The Debt Collector

The scene could have been anywhere. But it was Boston.

The year could have been anytime. But it was 2026.

The figure could have been anyone. Their height was somewhere between tall and short, their hair somewhere between blonde or red or black or brown. Their eyes could have been dark or light. Their gender indeterminant. They moved through the crowd and their clothes kept shifting, a green dress, a black suit, a cream sweater. Even their movement was fluid like water slowly settling over a flat surface.

The girl on the other hand had always been one thing. That was rebellious.

She was draped into a velvet lounge, joint hung loosely between her fingers coming ever so close to setting her cheap, sparkly dress aflame. Her eyes were dark and heavy with makeup, the lids drooping low. There were three empty glasses lined up haphazardly on the low table beside her. The lights were dim and moody, the music jangly and bright as people laughed and danced around her.

This was a club. A new one that had opened last month with completely unoriginal theme of 1920s speakeasy. The designers had gone for the dark wood tones and velvets. But it was still a converted warehouse. The fake stone plastered onto the walls did not hide the bones of such a space. The windows had been blacked out, the ducts painted, but the eyes of security cameras and smoke alarms still glowed up in the nest of the exposed ceiling high above.

The girl had been here a few times now. It was new so it didn’t have regulars yet. No one to know her face or ask her how she’s been. Only the dealers peddling their offerings in the anonymity of a crowd. Here she could pretend to be anyone. But she was Rose Gallant. When she walked out of here in the morning, she would still be Rose Gallant. That girl people whispered about.

Rose barely moved her eyes as the figure crossed into her line of sight. As they got closer, she saw a man. But they were not a man. To her he had one of those faces that was both familiar and alien. Someone she both had known forever and had never met. His skin was dark, his eyes darker, his voice when he spoke like honeyed smoke. Sweet, but you could choke on it.

“Hello.”

Rose did not respond. She was not here for boys. She was not here for company. The man alighted on the arm of the armchair across from her and a long moment of pointed silence which Rose thought made her position very clear ensued. It did not.

“Buzz off why don’t you. I'm not interested.” Her voice was syrupy and slow, rough like she’d been screaming. Or crying.

“I haven’t offered you anything.” The man’s expression was bemused, thoughtful almost. Old. Far, far too old. For a place like this. For a girl like this.

Rose blew out a long, aggrieved breath, “This isn’t cute, whatever this bit you think you’re doing. I’m not going to suddenly strip down to nothing and let you gape at me because you’re playing to man of mystery.”

“You already have.”

Rose was drunk. But not that drunk. She was high. But not that high. She was sure with one hundred percent certainty that she had never met this guy before a day in her life.

She was right. But she wasn’t.

“What do you want?” She asked, still lounging, still making it perfectly clear that she wanted to be left alone. The joint slowly burning in her fingers. The music echoing in her chest.

“I am a collector.” The man said and Rose blinked. Something fought to surface in her memory. But it wasn’t there.

“Of what?” She asked without meaning too and the man smiled. It was a smile full of perfect white teeth, each one glinting in the low lighting. Something animal fought to surface in Rose. But it wasn’t enough.

“Debts.”

She ran her tongue along the front of her own grimy teeth. The joint fell between her fingers and died on the floor next to her tall black combat boot. Adrenaline was fighting the depressants in her system. She straightened her spine.

“I don’t owe anyone anything.” This was a lie. But also, a truth. The figure was not interested in the types of debt that Rose would lie about. Not the student loans, not the car payment, not the credit cards. They were interested in something else.

The man in front of Rose hummed. The sound resonated deeper than the music. It felt etched into her bones as her mouth fell open. She had no idea why.

“I am a collector of debts with consequences.” He clarified. It did not clear anything up.

Rose drew on her armor. She layered it around herself in: prickly demeanor, unapproachable aura, rude mouth, thousand-yard stare. A hundred words people called things like her. “What does that even mean?” She layered the words with venom and poison and acid. Whatever she could spill from her tongue.

“Anger is only fear in disguise.” The man said. His eyes were depthless, bottomless, soulless. Rose clutched her armor tighter, her head tilting up haughtily, jaw clenched.

“What do you want from me?” The words thrown between them like a gauntlet. The figure let their gaze travel through Rose.

“A debt.” He said and she closed her eyes.

“Which debt?”

“There is a road. It is winter. It is snowing. There is a car.”

“Stop!” The animal inside her rears up, breath too quick, heart too loud. The crowd doesn’t see. Doesn’t care. “Don’t.” The warning is lower now, a snake raising its hood before a strike. Dangerous. Not dangerous enough.

“In this car there are two people. There is a girl and a boy. They share blood. The girl is not speaking to the boy. She is sick. She is angry. The boy is lecturing to deaf ears.”

“Stop.” A plea. Shoulders hunched against the onslaught of weapons sharp enough to cut bone. “Please stop.”

“The girl had been somewhere she had not been allowed to go. She had ingested something she had not been allowed to ingest. Someone else had called the boy.”

The word that left Rose’s mouth wasn’t a word. It was a whimper. The sound an animal makes before it resigns itself to die.

“The girl had enough. She’d begun shouting. Screaming and screaming and screaming. Words as knives. Words as weapons. Words as punishment. Hands where they shouldn’t go. A moment where falling felt like flying. A moment where control was lost. A car that was no longer a car. A sound. Loud, so loud. Ringing and ringing and ringing.”

Tears glittered in the low lighting. Shoulders curled over a heaving chest. The armor lay broken, the girl shredded and destroyed. “What do you want from me?” A whisper so quiet no one could hear. Something heard.

“A boy and a girl were taken away from the car that was no longer a car. A boy and a girl were taken to a place where broken things were made whole. Two broken things made into one.”

But not whole.

“A girl went home. A boy went underground. But not whole.”

“No.” Rose breathed. Air moving out of lungs that used to belong to someone else. Her brother.

“A debt is a heavy, heavy thing.” The man’s voice said. It sat on her chest, pushing down, down, down.

“Are you here to kill me?” A guillotine hung over an exposed neck. “For…for…squandering my second chance? For killing my brother? I never meant for any of that to happen. If I could take it all back, I would. I would tell them to save him instead of me. That he was the one worth keeping. Not me. Not me.”

The figure spread out long dark fingers and reached for the girl’s cheek. They gently scooped a perfect tear from her skin. Their fingers were cold. But not. They took the tear and held it up to the light for a single moment before it bled into their skin.

“I have collected from you this debt. You are free from it now. Live your life without shadow.” The voice was a comforter on a winter’s night. The arms of someone you love. A favorite story. A lullaby.

Rose shuddered. But she felt lighter. She stared at the figure. “James?”

It was the first time that name had crossed her lips in over a year. It pulled from her chest, air released from a tire. A bird free to fly.

The figure rose and melted into the crowd.

…

The scene could have been anywhere. But it was Kansas.

The year could have been anytime. But it was 1975.

The figure could have been anyone. Their height was somewhere between tall and short, their hair somewhere between blonde or red or black or brown. Their eyes could have been dark or light. Their gender indeterminant. They moved through the crowd and their clothes kept shifting, a green dress, a black suit, a cream sweater. Even their movement was fluid like water slowly settling over a flat surface.

The boy on the other hand had always been one thing. That was prideful.

His eyes darkened in challenge as he saw the small woman in uniform approaching him.

“What do you want?” Blunt and heavy words. Clumsy and tactless.

“I am here to collect a debt.”