The squeak of my shoes made me feel all the more noticeable. The inside of the bank sprawled on like a train station, with counters below windows of inch-thick Plexiglas plates, people standing in lines to make deposits or withdrawals or open accounts. They babbled incessantly as the ceiling speakers struggled to fight back with cheap saxophone music.
My back was hit by the revolving door.
“Excuse me!” a brawny woman barked, her two children in tow. I came to my senses and pulled my hand out of my pocket, taking the letter and looking at the access code that Anon had given me. There were two numbers, actually: one, a 16-character, and the other a 4-digit PIN code. I approached the back of the line and waited.
I was easily distracted so the line seemed to move quickly. All the people around me were simply going about their own business, hardly any of them even paying me a glance. I saw rows of pictures going around the upper wall, showing the long line of Verstone CEOs and board members. In my boredom, I picked out which ones had been stealing from the company, two that were having affairs and one who might have been a murderer. I hopped from one Glimpse to the next—it was like a game.
The teller coughed loudly at me and I realized it was my turn. I stepped up.
“I—I have a deposit box here,” I said.
“We use electronic access codes here,” she told me through the speaker. “Do you have yours?”
I nodded and punched the long password string into the box. She checked it with her computer, then told me to go wait at a side door. I stood there for a few minutes until I heard it click, and she ushered me in.
“You’ll need your PIN to open it,” she informed me, all business. The hallway was tiled, fancy marble on the walls covered by more richly framed portraits. As we walked, we started to pass wooden booths with thick red cloths hanging from poles covering their entrances. There were numbers over the booths, and when we came to the one marked “43”, the woman stopped.
“When you’re done, press the call button and the guard will retrieve your box,” she said. She held the red cloth open for me insistently, so I slipped under.
I heard her high heels clicking against the floor as she left. I was now in a boxy room, identical to the others I’d seen on my way up. Harsh lights glared from the ceiling and scrubbed the place clean of any sense of uniqueness. A simple leather stool sat in front of a counter. I heard the teller open a door far away, a few seconds of outside babble, then silence when it clicked shut.
In the center of the counter was a small safe deposit box, lonely and out of place in the grandeur of the room. It was black and metal, the lid sealed by a digital keypad on its top. I stepped closer, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the cloth had fallen into place. It didn’t seem secure enough, not as my expectancy rose, hands gripping the box. It took great effort for me to lift it even an inch.
There was no reason for me to waste time, so I set the paper next to me on the counter and carefully typed the PIN. The box took a few seconds to register and I thought for a moment I’d punched it in wrong, until there came a single beep marking my success. Something inside clicked. I lifted the lid.
Yet another white envelope with my name was resting on top, so I took it out first. I didn’t have a chance to open it though, because there were more things beneath it that distracted me. I fished around in the box, pulling out two blocks of paper, stiff like tall notepads. It wasn’t until I had them all in the light that I realized they were bound stacks of cash.
I nearly gasped. They were all hundred dollar notes bound together in their center by a strip of yellow paper, each stack marked as “$10000”. There were two of them. I’d never seen so much money all at once, even at my hourly rate. This type of money would have changed our lives back home…free air-conditioning in abundance…a new car.
I cautiously reached into the box again with my right hand, unable to let my other release its clutches on the money. I didn’t find anything else but a bumpy base, until I realized that it didn’t feel right and I had peer inside again. At the bottom of the safe deposit was another box.
I unwillingly let go of the money to grab this new contraption, grunting at its weight and struggling to set it on the counter without making too much noise. Even the tiny click of its edge touching the countertop echoed in the booth, though luckily the heavy cloth wouldn’t let the noise escape.
It was one of the most unusual devices I’d ever seen. It was no thicker than two inches but long and rectangular, like the case that my mom kept her old china silverware in. There was no place for a lock though the lid was stuck tight, every part appearing to be made of something like brass.
The most unusual part, though, was the top of the lid. It was embellished in a strange metalworking, the design swirling up and down intricately with lines and curves that whirled into shapes at the corners. In the center of the box’s lid was an upraised piece, with two circles side-by-side, embedded in the metal and bulging out unusually.
I licked my lips. This was something different. I’d learned, however, that Anon tended to do things in an order, so I reached for the abandoned envelope and tore it, pulling the paper out.
To Mr. Asher,
This will be my final correspondence for some time. I must be brief.
This money is to aid you in survival. The bills are untraceable and will provide for your food and basic needs. Do not feel inclined to repay this to me: this is a portion of funds that you left in my care before your passing.
You also asked me to keep one other thing for you. It is the box. Only you can open it.
Do well. Don’t trust anyone.
ANON
It was so very brief in comparison to all his previous letters—almost a letdown when I got to the end. I’d wished for a few more answers…but then again this was Anon.
So I set the paper and the money aside and moved for the box. Shouldn’t Anon have at least given me some instructions on how to get it open? I searched all around it but couldn’t find a hole for a key. In fact there didn’t even seem to be any edge where the lid would part: the entire thing all one piece of uninterrupted metal.
I ran my fingers around its sides, trying to find a button. Instead, as my fingertips crawled the top’s design, I accidentally hit an edge of one of the corners. At first I was frightened that it’d broken off, then I saw that I’d actual hit a hidden lever, which had turned down like a switch.
Nothing happened. So with haste, I searched the other corners, finding that the matching pieces there also moved, shifting all three remaining levers until they faced the center.
I heard a mechanical clicking like tiny gears being forced into motion, feeling a gentle vibrating movement inside the box’s metal shell. Then, like twin doors, the protruding circular pieces started to split apart at their centers, opening like eyelids until they exposed what was beneath.
It was a pair of glass orbs filled with clear liquid, still unsteady from when I’d moved the box. Floating inside them was what appeared to be two human eyeballs.
There was one in each orb, both staring straight ahead with no socket or muscle around them: blank, expressionless gazes missing their frame of a face. It was almost grotesque, until I convinced myself they weren’t actually human eyes…or were they? I couldn’t tell for sure. If they weren’t authentic, they were at least realistic.
I stretched over the countertop so I could see the eyes clearer. Their irises were both green with wide-open pupils, almost like a cat’s in the dark, staying straight even when I tilted the box forward at me so their gaze met mine. Was that all I was supposed to see? Maybe the box didn’t open after all.