Hunger

"That's really it?" the man in the thrift-shop suede jacket asked, surprised smile stuck on his face. "Don't I need to sign something or..."

"No," said the old woman, gesturing toward the door. "Now leave. Please."

"But I only just got here!" he said as she pushed him up out of his chair and toward the exit. "What about the..."

"The what? The case? Keep it." she pushed him forward again and he turned to see her recoil as if he had suddenly become electrified. Her piercing gaze clouded over a little more every second.

The cufflinks dangled from the pinched grasp of his left hand, suddenly forgotten. "What is happening to your eyes?"

She shook her head vigorously before snatching the golden accessories. "Right. Thank you."

With a final push, he stumbled to the ground on the street as the glass door to the creepy old pawn shop slammed in his face. In the time it took him to get back on his feet, he heard the door lock. As he pulled his right hand up to check his breast pocket, he hit himself in the chest with the black briefcase he had somehow forgotten receiving in the deal. He laughed. "20,000 dollars does hurt a bit when you hit yourself with it."

For the first few stops on the subway, he stood and thought about how he was going to tell Freida. He would have her over and explain how he found these cufflinks on the train one night, just sitting there next to him. No one else was in the car and when he got to his stop, he couldn't find anyone official to give them to. The whole station seemed to be vacant, but leaving the cufflinks at an unmanned desk just felt wrong though, so he resolved to try to turn them in later.

It was the next day when he realized they were still in his pocket. Despite being on the street, he took them out to have a closer look when a weird little old woman popped out of nowhere and shouted, "Five thousand dollars!"

"No, sorry." he said, not recognizing the words as an offer, barely recognizing them as words at all.

"Ten thousand." she said, motioning him toward her shop with one slightly gnarled index finger. Her eyebrows lifted in a suggestive beckoning that surprised a chuckle from him.

He blinked. This had to be a prank or something. No one hands you thousands of dollars for something you found at random. "I just found them is all. I have to give them to the station's lost and found."

"Fifteen," the old woman insisted, voice curving toward desperation.

She must really want them, he thought, but couldn't understand why. Sure, they look nice, but they're not exactly designer goods. From where she stood, she wouldn't even be able to make out the worn, wispy initials illegibly engraved on the front.

But fifteen thousand dollars could change the world for him, even if it only bought him a couple more months of job hunting before he gave up and moved back to nowhere. Fifteen thousand dollars could be the cushion he needed to get the life he wanted.

"Twenty." she said. "Final offer."

He was nodding before he realized it, reluctance dropping from him like a forgotten cloak falling from his shoulders.

The old woman brought him inside of her ancient pawn shop, over crowded with odds and ends that he wouldn't have been able to identify if he had tried. He barely had a chance to take it in before she slammed a thin, hard leather briefcase on the counter and opened it with a simultaneous snapping of the two clasps. Surely enough, thousands of dollars lay stacked in neat rows inside, all in bank binding that he had only seen in movies about hostage exchanges. It looked enough like twenty thousand dollars that he struggled to remain calm, rational thoughts fleeing at the sight of so much money.

And that is how I made 20,000 dollars in the big city, he thought to himself. Frieda wouldn't believe it. He could barely believe it, but there it was in his hands.

But, he could hear Frieda's most likely response in his head, Are you sure it's the right amount? Not counterfeit?

Crap. he thought, remembering how quickly the woman had rushed him out of the place, and how she hadn't counted the money out or written a receipt.

As little as he wanted to open a briefcase full of money on public transit in the big city, he just had to know how badly he had been played. Looking around, he counted the seven people spaced throughout the car and took a seat as far from any of them as he could get.

Sliding the briefcase onto his lap, he moved his thumbs to the latches. Only when he confirmed that no one was watching him did he unlatch the case and lift the lid halfway open. Five stacks across and two stacks down, the bills still looked real enough. While trying to pull out a bill from the top of a stack, the back of his hand brushed against something warm.

Forgetting about the rest of the train, he flipped the lid fully open to reveal a pocket sewn into the lining of the lid with a thin black notebook peeking out from inside.

His fingers were drawn to the surface of the book where it was still hot to the touch. As he pulled the book out, he saw no reason for the heat. The rest of the pocket remained as cool as the rest of the case, only the book radiating a feverish warmth.

Without another thought, his hands instinctively opened the notebook to the first page. Every inch of space was covered in such a solid, deep black that he ran his thumb over it, expecting the indention of a void. Finding volume on the page, he turned the page to see that the darkness hadn't bleed through. Instead, positioned in the center of the two open pages lay the face of an old man, tired lines exaggerated in a look of intense pain as the sagging flesh of bare chest lay marked with old scars.

As uncomfortable as the image made him, he had to admit it was good art. Not only did the realistic detailing show great ability but the depiction created a visceral reaction in him, even if it wasn't an enjoyable one. To do so much with only black ink and paper demonstrated an impressive level of skill.

He turned the page. Another face stood in the same position, this time an old woman, also unclothed, though nothing below her shoulders was visible. Her face was held in the same kind of grimace he remembered his grandmother having toward the end.

Such expert detail work he could have commended, but the subject matter disturbed him. He couldn't imagine why anyone would draw these but hoped the next page would hold something less upsetting or at least different.

His left hand shook just a little as it held the edge of the turned page and nausea flooded his stomach. The third portrait was of a child, no more then ten years old, tears streaming down their fear-ravaged face.

That's enough, he thought, trying to slam the book closed only managing to slam his thumbs together.

Let go! He commanded, but his hands wouldn't yield. Wrenching and pulling the book did nothing but make it feel hotter, as if it may soon blister his palms and fingers. With a frustration just shy of despair he realized that moving forward was the only option.

In an act of self preservation, he flipped through the next pages at a speed that didn't provide him more than cursory details, and he tried his best to aim his gaze at the clothes or the hair-- anything but the faces. One older man wore a soldier's uniform from some time ago, teeth bare in a grimace that shared anger, pain and fear. Only the last two emotions made it to his eyes.

Faster, he flipped through a young man in rags, then a worn face in a peasant blouse, then yet another child, this one pleading in a night shirt that reminded him of Charles Dickens. He sped up but stopped as he could almost hear the shriek of a younger woman in a high-collared button-down as her hair became spiraling panic. The next was an older man in a suit and tie, hat flying off his head to the left as if he had only just convulsed. Afterward, a woman with a flapper headband howled, short curls splaying in sweat and anguish. Every ethnicity and age he could imagine had been committed to this book and every single face was captured in a moment of terror and pain.

Oh God, he thought. When does it stop?!

Another girl in pigtails with a doll shrieked in terror, looking up at him from the page.

Then a boy with a cartoon t-shirt from the early nineties stared back, eyes begging for help that could not come.

Why hasn't it stopped?

Another woman with gauged holes in her earlobes and a nose ring snarled, anger seeping into the fear in her eyes.

Who would keep a book like this?

The next picture was a child in so much pain that his eyes scrambled for the periphery, desperate to avoid the face. Flying backward from the child's grasp was a toy he recognized. Last Christmas, he had bought the same one for his nephew. Tears ran down his face as he gripped the edge of the page.

Who would draw this?

Heart pounding, he turned the page.

It was utterly blank. Not one mark marred the surface, and he released the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. He tried to run the palm of his left hand over the blankness, expecting to feel the flat coolness of an unused page. Instead, the warmth of the book on his fingertips turned molten as his hand passed through.

He looked up, hoping that someone on the train could help him, but searing pain took hold then, running up his arm as the book drew him in. Looking down, he saw his left arm registering on the page in picture perfect detail, from the creases in his palm to the tattered spot on the cuff of his thrift-store suede jacket.

His shriek of terror rocked the train car in the split second before the book swallowed him whole. The thin black notebook flopped to the seat just as the train came into the next station, sending the briefcase tumbling to the floor where it snapped shut.

None of the other passengers even looked up as a short, shadowy figure came in from the next car. Pulling back her hood, the old woman clucked her tongue.

"I thought he'd never leave," she said softly as she picked up the case and opened it on the seat. Shifting the stacks of bills forward, she pulled out a pair of metal tongs.

The book twitched.

"Don't," she said, gently and swiftly pinching it up and into the air with the tongs. "You know this is the only reliable way we have to get you food."

It twitched in the tongs, and she gave it a firm shake.

"Settle," she commanded and it reluctantly obeyed.

The old woman put the little black notebook back in its pocket before replacing the tongs and closing the case. She drew her hood again before standing and as she started to walk away, the book shook hard enough to jostle the case.

"Right," she said, reaching her other hand into her pocket. "I keep forgetting."

She departed at the next stop, leaving only ghosts and a pair of gold cufflinks on the next open seat.