7 Sins Saga: Greed

The briefcase sat on the desk.

It was a simple, leather-bound rectangle, placed innocently in the middle of the cedar desk. He looked up and across the table at the woman, who was sitting forward, with her elbows on the table. "Interested?" she asked, a slight smirk on her face.

He reached out a hand, used to taking things that were rightfully his, by birthright if not earned by hard work. He slid the case closer to himself, the metal clasps making an awful screech as they slid across the well-polished wood. He waved away his bodyguard, who left the room discreetly, the sharp click of the lock marking his departure.

Two sharp clicks permeated the silence. He hinged the lid up, obscuring the woman's face from view, and looked inside. Bundles of cash were stacked neatly, hundred-dollar bills that he imagined greeting him like an old friend. He was friendly and familiar with money, even intimate, and as he picked up a stack, he let it run across his fingertips in a gentle caress.

He turned his eyes upwards. The hatch to his safe box hovered just above his head - a safebox full of cash, gold bars, heirlooms, all of which he had obtained through various levels of legality. He accepted his kleptomania and need for possession in open arms, and it showed. His neat suit, gold cuff links, and band upon band of impressive jewelery all showcased his craving for more.

The smell of freshly laundered money was intoxicating. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting out an audible sniff that echoed around the boardroom. He could hear his guest shuffling around with impatience. Let her wait, he thought to himself. The money is as good as mine.

He opened his eyes, ready to negotiate. He reached out a hand and made to pull the briefcase closed. Something cold - very cold - touched his fingers.

A skeletal hand delicately stroked his arm. Slowly, the briefcase lid dropped, resounding with a sharp clack as the locks engaged, revealing the face of his client. As he watched in mute horror, her skin peeled back like the lips of a flower, shriveling into black crisps that crumbled into scattered ashes.

The skull grinned at him. "I was so hoping you would pass the test."

Its skeletal arms tightened until he cried out in pain. "And you should really give your bodyguard a key to this room. By the way, isn't all that money extremely heavy?"

He let out a shrill yell, but it was drowned out by a loud crunch from overhead. Looking up, he gasped silently as the heavy safe emitted a low groan, and the reinforced ceiling began to sag. The skeletal face whispered in his ear. "Oh well."

With a sharp crack, the hatch split open, pouring gold bars, stacks of money, precious gems and jewels, antique furniture, and all the goods he had ever collected; tons and tons of material wealth falling like rain. He screamed.

Awake

"What's happened?" the doctor on site yelled, as he bustled down the hospital corridors. His white coat flared as he paced alongside the nurse, who was furiously scribbling notes on a large brown clipboard.

"I don't know. It's... it's like nothing we've ever seen before," the nurse replied, pulling his surgical mask to his face. In a nervous shiver, he continued. "Prognosis is pretty much... well, you'll see..."

As the doctor approached the emergency room, he could hear shrill screams emanating from the doorway. The air was filled with the cried of a woman sobbing, and a man's deep coughing, but the shrieks weren't from either of them. The nurse glanced at him, accurately gauging his expression. "It's the... patient. He's, uh, he was affected by the trip."

The bright doorway sat at the end of the hallway, illuminated from within by halogen surgical lights. Turning the corner sharply, the doctor suddenly reeled back, almost knocking the nurse to the ground, as a darkly dressed figure burst from the room screeching unintelligibly. An orderly jumped out of the room, tackling the shadow to the floor.

"Sorry doc," the orderly panted. "Patient is a little unstable." He touched a syringe to the man's arm, depressing the plunger. The sharp tang of Propofol filled the air as the patient sagged, anesthetic coursing through his bloodstream. He rolled his eyes up towards the doctor as if in supplication.

At first, the shock of white hair and thin frame suggested to the doctor that the patient was an elderly man. But as the patient passed out, the doctor realized that he wasn't a man at all. Instead, a young boy, not even in his teenage years, lay on the cold, linoleum floor. His short cropped hair had gone completely white, and even though he was sedated, his blue eyes stared as though he could see into another world.

"What happened?" the doctor asked quietly, as the nurse and orderly hoisted the boy onto the gurney. A man and woman sat in the corner, both weeping loudly - the boy's parents, he presumed. The nurse shook his head subtly, indicating the hallway was a more appropriate place to discuss the situation.

As they stepped out, the nurse took a breath. "You know the standard procedures for Transporter technology, right?"

"Of course. It's medical procedure - subjects are sedated heavily, to the point of an induced coma. Then the quantum junctions are activated... I don't know exactly how it works, but it has something to do with dimensional jumping. The subjects are revived upon arrival."

"Yeah. Initial animal tests showed erratic behavior after 'porting, including massive brain damage, that was only prevented by the injection of pentobarbital." The nurse took another breath. "The kid was faking it. He pretended to be in a coma after a single dose. It wasn't enough to actually knock him out."

The doctor stared blankly. Then: "Are you telling me... he was awake?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Massive brain damage - his cerebellum is literally lined with scar tissue - and his brain stem looks like it's been cauterized with a soldering iron. We have no idea what happened; we reported the incident to the TPS, but they haven't responded yet."

"I'm going to try and talk to him." The doctor reentered the room, the smell of alcohol immediately assaulting his senses. The steady whine of the medical equipment was only outmatched by the choking sobs of the parents, who now sat in a corner, the man holding his wife as she cried. The patient was restrained in a bed, foam dental dam plugged in his mouth to stop him from biting off his tongue, while leather straps pinned him to the metal framework.

"Pull the IV," the doctor ordered. The orderly quickly unclipped the drip from the boy's arm. Within minutes, the child began to stir, and suddenly screamed, the sound muffled by the block of foam in his mouth. Saliva drooled from the corner of his lips as he struggled against the straps, his movements rattling the bed in an eerie clattering. The boy's parents began to cry anew.

"Get them out of here," the doctor yelled, as the nurse escorted the two adults out of the room. "Give him a shot of sedative, twice the standard dose!"

After a minute, the boy's movements became less pronounced, until his head drooped so his chin touched his chest. The doctor waited, then slowly removed the block of foam from his mouth.

"Can you hear me?" the doctor whispered. The boy slowly looked up, a laborious effort. "I'm a doctor, at a hospital. Can you tell me what happened? What happened to you?"

There was no response. Again, the doctor repeated himself. "What happened? Can you tell me what happened?"

The child stared.

The orderly handed the doctor a thin sheaf of notes, with a muttered explanation that the TPS had just faxed it over. He skimmed the pages quickly. Teleportation was a new technology, just invented within the last decade. Like any new technology, it was poorly understood - all scientists had discovered was that a person was literally deconstructed into component particles, which were then whisked away at faster-than-light speeds to the destination, where they were reconstructed. For some reason, patients had to be sedated beforehand - when awake, all animal test subjects had gone insane.

The TPS report, while vague, suggested that travel at such great speed seemed to slow down time, stretching it out almost to an eternity. With dawning comprehension, the doctor nearly buckled as the full, staggering gravity of the situation hit him. This boy - this child - hadn't been sedated through the trip. He had been aware, as his atoms were torn apart, as they were sent screaming across the void at speeds faster than anything ever experienced, as time stretched out to an endless torment.

The doctor turned back to the patient, urgently, as if his understanding had incited in him a sense of panic. He repeated himself, softly at first, but then louder. "What happened? What happened to you?"

The boy's mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. Then, he spoke, in a low, gutteral voice lined with saliva, harsh and croaking, as if he hadn't spoke for centuries.

"Awake," he said, very slowly.

"You were awake during the procedure? The Transporter procedure?" The boy didn't respond, and the doctor gripped his shoulders. "What did you see? You were awake, what happened?"

Slowly, the boy's head lolled to one side. His eyes focused, then unfocused. The orderly stepped in with the IV, but the doctor waved him off. He needed an answer. "Look here. Follow my finger. What did you see?"

Still no response. Drool dribbled out of the child's mouth as he tried to speak. The doctor leaned closer, until they were nearly touching noses. Then the boy's mouth moved. He looked up.

The boy's wide, blue eyes met the doctor's. "I... saw... ...Everything..."

Then he fell back with an explosive gasp, the ECG emitting a steady whine.

The Seed

I was cleaning my room today

and found a small pouch I didn't remember having

It was brown, made of a thin leather, and it had a black drawstring across its mouth.

I poked a finger inside, widening the opening, then carefully tipped the sachet onto its side, bouncing the edge on my palm to dislodge anything hidden within its depths.

Out rolled a small object that I at first took to be a pebble. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be some sort of grey seed.

I was about to throw it into my nearby trashbin when my curiousity struck.

Turning the seed over in my hands, I pondered what to do with it. Planting it seemed like the best idea, so I walked to the bathroom to get a small cup and some water.

The soil I scavenged from the bottom of my running shoes, which had been confined in my closet for the winter.

I knew the ground outside was too hard to obtain even a mote of soil from, so I had to settle for the secondhand dirt scraped from the treads of my Reeboks.

Tipping the dirt into the cup, I pressed my pinky finger in, making a hole just wide enough to admit the small seed.

As I tipped the seed in, an odd smell wafted into my nose. I sniffed, drawing a deep breath, trying to discern the scent from all the others in my room. It was acrid, like burning newspapers. It smelled like ashes.

The dirt quickly collapsed over the seed, burying it, and the scent of ashes.

I tipped a bit of water onto the surface of the dirt. It hung there, poised on the brown earth, the surface tension maintaining a round, bubble-like droplet.

Then it was sucked into the pores of the soil, as if something below had greedily drank it down.

I left to bring a bag of garbage to the garage

When I returned, rubbing my arms from the cold, the cup was gone.

At first, I thought I had left it somewhere, and that my mind had been distracted by the mess littering my bedroom floor

but then I noticed the thin ring of water on my desk where the cup had sat.

Upon closer inspection, I also noticed small tracks of water leading off the edge of the desk, like tiny footprints.

I tried to follow the thin droplets, but the carpet below had guzzled them up, leaving only a slight moistness in the material.

My door had been closed, so chances were that the cup was still in the room. I tried to pretend a draft had blown the cup off the desk, leaving a stream of water where it had tipped, but my window had been locked and shuttered. Even the blinds were down, and in a sudden grip of fear I tugged them open.

Light streamed into the room, but it only served to lengthen the shadows.

The lamp on my desk suddenly threw a threatening projection onto the wall. The plastic models on my bookshelf no longer looked like robots but demonic figurines.

Even my stuffed animals leered at me from their basket, their faces in eerie half-light.

I heard a quick scuffle from under my bed.

Cautiously, I reached for my Louisville Slugger, the wooden baseball bat I keep by the head of my pillow.

Slowly, I dropped to my knees. The unmade blankets dropped down to touch the floor. I reached a hand out to steady myself as I placed my head close to the ground.

With my other hand, I pinched a section of the blanket, ready to lift the curtain hiding whatever lay in wait under my bed.

With a cry, I pulled the blankets aside. Light streamed in, illuminating every dark corner. A jagged shadow lay huddled in the corner, sharp edges cast against the wall. I poked at it with the end of the baseball bat. It didn`t move, but made an odd clinking noise.

Using the bat, I manouvered the pieces into view. Shards of porcelain met my fingers as I reached out to scoop them up. The cup was shattered into 8 uneven pieces, each stained with dirt and a little water, which mingled into mud under my nails.

There was an odd red fluid that stained a few of the shards. I sniffed it carefully. It smelled like copper and iron.

I listened carefully. The silence enveloped me.

There wasn't a sound, other than the frantic beating of my heart.

I realized I had forgotten to breathe. I gasped once.

Twice.

Then something moved under the bedsheets, right in front of my eyes.

I grabbed the bat and swung. But whatever it was, it was fast, and dodged the crack by inches. It shuffled around under the bedspread, as I smacked the bed again and again, panting heavily.

I stopped to take a breath, and as I did, the lump under the sheets stopped too, as if it had read my mind.

A quiet tearing sound came from the rounded lump. A soft riiiiip that nevertheless penetrated the silence like a gunshot.

A hole appeared in my quilt. I spotted a thin claw, like that of a lizard, and a scaly, yellow eye. It blinked twice, then vanished.

The lump began to move again, this time towards the side of the bed where it met the wall. There was a thin crack there, between the frame and the wall, in which it would be able to slip and escape. I wasn't about to let that happen.

With the bat, I hammered away ferociously, blocking its movements with each swing. It seemed disorientated, moving in circles, trying to dodge my blows.

Eventually, it tried to make a break for it. The lump moved in a straight line for the edge, in a desperate gamble to reach the safety of the wall before I could take another swing.

The bat was too slow. Quickly, I scanned the room, and spotted my guitar binder on the desk next to me, within arm's reach. A binder filled with over 300 pages of tablature, as thick as a phone book.

I picked it up, hefted it onto my shoulder, and threw.

The book landed with pinpoint accuracy. I almost could hear a faint yelp, then the cracking of bones as the binder thudded, with grim finality, on the lump. It stopped moving.

Afraid of what I might find, I gripped the bat tightly in my left hand. With my right, I peeled the blankets back.

There was nothing there. Just a grey and black pile of ashes, and a thin trickle of smoke rising from them.

I picked up the entire bedsheet by the corners, avoiding the small mountain of ashes. Wrapping the cloth together, I bundled it into the garbage bag, then took the bag outside into the garage, pinching it by the corners.

I packed the bag, complete with the bundled bedsheets, into a metal bucket. Then I doused the entire thing with a generous amount of gasoline.

I brought the entire thing into my driveway. Standing a safe distance away, I tossed a match in.

I watched until the entire thing burned away. All that was left were ashes.

Feeling relieved, I returned to my room. The mess seemed less troublesome now, and I quickly disposed of anything unusual right away. My curiosity would not get the better of me again.

I tucked myself in that night, yawning from tension and nervousness. Closing my eyes, I put my hands behind my head, underneath my pillow.

And I felt something.

Hard. Round. Like a seed.

And another one.

And another one.

As I rolled them in my hands, realization dawning on me, I heard a thin crack. And another.

Then something cold touched my hand.