wE Want $100,000 0R we kill yoUr giRl
wE Want $100,000 0R we kill yoUr giRl
Steve stared at the piece of paper in his hands like it had a dead spider plastered on its surface. There was no dead spider of course, but instead it was covered with glued-on cut off pieces from a newspaper forming the most absurd words someone had ever told Steve in both spoken and written forms.
He turned the paper and looked at the back side that unfortunately didn’t have any answers to the many questions swarming his head, but had a date, time and an unfamiliar address written in printed letters.
A tram passed his building and the floor under Steve’s feet trembled like always. The building was old and barely holding itself together, and the frequent trams that went back and forth on the street below shaking the whole construction didn’t exactly make it better. Steve reached out to a photo frame hanging on the wall, straightening it in an absentminded gesture that came to him after living in this place for as long as he had.
He looked at the paper in his hand once again and scratched his balding head.
“What the fuck,” Steve said.
It wasn’t exactly a question, but rather a statement of fact. There was some fuckedy situation going on here, that was clear.
He set the paper aside and directed his blank gaze to an equally empty wall, contemplating.
Might it be that his buddy Rick had played a joke on him? It was true that Steve hadn’t had a girlfriend for the years so many it had gotten pretty embarrassing to admit it outloud.
And so Steve didn’t. For all that his colleagues and rare acquaintances were concerned he had been in a stable and happy relationship with a girl named Amanda for the last several months.
There was no such girl Amanda of course, aside from Steve’s imagination and his elaborate lies. Well, he figured there were plenty of Amandas out there out of his reach, but none of them was his girlfriend.
He liked the name though. Amanda. His mother was called Amanda and he always had a loving relationship with her until she died ten years ago. He figured if he ever met a girl named Amanda she undoubtedly would be as kind as his mother was.
And so Steve had been in this imaginary relationship with an imaginary Amanda for quite some time now, and only his buddy Rick knew the truth. Because, you see, Rick was, just like Steve, one unfortunate enough as not to have any particularly appealing qualities. This made both of them the kind of person you might meet in the line at a bank, where they would complain about being late to work and high taxes and their loud neighbor, but you would forget their face as soon as you step outside and get back to your significantly more entertaining life.
This were Steve and Rick. An average Joe, you could say. Or someone might even say, a loser.
So Rick, being similarly unfortunate in everything he was just like Steve himself, who bonded with him through their shared misery and hatred toward the rest of the world, knew about Steve’s Amanda being imaginary, and he didn’t hesitate to make fun of his buddy for this.
Truth be told it was the only entertainment Rick could get out of his pathetic life, so Steve didn’t hold it against him. However until now Rick had stuck to the friendly vocal abuse regarding Amanda, and the ransom note was something new.
Some irrational part of Steve that wished very much for Amanda to be real, felt a spike of real fear and concern toward the fate of a not very real woman.
“Oh no, not Amanda!” that part of him screamed internally at Steve, urging him to do something to save his girlfriend.
With some effort Steve managed to ignore it and instead of dialing the police number, as his first instinct told him, he called his friend Rick instead.
“Very funny,” Steve said as soon as Rick picked up the phone. “I should’ve never told you about Amanda,” he added vengefully.
There was a confused noise on the other end of the line and Rick replied that he had no idea what Steve was talking about.
“The note,” Steve said.
“What note?” Rick asked. Steve frowned and squinted his eyes carefully listening to all the sounds coming through the phone, ready to react with the “Aha!” as soon as he detected Rick stifling a laughter.
There was no such noise however, and Steve knew that if Rick found something funny it was very hard for him to hold himself back from expressing it.
“The ransom note,” Steve elaborated.
“A ransom note?” Rick repeated in confusion. “What does it say?”
Like you wouldn’t know! Steve thought to himself in anger, but he actually wasn’t so sure now that Rick was truly involved in this ridiculous prank.
“It says we want $100,000 or we kill your girl”, Steve read out loud from the note.
“Huh,” Rick said. “Is it like made out of cut out newspaper pieces?”
“Yes, yes!” Steve confirmed eagerly. “So you did it after all then?!” He asked accusatory.
“You know I don’t use scissors, man,” Rick replied somewhat disappointedly.
“Oh, right…” Steve mumbled into the phone, remembering how one summer several years ago Rick was feeling too hot and decided to cut off his hair himself.
“To feel the breeze on the neck, you know,” he said then. Turned out cutting off one’s hair wasn’t such an easy task and Rick accidentally cut off a piece of his ear instead. Since then he had developed mistrust toward the scissors and avoided getting anywhere close to them.
This wasn’t Rick then, who had made this note, but who had?
“Who made this note then?” Steve asked his buddy, feeling lost.
“I dunno, man,” Rick replied, already losing interest in the conversation. “But that’s a ton of money, man, I feel bad for Miranda.”
“Amanda,” Steve corrected him automatically.
“Right, Amanda. Feel bad for the poor girl.”
“She’s not real, Rick,” Steve reminded him.
“Huh, you’re right, I forgot,” Rick replied. “Well, then you don’t have to worry, they probably just mixed you up with someone else.”
“Probably,” Steve agreed, already feeling better.
He bid his goodbye to his friend and pocketed the phone. Throwing another look at the note Steve picked it up and rolled it into a ball, throwing it into a garbage bin. He went to his small kitchen and started preparing dinner. There was a new episode of his favorite show on TV this evening and he was eager to spend this time before bed watching it and picking at his instant noodles.
In the apartment below him a man named Steven but with a different last name than his neighbor was setting up a table for two and preparing a small but tasty dinner for his girlfriend that was returning from her work soon. They had been together for almost a year and Steven was very happy. He bought a cheap ring in a pawn shop near his workplace and planned to make a proposal tonight.
He lit a candle in the middle of the table and sat down, waiting patiently, a small smile playing on his lips.
Steven and Amanda, that had a certain ring to it. He couldn’t wait.
