Windfall

Read Windfall, among other short stories, on decentralised literary magazine Softcover.eth.

He knew as soon as he got into the box that he shouldn’t have but he was in the line of work that knew how small a million dollars can be when the notes are in large denominations. You’ll not find yourself in a similar situation unless you follow your rights broker onto a strange plane from Daru across the Torres Strait. When the box fell from the cargo hold, maybe nudged or maybe not, that rights broker was somewhere else on the plane. Maybe.

It wasn’t even a love of money or those ones they warn you against. More like curiosity, like the other one they say. Not that he had nine lives or anything. Just one. The wind whistled past through the small holes in the frame of the box and the million dollars fast lost its sheen. He felt like he was wearing the plastic notes thin as he tried to think of some Icarian way to bind them together even now and strap them to his back and glide off.

That would have been a good one. Hard to believe, that’s true. He imagined retelling it at the pub. Hoping it just held him steady until he splashed down, keeping some of the bills to buy a few things back on the mainland whenever he arrived. He’d have to sleep somewhere overnight in the rainforests. Cross the Daintree somehow to get back to Cairns. He didn’t suspect the money would be that handy in the wild. Not even a chunky enough block to feed to a crocodile for safe passage for a moment, a night, a trip down a shallow-seeming stream. He’d done it before. But he’d had better leverage than a million bucks then.

What he had now a people problem. Time traded for other people’s time. But here, alone, it wasn’t much good. Would it be much good again? Would it be — no. Never mind. What would come? Whistling and rattling. A bill slipping loose. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and whatever or something.

The long list of ways to spend it changed as the salt air smell came stronger. Maybe he’d try the wing thing after all. He kicked at one of the wooden panels and it came loose and it struggled against the quiet sky. He regretted pretty quickly looking out through it. He couldn’t hear his own reaction. That feeling deep in your gut on the edge through all of him.

But not for much longer.

Read Windfall, among other short stories, on decentralised literary magazine Softcover.