Jason and the ATM

Jason and the ATM








Let me tell you a story.

It starts off with this guy I once knew, right, a real tight customer. Always sneaking off before his round came up at the bar, always borrowing money and never paying it back. Jason, his name was. The kind of guy who never bought anyone a present on their birthday and thought nothing of it, the kind of guy who threw a hissy fit when he didn’t get anything for his own. That kind of guy. We all know one.

Well Jason, right, he got married. God knows how that worked out, but somehow he found a good-looking girl and convinced her to settle down with him. He stopped coming out with us after that, turned into a right family type. Had one kid, and has another on the way. Too busy building a family to even notice us anymore.

I have a family too, so don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those guys who fear commitment. That’s not what this is about. I’m twenty-six and married with one kid, but I still socialise with my friends on a regular basis. It’s funny how some people do that, just meet a girl and cut everyone else out. It’s happened a few times with a few of my other friends, but nothing quite like this.

So anyway, Jason was out on the high street on one of his days off with his pregnant wife and his daughter, and he’s just been paid. He’s ecstatic; it’s the first Friday, his favourite day of the month. God knows what this guy’s planning to spend his money on, but his wife always looks worried on pay day. She knows how out of control his spending can get if left untamed. It’s part of the reason she’s there.

So he goes to the ATM in the middle of Sauchiehall Street to get his money out because he’s an old-schooler and doesn’t trust the chip and pin. Well, that’s what he said all those days ago, but we all knew it was because he used to just love withdrawing a big wad of cash and feeling it between his fingers. He’d stroke it like it was a pussy or something, his lips stretched across his face like a sex offender. You’d talk to him and he wouldn’t hear a thing for about twenty minutes after using an ATM. We used to joke, tease him that he would masturbate over the image of the queen’s face on his notes. He’d never defend himself, perhaps too happy to care. I hope that was the reason anyway.

Right. He’s at the ATM. He sticks his card in the slot, punches in his pin number excitedly. All’s going good. He checks his balance, his eyes light up as he sees how much he’s earned this month. A hell of a lot. Everything’s going swell, his adrenaline’s going mad, shooting through his veins in torrents. The anticipation is wild.

Then he tries to withdraw his cash. To feel that big wad of notes in between his fingertips, that sensation he’s been thinking about all day. He presses £100. A justifiably thick pile of notes, he thinks, waiting for it to come out.

Now, these days they give you your card back, then the cash, but before that it was the other way around. A lot of people forgot about their cards this way, just took the money and left, blinded and rendered inept by their withdrawals, by the sight of their earnings. Money drives you mad after all. If they hadn’t ever changed the way ATMs worked I can’t help but think that things would have panned out much different than they did.

So his card comes out first, he puts it in his wallet. Then on screen the usual message – Please wait. Your cash is being counted. The thing starts making chewing noises, whirrs. Something’s going on in there.

Well, it never came. They money never came out. I dunno if it was a fault or something, that the money got jammed on the inside or something, or maybe it just plain ran out – but that cash never emerged from that slot.

It was the message. That vague promise was what kept him from leaving. Please wait. Your cash is being counted. Certain the notes would come out soon, he stood there while the queue built up behind him. After a while it was curling around the building, and all those people, the ones who were lining up, they were getting really mad. Coughing, and going Ahem and For fuck’s sake. But still, he refused to leave. The thought of walking away just as the money came out for someone else to take, it terrified him.

Well, a few hours pass, and everyone’s still waiting there. It’s getting hot and sticky. The sweat is running down Jason’s face, a combination of the heat and the stress eating away at him. “It’ll come out soon.” He assures the livid woman behind him. “I heard a click from inside. That’ll be it just coming.”

Anyway, I heard about this from a few of the boys who had seen it with their own eyes, that he had waited for a ridiculous time in front of that ATM, his tightness with money coming back and hitting him in the face. Hard. It was an entertaining story, and it made its way around the pubs for a while. But like every other bit of banter, it faded out and was forgotten within two weeks. And since Jason never hung around with us anymore, we never saw him to ask how he was after his ‘traumatic’ experience.

Turns out, he’s still there, weeks later, still gripping onto that ATM like a car fire victim stuck to the steering wheel. They say his skin is like black leather, that his lips are coming apart in stringy sections. They say it’s enough to make a man sick.

Well, I bumped into him one day, seen him still there, the queue behind him still building up. As I approached, the queue went silent and they watched me with dark eyes. I had to convince some of them that I wasn’t skipping in, that I was just here to see my friend. They watched me cautiously, like animals aware of a predator. They had turned into savages, obsessed with the ATM. Some of them had fashioned spears and other primitive weapons from walking sticks and knitting needles. Others were topless, a thousand pairs of bare breasts from all ages exposed to the elements, smeared in mud and crimson and other bodily fluids. A child pissed against the wall of a post office. Skinned skulls and bones were shaken and clattered together territorially as I grew closer. I had an overwhelming sensation that they were going to attack, that they would tear me to pieces the second I came within arm’s reach. Thankfully they restrained themselves and I was able to approach my old friend.

He looked and smelled terrible. Worse than I had been told. His eyes were sightless white orbs and the hair on his head had been reduced to a few pathetic strands. His legs from the shins down were gone, black strands now fused to the floor from the sun and seeping thin columns of smoke. A tattered cylinder of flesh lay by his side, a bubbling handful of tendons writhed in the torrid heat.

Apparently his wife no longer came to feed him or hydrate him. She had grown bored of his obsession awhile back. His daughter no longer recognised him, and screamed with all her might the last time she seen his leathery face. Someone told me his wife had changed her phone number, and the house locks too. Not that it mattered. It didn’t take a detective to see that Jason was never going to come home again.

The ATM display had not changed. Please wait. Your cash is being counted. Staring at the mess my friend had become, I felt an overwhelming sense of pity. A strong desire to help him came over me. I asked him how he was doing, and later pleaded with him to come with me, to give up and forget the money. I guess the sun had fried his brain, because he just kept gazing into space, that ‘hundred-yard’ stare or whatever they call it. I could see by his vacancy that he had nothing left in him for society, his family, or even for me. But I could tell that he still knew he was waiting there for a reason, still waiting for that one-hundred pound withdrawal to slip out of the slot right into his charcoal fingers.

They were growing tired with me, the others in the queue. The rattling of bones and their erratic screaming grew more intense, an obscure crescendo. I knew I would have to leave very soon if I were to make it home tonight. A few spaces back in the queue, a couple were engaged in noisy sex.

I abandoned him with tears in my eyes, abandoned him with what was left of his genitals on display to the city, as they had been for some time now, blackened and protuberant from infection. I left him breathing hoarsely, like a terminal throat cancer patient, becoming more corrupt with every crackled breath.

And the queue, well, it’s still there. You might have read about it - growing all the time, people only moving up when someone ahead of them drops dead from exhaustion, only to be the subject of a vicious feeding frenzy from the others.

Last I heard it had reached London, and it’s not slowing down.








1904 words.