Carried Debt

I did my best to backtrack exactly where I had been when it happened. I didn't even think of renewing my driver's license, canceling credit cards, spending another dollar for the public transport card, or about the three ten dollars bills I had in there for about a year. This was more important, way past the unfairness of it all, to take a wallet that doesn't belong to you, for what was it the cash that was going to get you the things that would kill you just a little bit faster. Don't we all wish for that bravery, from the willing and the will to face the reaper. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. I got in the car and faced the garage door as I did my best to think back on my day. Three men and one child on that train that left me with only two suspects and a father. I've heard that being a dad does things to you, but I wouldn't know. And a child, well, the child can't spend on anything without being asked where the money came from. The color switched easily between black and green in my mind. Book color was his shirt either way. I remember he looked at me not a single familiar face on that train. I'd tell you the other one was too busy playing on his phone. It wasn't supposed to be dumb around these areas to show your thousand dollars phone out in public. The father and his son were a few seats away, facing away from me, and I knew it. I knew something was going to happen as soon as I stepped into that train car. I never missed that second one, but this time I did. I was rushing down the steps because of that woman who couldn't figure out how to use a card reader. They were new back then. These things cost a dollar plus another five to put your fare in it. Tracking us, seeing where we enter and where we leave. Not hard to figure out where we live and where we work because of it. And so I watched as everyone rushed past us on my right to make that train, and desperation, I murmured something to myself angrily enough for her to turn around. Bright red. She was beautiful, older than me, long black hair, and a light purple jacket over a white shirt. I pushed my wallet past her, brushing her arm with mine as a beep and the green light triggered the tiny gate to open. She rushed forward and waited for me, acting as if we knew each other. I ran straight ahead and down the steps, ignoring her loud thank yous as I barely made the third car on the train. It was a nice voice she had, likely a singer, shouting as the door was closing. I looked at her and almost waved as the train sped away. Had I not been in the wrong train, I wouldn't have arrived by the away. From the stairs, up the platform and onto the street, I had to go past the vendors and the lazy taxi driver smoking when the security guards finished their rounds. Looking back at it now, I remember the woman expecting me to buy coffee at six pm. Who even does that? She got up and went to the cash register, and I just walked past her two I found it odd, But when I turned around there was a man from the train right there again ordering something, searching his jacket for his wallet. It was then when I was walking out of the station when I realized I didn't have it. There was no way to tap my card on the exit thing, and now I stood there as another random person behind me murmured something to themselves loud enough for me to hear. I turned around and stepped back, frantically searching for my wallet. That's when I felt the coldness flowing over my own arms and then my legs. It was gone. Now. I didn't want to do it, but I called up my friend Matt to ask him if I could come over. His girlfriend was going to be there. I was sure of it, so I grabbed my things at eleven pm that same night and went over there. They were acting as if it was just a regular afternoon. His girlfriend, Jade was making waffles and the toaster and heating something else up in the microwave. I stepped over the clothes they had on the floor and sat down. I started asking questions. They were the only ones that stayed awake with me when I couldn't sleep all those nights. They let me crash on that same couch until I got better. My therapist told me it was something we had to search through, which didn't help, but they did. He would talk about my past relationship and the streak of bad luck. When I was sure I was having no job, no home, no life. But there was something Jade told me that would actually help. Anything you want she said, literally, that's how we found each other, right, Mattie. She looked over at Matt and pinched his cheeks, going in for another one of those long and inappropriate kisses in front of another person. That's actually how I got to know her through these wishes, as she called them. At the time, I didn't know if they were working, but they approved themselves in time. First I got two job offers, the second one for a lot more money than the first. I got approved on the first apartment application I submitted. They were doing well too. Business cards. They called them, these oval shaped pieces of what I thought was paper at the time, but later found out that it was made of human skin. Inscribed were odd markings and soft burn marks, all neatly around it, in such a way that it looked to be all of one color you got close enough to see them. The ink was permanent. It spread over the years I had it, but I tried not to look at it. Carry it with you were the instructions for the thing. Almost three hundred dollars for it back then. It must only stay with you. Matt and Jade also had their own maid. They kept it with them, but I sat there all those memories circling me, mixing up with the new ones, trying to decipher the shirt color of the man on the train that when I was sure had taken my wallet and then used it to buy a coffee. So late in the day, Jade had brought over a plate of chicken nuggets, the bottle of maple syrup, and her waffles to the living room table. Spill. She yelled, Suddenly my wallet was stolen, I said, looking at her dead in the eye. Her shoulders relaxed, and then she looked at Matt. Oh, she said, that sucks. Then she grabbed the nugget and stuffed it in her mouth while trying to cool it down. At the same time, Matt turned to me, trying to be supportive as always. Did you cancer your cards or whatever? Man? Do you need cash? I looked at them. At one point I had trusted these two with my life, and now I was out there looking at them for what they really were. The business card was in there, I whispered. Jade stopped chewing and her eyes opened wide. Matt got on the floor and crawled up next to me. Do you know who took it? Jade interrupted? You sure you didn't just lose it. Check your pockets, man, check them. I tried to answer both of them, but they kept interrupting with more and more questions about where was I sure that the business card was in there? And it took only a few seconds of silence for my part before Matt realized what this meant. Jade took off to the the room. There was a reason that this thing was supposed to stay with me at all times unless disposed of properly according to the instructions. Jade was already on the job. I could hear things being moved around from down the hallway, for she came out not two minutes after that. Her hand was shaking as she read the instructions. I remember that yellow piece of paper from back. Then keep the Prisserius with you at all times. It would serve as life, as shield as sword. The sacrifice was from the lineage of the First Death is at Bay. Matt stayed quiet for a little bit before turning toward me to ask again if I knew who had taken it. We sat there in silence. There was a man on the train. I started, black or green shirt. He looked at me, and I looked at him. He followed me out and stopped for a coffee. I think he had my wallet by then. Thief Jade interrupted. Matt put his hand on her shoulder and looked at her with serious eyes. He will die. And that was the thing from all of our conversations. The reason why I forked over three hundred dollars back then, back when I was struggling with groceries at the dollar store, was because of this. Somehow death made these promises seem real, these gruesome photos of people with the final belongings laid right next to them. What remained of a man with a bloody white shirt and fourteen credit cards, a license, a picture of another family, and one hundred and thirty five dollars in cash, a few coins from his pocket, a watch, the prisers or business card as we called it. Then there were the photos of a teenager with her black spiky purse from hot topic, lip gloss, a prisceris, and the idea of a man. And these were photos no person should ever see, of traumatic deaths, bodies twisted in ways that showed me how fragile we are against steel wood and pavement. The exchange, the website said in every caption it was a way to defer the payback if you will. They say that when you ask for gifts from a dark force, you must pay it back, but not with this. It was yours forever, and only those who take it from you would end up paying the price, ending the cycle at the same time, until you bought another priceras or disposed of it properly, essentially meaning that you send it back for it to be prepared and sent to someone else. Nothing you can do now, Jade said softly, you want to stay here? I looked at mad. He was worried for that stranger. Nearly four years since our lives turned around without incident until now. We stayed up the rest of the night, watching the news and scanning the radio every so often. Not many in terms of news out there, mainly the same music we've been listening to for ten years, plus the occasional pop hit, but we would get announcements every now and then. A business owner arrested for suspicion of fraud, a mom taken to custody for leaving her children alone for two days while she left with her boyfriend to gamble. We talked about life and death, just like back then. Matt hadn't changed a bit, though he had gotten a new job. Jade had changed the most. She was more serious in her tone, her lipstick wasn't as stark, and she had stopped smoking. I must have replayed that night after work a thousand times. I could see the men in that shirt. Green, by the way, was the color of it. He matched the logo of his shoes, and I remember that detail. The night had happened because of the muddy footprints he had left on the floor. They ended right where he was sitting. It's why he looked at me. I was blaming him with my eyes, Jade. I started looking for the website again to reach out to the same guy who had sold them to us, but had no luck. Suspicious, wasn't it. How did they get the pictures of those who had taken these items for lack of a better word, from someone else. Were they on patrol for gruesome deaths? Or did they get them from the police report? Somehow? Jade had a theory that it must have been the latter. They do take photographs of the belongings of the deceased. Sometimes in some cases they even get more detailed. When their's suspicion of foul play, and how do they know it was because they had unknowingly taken the prisras. Some of the reports said that the deaths were mostly ruled acts, with a few exceptions. Was it some type of coincidence? Matt said that it might have been marketing, you know the photoshopp in the prisserius into the photos, say that it was because of that, and use it to sell us those things. But even he thought of just how much these things had changed our lives. Matt had somehow managed to sell his first business for a lot of money, and Jade ended up with her dad's inheritance. With the courts favored her over her step mother. They both seemed healthy, and although it seemed to be purely on them, I wasn't going to say anything because my life had changed two It made me feel uneasy at first, but then I noticed more and more things around me were changing. Women were approaching me, and at work people would show up to greet me by name, tapping a hand on my shoulder. With confidence, I no longer thought of my past, the fear of losing, Although fear of losing as all the fear there is right our health, our money, our sanity. I started risking, more confident enough to turn away opportunities and wait for better ones. It was more than just a thing I carried in my wallet, and I knew it. And yet there was a rational part of me that told me that this couldn't possibly be real, that it was all a joke or a dream, that I would wake up and no one would be dead because of me. Okay, man, here's the thing, the detective started. You can tell me what you know, so this gets a little easier for everyone. We already have you on camera and everything. It doesn't need to get dragged out so much. We have some pretty nosy journalists in town. Tell them where I was on the night of the fourth, the night I lost my wallet. I was at Matt and Jade's apartment, and part of me was afraid to tell that had they done something wrong? Well, aside from the purchase, I knew my rights even better back then. Now I think I would get a little overconfident, but I managed to stay silent until I got a lawyer. The guy was bad, but at least he explained everything had been staying tuned into the news for the death of a man, almost believing everything I had read from the website that Jade found. It seemed like such a scam. Now, sitting on those generic offices with law books in front of me, but no death ever came, well, not the one I was looking for. The lawyer sat me down and explained even more than what the detectives had found and what incriminated me. Listen, he said, tell me all the truth here, and I will do my best to get you a deal. It won't be too much time. I knew it was serious then, so I told him what I did. That night, as we prepared for the meeting with a detective and other prosecutors, I was at Matt and Jade's apartment, longtime friends that I knew since college. I stayed with them for a couple of nights because I was having some trouble and wanted to be with my friends. I would go to my house in the mornings and come back in the evening after work, back to Matt's, and then we would stay up watching television. That's the truth, the lawyer, mister Brown said, leaning back in his chair. What about Melissa, Melissa, I asked, confused, you gotta tell me the truth, sir, he shot back, beginning to lose his patience. Who is Melissa, I nearly yelled as I heard him clear his throat, his mouth beginning to shake Melissa, the woman you were with on the train. Now what happened next is to what made me wish my memory wasn't so good. I remember every detail he showed me the photograph. So what was left of a woman with dark hair, the purple jacket, and the white shirt. I remembered Melissa, the one that was found on the train tracks right outside the platform, the wrong exit, one I had never taken, The exit that was traced back to me. The camera showed us together by the turnstiles, the way she turned to look at me and waited, the way my public transportation card was scanned at the same time she left the platform on Fourteenth Street, but the case was dismissed once the full clips were released, no thanks to this lawyer. The footage showed the way she yelled for me after I had dropped my wallet. It showed me going down to take the train and stepping into the wrong train car. It showed her exit the platform alone the way I had taught her with my wallet. The stories on Scary Story podcasts are written and produced by me Edwin Kowarubias. We needed a bit of a gruesome story with this one, but kept it hidden enough with a splash of guilt. Let me know what you thought of it, and if you're off for it, check out my other podcast, Horror Story, where I tell you about true paranormal mysteries and hauntings and adds a similar feel to this one. Anyway, as always, if you're following the show, I'll be back next week. Thank you very much for listening. It scary everyone, see as soon