(Background: I had written this for a short story contest and then realized I had misread one of the prompts and had to scramble to revise it before the deadline (which is probably why I didn’t advance to the next round) – I prefer this version over the one I submitted)
Cheryl would barely glance up every time a customer walked through the bank’s main entrance, but the one who just now came in gave her an unreasonable dread in the pit of her stomach. There was nothing that stood out about this individual – face, hair, clothes, and shoes at first glance were all “normal” – but as he purposefully strode to sit in the waiting area there was an undefinable something that seemed a bit… off.
She thought back to the last time the bank had been robbed and all the training videos the employees had to sit through, but this customer did not quite line up with those scenarios so she felt unjustified in slamming the panic button – yet.
The customer was the only one seated in the waiting area and Cheryl was the only bank officer available, so she added her doubts to her all-day blistering headache as things to ignore, walked over to him, and smiled: “Hello! My name is Cheryl – I can help you right over here.” She held an arm out toward her desk.
The customer looked up at her and she immediately catalogued his sickly pale face, stringy hair, and a whiff of something that her unconscious brain screamed “SULFUR!” But I wouldn’t know what sulfur smelled like unless it was pointed out to me, her conscious brain countered. Her unconscious brain persisted in its decision as she led the customer to sit in the chair next to her desk as she sat in hers.
Wanting to speed this along, she immediately began working on the bank database instead of taking her usual 90 seconds to actually look the customer in the eye while she obtained some basic info: “So, what can we do for you today?” Type-type-type-type-
“Well,” the customer said while dropping a heavy bag onto the desk, making Cheryl jump slightly in her seat. “I’d like to make a deposit.”
“Oh?” I’d bet all the coins I just heard jingling around in there that that bag didn’t exist until this moment.
“Yeah. Actually, I guess what I really want is to open a savings account. For all of this.” The customer patted the bag, making the coins jingle some more.
“Oh. OK.” Cheryl settled into the familiar routine of creating a new account. “If I may ask, is this from an inheritance?”
The customer chuckled in a way that Cheryl did not like at all: “You probably could call it that.”
Oh no, I’m smelling – SULFUR! – felony. She stopped typing. “Before we go any further, could I see some form of ID, please? Driver’s license, passport photo, permanent resident card?”
“Oh, sure, um….” The customer patted a few pockets, then pulled out a paper driver’s license that had been taped up multiple times.
Cheryl stared at it for a few moments, then waited for her heart to start beating again before saying: “This expired….”
“Really? Oh, shoot.”
“Almost 80 years ago.”
The customer looked thoughtful for a moment, then reached over to take back the license and stare at it. “Has it been that long already? Huh. Time sure does fly no matter where you are in life, am-I-right?”
Mentally holding onto the evidence of fraud, Cheryl unobtrusively pressed the panic button while tamping down the internal panic as she realized no other employees or customers were within her line of sight. “So – ” she had to clear her throat, “um, do you have any other forms of ID on you?”
“Nah, that was the last one I had. Here, let me give you some of the backstory so you can help me figure out what’s the best type of account I can get for these beauties.” The customer hugged the bag lovingly.
Cheryl tapped the button a few more times: “OK.”
“Sweet. So, I came back from The War all messed up with what I saw over there – let me back up a bit: when I was over there, I was an ambulance driver and had to ferry soldiers and civilians who were shot up or blown up or ripped up or whatever up to the field hospital, and if I managed to get one in 50 of them there in time to be saved it was a miracle, know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah. Rest of `em went to Charon the Ferryman, and I got sick of it. I mean, here I am, busting my behind driving people through literal hell trying to save them, and in the end that guy gets `em anyway AND the coin payment to boot. For doing what, exactly?”
“…Ferrying them across the River Styx to the Underworld?”
The driver scoffed: “Big deal: a river with no currents, or even any other boats; easiest job ever. Ferrying them across a river filled with mines, bullets whizzing past your head, bombs exploding all around you, and your passengers screaming in agony and begging you to help them, THEN he’d have a case. So I came back from The War and figured, why not get a little of my own back? I deserved it.”
Cheryl’s throat could not get any drier: “How so?”
“Well, when you’re in the middle of all that death – you never served in the military, right? I’m not preaching to choir, as the saying goes?”
“No.”
“`K. So when you’re in the middle of all that death and pain and terror, it changes you, and usually not for the better. And I figured, if people’re gonna die no matter what anyone does, why shouldn’t I get a little something for, you know, helping them along?”
Cheryl gulped: “‘Helping them along?’”
“Right. So, instead of letting Charon get all the reward, I figured I’d cut him off at the pass, so to speak.” The driver started to open the bag. “Get `em while they’re fresh, and instead of them having to wait around for whenever his nibs and ferry decide to show up, I give `em an express ride to the afterlife and keep the coins myself. It’s worked out beautifully, and somehow adds zero mileage to my car – I only get a few out of the thousands who die every day, but it’s enough that guy’s sooooo miffed at the drop in business. Too bad you got competition after millennia of monopoly, pal!” The driver laughed hysterically while burying his hands in the bag of coins, too many to count.
All Cheryl could do was stare at the bursting bag while her head pounded; the driver suddenly yanked his hands out of the bag and checked his wristwatch.
“Ooh, look at me rambling on here – sorry, it’s been so long since I could really talk to anybody about all this, you know?” Cheryl looked back up at his waxen face. “Anyway, we’ve only got a little time left so I was hoping I could get your advice before we go.”
“‘Go?’”
“Well yeah, that brain aneurysm’s gonna get you in about five minutes, and I gotta get you first or else you’ll go straight to Charon and then where’ll my cut be?”
The bank’s walls constricted around Cheryl’s unbearably painful head and she could no longer feel her extremities. The driver leaned closer to her.
“So I gotta ask you – ”
The scent of sulfur nearly overwhelmed all of Cheryl’s senses; from a distance through her tunnel vision, she heard:
“You recommend money market or high-yield?”
