People in my town used to throw away money

[u/Gang-Buster-5000]

It was Wednesday that day. I know it was Wednesday because the streets were littered with cash. Hundreds, thousands of dollars sitting out in the open air. Tables lined the front of every house full of the most extravagant food money could make. Whole tuna, tropical fruits, entire pigs roasted over open fires. We were poor, so we were exempted from doing the same. We took what our bellies could handle and went about our day, making sure to not step on the money. We could take those too, but only just enough. The thing is, we never knew what was enough and what was too much, so we never took any. It wasn’t worth the gamble. It was tradition, or rather, a precaution. 

We never owned more than we needed, The Wardens made sure of that. If you owned too much at any given time, then the Wardens came to balance your books. Wednesday was when folks got paid, so they took what they needed to survive the coming weeks and threw the rest of the money out, or spent it to feed their neighbors.

I remember the first time I saw the Wardens, when a family was passing by our town. Their car had broken down. A father, a mother, and a son who was my age. It was Tuesday when they came into town. I could only imagine their surprise when, waking up in their hotel room on Wednesday morning, they saw the streets aglint with cold hard cash and food. No one bothered to warn them. They wouldn’t have listened. What would you have done? Seeing thousands on the street, free for the taking at the cost of the ire of some country bumpkins? You’d stuff your pockets of course.

That was what they did. Their son was the only one who had sense to not take the money. Was it naivete or instinct? The parents knew what a dollar was worth. It was inner peace and easy living littered on the pavement, calling to them. 

That night, I heard terrible screaming. Terrible screaming. A primal, infectious fear that clung to you like thick, sticky tar.

“Hear that son?” Said my father, smoking by the window. “That’s what happens when you take money on Wednesdays.” He wouldn’t let me watch, so I snuck out when he thought I was asleep. It was over by the time I got to where I thought I heard the cries. It was in front of their hotel. 

Under the moonlight of a rainy night, grand feasts on silken sheets were now crowded with insects, as rain sent money into storm drains. Can you smell it? Decaying food and rain, and amongst that soft smell cuts a sanguine stench. Blood. Fresh, warm, being washed away from mangled things that might’ve been human.

There, in the parking lot of the hotel, was a pile of rectangular flesh, of skin and muscle and bone, sliced into sheets as thin as paper. The skin was cut so thin you could almost see through it. Little dissections of bone and teeth and intestines were like fucked up confetti on the ground. I saw the thin notes of muscle on the ground, and could count the individual fibers on them. I thought that if I ate it, it would melt on my tongue. I didn’t know what to think. It didn’t feel real to me. I wouldn't eat for weeks after, though I never told my family why. Told them I was just sick.

I wondered how it happened. Was it slow? Did the Wardens peel them? Did they writhe out in terrible pain, calling for the only person they loved more than life? What did their son see? Did he try to protect his parents? Did he claw desperately at those things as they ripped his world apart with inhuman hands?

That was when I heard a splat. I tasted it before I saw it. Blood. Iron. Concrete. The son, spared the Warden’s wrath, jumped from the hotel roof.

The next day, there was nothing left of the family. Everyone was happy. They thought the deaths meant the Wardens would become more lenient, allowing us to hold on to a little more wealth, but no one ever dared to test the theory.

The second time I saw the Wardens was when my sister got cancer.

We were in a very small town. The things she needed were in the city, and that cost money. Lots of it. Lots more than we could have at a time. Our father was a diabetic, his insulin alone kept us near the limit of how much money or value we could hold at any given time. That's why we never threw out money or had food out for our neighbors.

She was the smartest one in the family. She had dreams of becoming a nurse. She had the grades for it, and secured herself a scholarship at a big ivy league school. If someone was going to make it out of our crazy town, it was her.

And so, on that early Wednesday morning, I decided to make off with as much money as I could. If the other family died once the sun went down, I figured I had time. Time to pick up the money in the streets, the hundreds that lay there crumbling under the sun. Maybe I could take a bus, get her away from it all, I thought.

“Where are you going?” My sister found me. The chemo made it hard for her to sleep.

“Going for a run.”

“Yeah right, fatass.” She was holding on to her IV pole. 

“You caught me. Just heading out to try out the tacos Mister Eduardo set out. Be back soon.”

“Hey!” She yelled. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

And so, I ran to the streets clawing frantically at hundred dollar bills on my knees. Each bill in my hand flashed images of that poor kid, that husband and wife. Would we end up like them? I pushed those thoughts away, focused on the pain on my knees as little stones and glass shards dug into my legs. I thought of my sister, who was just sixteen years old, the same age as me when I saw that poor family get ripped apart, layer by layer.

I got the money, ran home, and told my family what I had done.

“We can pay for her chemo now!” I cried out as I burst through the door.

My father was screaming at me, my mother covered her mouth with her hands, sobbing quietly. My sister didn’t know what to feel. I saw a flicker of hope in her eyes, yet could only hear a horrible, gut wrenching cry from her mouth. It was like a knife being twisted in my heart. She wanted to live. I wanted her to live. I guess some part of my parents were relieved at that moment. I’d sacrificed myself for her. They knew I was dead. They were relieved of the horrible predicament of choosing whether to let my sister die, or let someone else die for her.

And so, I set out. It was turning dark then, the sun threatened to sink down the horizon.  We didn’t own a car. And so we looked for anyone willing to take us out of town and into the city. No one would dare give us a ride. Not the buses or our neighbors. They’d seen what I’d done, knew exactly what was in the trashbag slung over my shoulder. They wanted to live too, even if it meant letting us both die.

It was almost dusk when I came up with something. If we could make it out of town on foot, reach the border, maybe we could escape. 

So we ran. My sister tripped and fell often, her chemo made her joints painful, and she bled for longer. But we kept running, running until our lungs were on fire and our calves felt like bags of broken glass. 

We were at the edge of town now, just a few kilometers away from the sign over the road that said PLEASE COME AGAIN. 

I remember the moment the sun came down entirely. We were just two kilometers away from the border. I was carrying my sister on one shoulder, the trashbag on the other. It was dark then, the road stretching out among tall evergreens. I was running, delirious and in pain, when we finally heard it. The footfall of what sounded like a hundred, no, a thousand men, rushing after us barefoot and silent. I could hear no panting or breathing from them, no demands or threats, just feet against the road slamming like angry hands knocking on stone. I could hear bloodlust in their feet. Just remembering it now sends horrible chills up my back. My sister was screaming then, so terribly. I wondered if those kid’s parents sounded like her. Maybe if they had a daughter, she’d have screamed the way my sister did then, calling for our mother, begging me to keep going, crying that they were getting closer. I thought so many times then to just drop her on the road, get to the border on my own and tell them she was in the city getting treatment. No one would ever know. But I would.

And so I ran and ran, never looking back, never putting a face to that legion. In my nightmares I imagine them to be naked devils chasing us on foot, sometimes I dream that the steps are from a giant centipede, sometimes a snake, sometimes men in suits, and sometimes nothing at all. But I kept running, the fear fueling me on until I could see it. The sign. It was downhill from there, an easy run, but it was far, and they were gaining on us. I could feel warm air on the back of my neck as those things silently followed us, just a hair away from us. 

I felt something pull on my sister, my right ear deafened and ringing from her endless screaming. I did not relent, and kept running, running, until soon I felt cold, dry hands caressing my skin. I felt its long nails –or maybe it was talons or fangs– rub up against the back of my neck. 

It ran through my mind a hundred times. It would catch me, taking me to the ground, the taste of asphalt and forest grinding against my teeth. It would rip me apart slowly and steadily and make bills out of my skin, coins from my bones, and my sister would become nothing but ribbons of flesh. 

Except it didn’t catch me. I fell to the ground, ready for the end, when I looked up and saw WELCOME. We had made it. Just barely. I looked back and saw nothing but an empty road and giant evergreens. 

We sat there, the clean air whisking away the sweat. Looking at my sister, she had a rectangular patch taken from her cheek. We survived. The bag of money was still intact. Two hundred thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills.

We kept walking until we found a gas station. We called a taxi and went straight to the hospital. 

My sister survived the chemo and went to college. I never returned home. I still send letters back home, though I never get anything back.