36: Liability

The noise of children playing outside and the clatter of the neighbor’s junk of a car struggling to start, woke Aaron from his slumber. It was morning again. He stared at the ceiling wondering what he was doing and what he was going to do. He looked to his side and found the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The love of his life was sound asleep inches away from him. He couldn’t help but stare. Never in his wildest dreams did he ever hope to spend a night with Sophie in his house. Chloe would be proud. They had finally kissed. Aaron had felt his heart jump out of his body with excitement at that fateful moment. The feeling was mutual. Sophie loved him just as much if not more. He gawked at her pink lips with a feeling of lust taking control over him. He had respected her too much to proceed ahead of a passionate kiss but looking at her in such a state made him reconsider. He inched closer and closer. Consequences didn’t concern him. A loud knock on the door jolted him straight and also woke up Sophie. She woke up in a panic and Aaron was also on high alert. All the feelings of lust and love had vanished in an instant. He wondered if he should dart for his gun.

“Yo Aaron! It’s something from your bank!”, Big T shouted from the outside and slid an envelope under the door. Sophie was relieved and so was Aaron. Sophie looked around for her phone to check the time. She looked back at Aaron and found him looking greatly worried. She wanted to ask him what was up.

“I don’t have a bank account. Never had!”, he spoke staring at the envelope lying on the ground just feet away from him. It took a moment for Sophie to understand what he meant and why it was serious. He carefully walked up to his door and slowly picked it up. It was a white envelope with an emblem of a famous bank on both sides. It bore his name. It had everything from the stamps to bank’s counterfeit seal to make it look authentic. Aaron tried to feel if it contained anything other than paper. He could feel nothing out of the ordinary in terms of weight. He reluctantly tore it open. It contained a single formally folded paper. It was a letter head of the bank and read, “Credit Card Statement” on the header. Underneath the header was a table of transactions he had never made. It left him puzzled. ‘How am I making transactions from a credit card I don’t even know exist?’, he thought. All the numbers that stretched from the previous month to the present date, made no sense whatsoever. He had expected too much of the mysterious mail. He shook his head in disappointment.

“What is it?”, Sophie spoke, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

“Just a pencil pusher’s best”, he responded. There was no address on the envelope so it was just blind luck that it had arrived on the door of a random Aaron Crawley. He folded the paper back the way it was to shove it back into the envelope and decided to toss it out. He decided against it at the last moment and chose to read it out of curiosity. He wondered what his other self had spent his money on. The bills ranged from everything to anything. It was an interesting read. After going through it, he realized that the transactions were made from branch no. 3 of every place. He couldn’t tell if the stores named their branches by numbers but it said so on that paper. It raised suspicions in his head. He wondered if it was just a coincidence. In the past, the elders had left clues in the dumbest of places that made him question their judgment altogether. The bottom of the paper mentioned the branches of the bank across the state. The First and second just pointed to the most famous skyscrapers in the city. The third one looked odd. It directed to a public park near his house. There was no mention of a plot number. Just the specific area of the park that was supposedly reserved for swings. He was half sure that it meant something. He started the searching the entire paper for clues. Sophie was puzzled. He kept reading it over and over. He tried to align every first letter of each transaction to make up something. Nothing added up. He lifted the held the paper against the window to see if there were any hidden writings. There were none. He tried to make up a phone number from the numbers mentioned in the paper. Couldn’t manage it. He gave up and decided to visit the park anyway. Just as he was folding the paper back the way it was, he caught the microscopic text at the back that read ‘Terms and Conditions’. He tried to give it a shot. It consisted of several bullet points that immunized the bank in every possible way. The one in the middle of them all caught his attention. It hit him like a train. It plainly read, “The customers with the Diamond Boot Card are requested to produce their liabilities in Branch#3 at their earliest…”

Aaron knew exactly what that meant. If the letter was from the elders, he knew exactly what the ‘liability’ meant. It pissed him off. Not only that the people he was depending on to save his and his girlfriend’s life, had proven to be pathetic at their job but they also saw his emotions as dead weight. They had advised him to ditch her before but he had decided against it and had listened to his heart. He wasn’t going to let them dictate that part of his life. He tore the paper into tiny little pieces and tossed them behind him. Sophie saw the sudden change in his mood. He stood motionlessly with his eyes closed, deeply trying to fathom the circumstances. He turned and found Sophie with a questioning look on her face. He quickly shifted his expressions.

“It’s getting real boring staying at home all day. Let’s take a stroll in the park today”, he suggested in a cheery mood. Sophie was confused.
“But isn’t it unsafe?”, she worriedly inquired.
“I’ve got a feeling that it’s gonna be just fine”, he comforted her.