August 6, 2005
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too good to be true........?
"Bank error in your favor..."
Come with me for a moment on a thought-trail.
You walk out to get your mail, and the birds are singing in the sunshine. The rusty mailbox dangles from the last remaining nail as you open it... You'll have to repair it one of these days.
You grab the handful of letters and flip through them hastily, hoping that today will not be the day. But as you scan the last letter, your heart suddenly stops cold.
There it is, lying pristinely in your hand, the letter you were so hoping would never arrive.
Suddenly, the world around you is silent, grim, shadowy. Your life, your future, all of your happiness, gone. Forever. All because of a drunken gamble very late at the bar four nights ago.
"How could I have been so stupid?" you ask, in a vain attempt to cheer yourself up. But the torment will not go away.
"I'll sell the truck; I'll mortage my trailer!" you think. "Surely that will help a little bit."
But deep inside, you know that the sum total of your possessions is hardly worth a tiny fraction of what you owe.
A moment ago the air you breathed was sweet to your lungs - now it is abhorrent. You shudder as if stabbed in the stomach, a condemned man for the first time. Your past has finally caught up to you. You had thought that it never would.
Your future stretches out in front of you - a guilty, condemned man... bankruptcy, jail, shame, disgrace, guilt... "Guilty..." you whisper to yourself.
The other letters slip down onto the brown grass - only the one letter matters. You tear apart the gray envelope with suddenly shaking hands.
"The Krinei Collection Group, Inc., is pleased to inform you that..."
Your hands are shaking so much that you cannot read further. Surely there must have been some mistake in what you just read. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, trying to steady yourself.
"...pleased to inform you that your debt to William Nomos has been paid in full by an anonymous benefactor and an additional sum has been placed into your bank account in the amount of one billion USD. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions..."
This is too much. You collapse on the grass, fists unconsciously clenched on the white paper, manic eyes fixated on the first paragraph.
Who... what... how...? Could this be a joke? No, the letter contains your correct bank account number, and Bill had mentioned Krinei to you before.
But... it is all just too good to be true, isn't it?
Comments (2)
The searing, insane "injustice" of what God did for me overwhelmed me once again during the car ride home today. And to think that it's all true... no error... There has really been a transaction paid, and it really was in my favor, in the extent described...
"Not guilty..."
makes me think of mr. bulstrode in george eliot's Middlemarch.. not sure if he has a happy ending though; thanks for the message! will call back soon--
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