The Weight of Gold

Evan Calloway never believed he was greedy.

Title: The Weight of Gold
Word Count: 1,874

Evan Calloway never believed he was greedy. He told himself he just wanted “a little more.” More money, more comfort, more security. But like every man who’s ever tried to reason with temptation, he didn’t see the line until it was already behind him.

He started as an accountant at a modest firm downtown—gray walls, quiet offices, and coffee that always tasted faintly burnt. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was steady, the kind of man who never missed a deadline. He prided himself on being invisible, the dependable sort others trusted to keep things straight. That trust was what undid him in the end.

It began with a single transaction. His boss, Leonard Brix, had left early one Friday. Evan stayed behind to finish reconciling some client accounts. One figure stood out—an overpayment on a closed contract, a few thousand dollars left floating in the system. The money had been sitting idle for nearly a year. Nobody had claimed it.

He stared at it for hours, listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights. His rational mind said to report it. His tired mind said no one would notice. His greedy mind whispered, “It’s practically yours already.”

That whisper lingered.

When he left the office that night, the streets were wet with rain. The city lights shimmered across puddles like spilled treasure. He imagined what three thousand dollars could do; new furniture, a small vacation, paying off his credit card. He thought about his father, who used to say, “No one ever got rich playing it safe.”

He transferred the money Monday morning.

It was easy. Terrifyingly easy. And when nothing happened; no calls, no questions, no sudden visit from auditors; Evan felt something he hadn’t felt in years: power. The rush of it was addictive. He slept better, ate better, even smiled more. He told himself it was because he was finally getting ahead. In truth, he was already slipping under.

By the third month, he’d moved small sums, ten here and fifty there, from various dormant accounts into a quiet checking account under a fabricated name. “G. Roland,” a joke that only he found funny. “G” for greed. “Roland” for rolling the dice.

He still went to work on time. Still nodded politely at coworkers. Still filed reports and drank burnt coffee like the rest of them. But the man who used to balance numbers began to unbalance himself.

He bought a new car first. Nothing extravagant, but enough to turn heads. When a coworker asked how he afforded it, he laughed and said he’d been saving. Then came new clothes, dinners at expensive restaurants, weekends in rented cabins where no one knew him.

He thought money would make him feel free. Instead, it made him paranoid.

Every knock at the door startled him. Every email notification made his heart jump. He stopped sleeping through the night. In quiet moments, he’d open his laptop and stare at the growing balance, as if the numbers themselves were mocking him.

He told himself he could stop whenever he wanted. He told himself he was only borrowing. He told himself he deserved it.

Then one afternoon, Leonard called him into his office.

“Evan,” he said, motioning for him to sit. “We’ve been reviewing some old accounts. There seem to be discrepancies—minor ones, but still concerning.”

Evan’s throat went dry. “Discrepancies?”

Leonard nodded. “Probably clerical. You’re thorough, though. Could you take another look?”

Evan forced a calm smile. “Of course.”

He spent the next three nights at his desk, rechecking his own work, terrified and sweating through his shirt. He fixed every trace he could find, moving figures, forging memos, cleaning his own footprints from the digital sand.

When it was done, he convinced himself he’d narrowly escaped disaster. But that small taste of fear made him crave safety. And the only thing that made him feel safe was more money.

Greed, it seemed, was a fire that didn’t warm. It burned.

Over the next year, his theft grew reckless. The more he had, the more he needed. He stopped counting how much he’d taken. He bought things he didn’t even like; imported watches, bottles of wine he never opened, suits he never wore. His apartment became a museum of excess, each object a witness to his corruption.

The final straw came on a Thursday in late spring. A new hire named Dana, sharp and observant, noticed a mismatch between ledger entries. She mentioned it casually over lunch, unaware of the panic her words would cause.

That night, Evan deleted files in a frenzy. His hands shook so badly that he typed the wrong password three times, locking himself out of the system. He drove home through a thunderstorm, the city streets gleaming like veins of gold beneath the lightning.

When he got to his apartment, he poured himself a drink and sat in the dark, the glow from his phone reflecting off the untouched bottles around him. Messages from the office blinked on the screen. They became urgent and insistent.

He ignored them.

By morning, they’d discovered everything.

The firm froze his accounts, and the authorities came knocking before noon. He didn’t resist. He didn’t even speak. As they led him out in handcuffs, coworkers stared from their cubicles—faces he’d seen every day, now filled with disbelief.

In the holding cell, Evan sat on the concrete bench, his mind strangely quiet. He thought about the first time he’d stolen that forgotten payment. He remembered how bright the city lights had looked that night. He realized that was the last time he’d felt any real joy.

Greed hadn’t made him rich. It hollowed him out.

He served three years. When he got out, there was no job waiting, no friends left, and no savings. The money had been seized, the luxury items auctioned off. What remained was a man stripped bare, not by poverty, but by the weight of his own hunger.

He found a small apartment above a laundromat and took work doing inventory for a secondhand store. The pay was meager, but it was honest. Sometimes he’d run his fingers over the worn edges of old cash registers and think about how many hands that money had passed through. How each person must have wanted more of it, and how each probably believed they deserved it too.

At night, he’d walk the quiet streets alone. The same city that once looked gilded now seemed gray. But in that grayness, there was a kind of peace. He no longer counted dollars. He counted days—each one without deceit felt like a small redemption.

One evening, he stopped at a café and ordered a cup of black coffee. The barista, a young man with a friendly smile, asked if he wanted anything else.

Evan shook his head. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough.”

The words surprised him. They sounded simple, but they felt true.

He sat by the window and watched people passing. each one chasing something invisible, something just out of reach. He knew that hunger too well, knew how it started as ambition and ended as addiction.

He finished his coffee, left a small tip, and walked home with his hands in his pockets. There was no gold left in his life, but for the first time in years, he felt lighter.

Greed had taken everything, but it had also given him one gift, the understanding of enough.

And in that quiet, unremarkable life, Evan Calloway finally found what all the money in the world could never buy: peace.

Word Count: 1,874