(okay, uh, I just kind of got a bug up my ass to pound this out in the middle of the night, so um, don't be surprised if it's not really any good)
Red had conquered the edges of his eyes and shot through the whites when he came to get me, that night. The way the light struck his eyes made it look like he was crying, or had been crying, or would be crying. It was late, verging on early, like 4 a.m. It felt like a dream, and part of me still believes it was.
"It's okay. This is important. I thought it was a dream, but it's not, it's so much better. Just let me show you." That's what he said as he pulled me down the stairs by the sleeve of my nightgown. I heard a strange jingling, like change, as we made our way down one flight of stairs, stairs I've walked up and down a million times, then down the stairs into the cellar, which I don't think I've set foot on twice in the twelve years we've owned this house. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the cellar, there had just never been any reason to go down there. I guess there is now.
"I hardly believe what I'm about to show you. This is going to change everything. I'm going to be able to give you everything you ever wanted. This is going to change our lives for the better." It didn't, as you can probably guess by the tone of this story, but he was grinning now. My husband has never been one for grinning, at all, typically a very somber, intense man. He has always primarily expressed himself through his art. In any case, despite myself I began to hope.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. It was dark; we hadn't installed proper lighting, just some windows flooding the room with moonlight. What a beautiful moon, that night. I wiped the sleep from my eyes; it was just bright enough that they actually had to adjust. The scene was beautiful, probably worthy of being in one of his paintings.
Finally, we stopped at a corner. It was bare concrete, except for a small, rusty pipe jutting awkwardly out of a wall at around knee level. He waited without saying anything, still grinning, as though expecting a reaction. After a moment, I said "All right, so... what is it?"
Still without saying a word, he sat, crosslegged, in front of the pipe. He focused his gaze on it, eyes suddenly clearing and acquiring a fresh intensity, and a second later a small clink issued forth from the pipe. It was followed by a tiny, echoey clatter. A small dark circle now sat in the middle of the floor between me and him. I swallowed, afraid to look. I didn't want to believe it. I knew what it was, though. I bent over, picked it up, looked closer, and sure enough.
It was a penny.
"Now, I know it seems crazy. But somehow, somehow, when I sit and concentrate on this pipe... pennies begin to fall out. About, um, one every second. I think."
"David," I said, "you need to get some sleep. Please. Come to bed." I yawned, a little bit. I guess was really saying that I wanted to go back to bed and forget this had happened. He shook his head, violently.
"No, you don't understand. Every second, another penny! And as far as I can tell, I can do this for as long as I want, for as much money as I want." He stopped suddenly, and grabbed my arm. "We now have an unlimited amount of money, right in there, just waiting for us to take it." I pulled my arm free, and I just walked off, shaking my head.
It wasn't really that bad, at least in the beginning. First, I noticed that he started losing sleep. Little bits at first. He would wake up in a panic and just lay there, fidgeting for hours until finally he would get up and disappear down the stairs. When he wasn't painting, he was usually down there. It began to cut into our time together, severely, and when we did find a moment to be together I'd catch him checking his watch, or counting the seconds under his breath.
For a while, I took him food, and at first he ate it. Then he began to wolf it down, faster and faster, until eventually he stopped eating it at all, explaining that it could cost him as much as ten minutes, that is, ten dollars. David began to wither.
Eventually, he didn't paint at all. He never gave me an explanation, and I never pressed him on it.
Then one day, I guess he got bitten by one of the thousands of spiders down there. I noticed it when I snuck down to check on him; by then, he got furious if I disturbed his concentration in the slightest. I peeked around the corner, and saw him there, meditating among the huge piles of god damn pennies he was never going to be able to get out of there. His face was swollen, the flesh rotting. Tears streamed down his face, but he didn't move a single muscle. It took everything I had not to scream, to continue being quiet as I crept closer.
Soon I was standing right behind him, and I could see what wasn't clear from the stairs. The spiders were all over him, in his hair, all over his clothes, on his skin. And the bite on his face was only the most advanced, there were many more, all over the rest of his body. This time I couldn't hold back the scream. It was a wordless, ear-splitting thing. He jumped, sending a number of spiders skittering across the floor. He barely had time to turn his head in shock before I was pulling him to his feet, brushing him off, scream trailing away into a subdued gurgle.
He let out a body-wrenching sob, and looked at me with more pain in his eyes than I have ever seen in a human being, raspily counting under his breath, right before burying the knife in my stomach. He didn't even watch me die. He sat immediately back down, and I heard the soft series of clinks begin again. Still, I did manage to take some comfort in observing that his shoulders continued to shake as from quiet, anguished crying, as my world slowly faded to black.
