Two hundred pounds sat patiently in a manilla envelope on a bedside table, until Richard Bankwest awoke and shook them out. His name was scrawled across the front of the envelope in an unfamiliar hand. The handwriting was poor. Childlike, Richard thought.
Where had it come from? He hadn't the foggiest. There was no note attached. No real explanation. Did someone owe him money? Not that he could recall.
He put the money in a cabinet, in case the rightful owner came looking for it, perhaps realising their mistake. Then, he all but forgot about the event -- and the money -- for almost an entire month after.
January passed, as it always did for Richard: the English winter stretching interminably, like a sheet of ice suffocating the ocean, until eventually swallowed by the horizon. He worked. It was at a call centre, and it wasn't a job he liked. Elderly people would ring up and ask if they'd qualified for this money or for that money, and Richard would tell them no, and that they couldn't have any government assistance, and then they'd get upset.
Or angry.
It was easier to dismiss the angry callers. The sad ones... they stayed with him for at least the day, sometimes creeping into his nights, too. It wasn't that he cared. He didn't. But they barged into his dreams like unwelcome family when trying to watch the football.
A new colleague offered him something to help him with the dreams. With the stress.
He refused politely.
There was only one other strange incident in February. One event that was a tiny bit unusual for Richard.
He'd lost a day.
An entire day.
He'd taken it as annual leave, apparently. That's what the computer told him. And yet... he couldn't remember booking it, or what he even did with it. Although... his arm was sore for the two days after, as if he'd slept on it funny.
Still, in a life as uneventful and lonely as Richard's, a lost day was neither here nor there. He could lose them all, for all he cared. And so, he went back to his phone and picked up the receiver, and listened to another elderly person drone on about how cold it was this winter, and how they couldn't afford to put the heating on. Listen to them beg for help that he couldn't give and didn't want to.
It was the start of February when he found another manilla envelope resting next to his bed. He took first a gulp, then his time, then the envelope, and finally another gulp as he tore it open and the money drifted out of the envelope like autumn leaves. Eight hundred this time -- and with it, a note.
Richard. Had a blast last month, so I'm going to take it for an entire week. You kept me locked up for far too long, friend. If you can't enjoy life, someone else might as well!
He placed the money with the rest of his bizarrely gained fortune, inside his bedside cabinet. Might get a dragon try to roost in it, if I get any more of these envelopes, he thought dryly. Dismissively.
February however, passed a little differently January.
Mainly because there was less of it.
Now, even in Richard's world, where a lost day could be accepted like a penny dropped on the floor that's not worth one's time to retrieve, a lost week (plus a heavy suntan, and a tattoo of koala on his bicep) could not be.
Something was going wrong in Richard's head, and he knew it.
So he told the doctor.
The doctor said he was suffering from stress. That his subconscious wanted to get away from all the grey. It wanted to shine a rainbow of colour into his life. That he mustn't worry. He was still in charge.
He told the doctor about the note he'd found.
The doctor didn't roll his eyes, but the rest of his expression matched that of a person who desperately wanted to roll his eyes.
It was the last day of February (night time, in fact) and Richard was an electric ball of very human nerves. He scrawled a desperate letter and placed it on his bedside table, begging this body snatching Santa to take pity on him.
I don't care for your money. Please stop taking my body. It's mine.
The whiskey helped him sleep. Eventually.
The note he found in the morning made him pick up the bottle again.
You don't take care of yourself, Richard. You certainly don't make the most of your life. I'm taking two weeks this month. I have given you two thousand pounds for two weeks. That is far more than your life is worth, I think you'll agree. Quit your job, and enjoy the two weeks every month. If you do not... well, this is your last chance to live, Richard.
He called in sick that morning, as he held the phone to his ear with one trembling hand, and the whiskey bottle in another. He blacked out two hours later.
It was Valentine's day when he awoke.
Drugs. There were drugs in his apartment. Clear, plastic bags full of white powder. Had... had he bought them? He couldn't have. It must be this... other him.
He flushed them down the toilet as best he could, the powder misting the room and reddening his eyes.
He staggered into work, pale and thin and with two more tattoos to his name. He begged for his job back -- apparently he'd quite thirteen days ago.
It was reluctantly granted. His boss hated to see grown men crying.
Richard found it a relief to sit back down in his booth and answer the calls he'd used to hate. For the first time in a long time, he even tried helping the caller. Giving other numbers to call for advice and such.
For the first time he could remember, he cared about something.
The next two weeks he did remember, even if they were a white haze of doctors and psychiatrists at the weekends, of work and precipitation drugs during the days, and of alcohol and cigarettes during the nights.
It was the end of March, when he scribbled his final note, in a hand that looked as if it had been written during an earthquake.
Please. I want my life back. I love life, even if maybe sometimes I don't -- didn't -- fully appreciate. But I'll start dating -- I signed up to a website last week! I'll join a gym soon, too. It's my life. Please, give it back.
Then blackness.
Then eight hours later, light.
No.
There was no money this time. Nothing.
Richard happened to glance at the clock. It was almost midnight.
Then he saw the date.
April the thirtieth.
He began to cry, his lips trembling, until they didn't.
Until they struck a switch-blade smile.
Until his eyes shone and his body took a deep, relaxing breath.
-Big Bro Out
