Emptied Account

Joe shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. Waiting in line was not his favorite activity. Especially at the bank. It was obviously that the woman in front of him was fed up as well; she was talking to herself. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it was clear that she was not happy. Even the security guard by the front door looked bored.

Joe had tried to avoid coming inside. The bank often resembled the DMV, although, honestly, nothing is worse than the DMV. But the bank was bad enough to make Joe think of the DMV. The least they could do was have more than one teller open at a time.

Usually, Joe would just use the ATM machine out front. His trip today had been prompted by Joe’s concerns about how his account was coping with the current economic crisis. To his dismay, Joe had read the fatal message:

ACCOUNT EMPTY
CONTACT YOUR BANK

Not what Joe wanted to read. He was hoping it was a mistake. It wasn’t possible to have a completely empty account, was it? Wasn’t there a minimum amount that had to stay in the account for it to exist?

So Joe was in the process of contacting his bank, which consisted of his waiting in line. He knew he should be more worried about his financial state, but he was mostly just pissed off. Originally he was pissed at the people who had botched the economy, and then the more immediate people who handled his investments. But right now all of his anger was aimed directly at the ATM machine with the bad news and the bank it was connected to, which also happened to be the building that contained the stupid line he was standing in. The teller was going to get an earful when his turn came.

“NO! DON’T YOU DARE!” the woman in front of him was shouting. Joe stared, trying to figure out whom she was talking to. “DAD, YOU ASSHOLE! LEAVE ME ALONE! I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU!”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the security officer tapped the woman on her shoulder. “WHAT!” She whipped around to face the man. As she turned Joe saw the Bluetooth headset in her ear.

“We don’t allow cell phones in the bank. If you would like to continue your conversati—“

“I’m done!” she said and turned back around. The security guard returned to his spot by the front. Joe’s heart was still up slightly, but both the security guard and the teller seemed to take it in stride. Apparently upset people were not unusual in the bank. Not all that surprising, really.

A resounding crash rocked the building. Amidst the sound of metal scraping against metal, through a shower of sparks, Joe watched the security guard lurch forward past him into the woman as he was thrown to the floor. The instant after his hands hit the floor they were surrounded by shattered glass.

Not knowing what had caused the crash, Joe looked around before rising to his feet. Looking forward, he noticed a twisted piece of steaming metal lodged where the handle of the door leading to where the teller stood.

Joe half rose to see where the metal had flown from. As he turned toward the front of the bank (the same place where the security guard had been shoved from, which made sense slowly in Joe’s brain), he noticed green confetti. He also saw what he would find out later was a 1956 Ford Mercury wagon. It wasn’t a classic car that someone had lovingly taken care of over the decades, but a beat up old tank of a car that the owner hadn’t bothered to replace.

Joe couldn’t see the driver because there was smoke spewing from the front of the car. He stood all the way up and grabbed a piece of the confetti that was flying around. As he looked closely at it, the hamsters in his brain racing madly on their wheels, and he realized that it was a portion of a twenty-dollar bill. He snatched another one, more complete than the first.

Without a conscious thought process, Joe moved toward the car scanning the floor. Four feet from the front bumper, which was three full feet in the bank, Joe saw his first undamaged dollar bill, inches away, a landslide of them, pouring from the wreckage of the ATM machine that had stood in front of the bank.

The same ATM that had bluntly told Joe that he was broke now lay broken in countless pieces with its wealth spilled before him. Joe hesitated long enough to look back at the unconscious security guard and the woman he had hit who also appeared to be out for the count.

Joe began shoving money into his pockets. In his frenzy he missed his pockets several times, pushing green paper directly into his pants instead. He didn’t care; it was all going with him.

His pants stuffed full, Joe whipped off his shirt and began shoveling money into it as though it were a duffel bag. Suddenly Joe was glad that he had been slowly gaining weight over the years. Bigger shirts hold more money.

Shirt full, Joe lurched one step toward the door, noticed cash leaking from the bottom of his pant leg. Joe was struck with one last bit of money-carrying inspiration. He bent down and stuffed some bills into his shoes without bothering to take them off.

Unable to jam any more money into his clothing, Joe burst through the front door and scrambled to his car. The teller, still inside, watched Joe leave.

“The perpetrator has yet to be caught,” the reporters face looked very real on Joe’s new high-definition flat screen television. “If you don’t remember, a Bank of America was struck by a 1956 Ford Mercury wagon driven by Michael Farlane, an elderly man who died moments before he crashed of a heart attack. His daughter, Kristine Farlane, was inside the bank during the incident. A trapped bank employee watched an unknown man who was waiting in line haul away money that had been in the ATM machine that Mr. Farlane crashed into at the front of the bank. The security guard was unconscious and the security cameras were shorted out by the crash. The identity of the thief remains a mystery.”