one more time, you check it one more time.

You open your account, and it's fifteen dollars less.

You've been debited for that website you subscribed to last month when your hunger was insatiable and you hunted for the violence and the shame that you wrap around yourself like a blanket. It is quiet and you are alone in your self loathing, oh the pity of it. You are so warm here.

You close the book on all the names begging for mercy and tell IT that you have changed your mind. 'I am going to keep the money,' you try to say but the words wont come out. The tar has begun to dribble down your chin.

We are all drowning in it.