“BEWARE OF STRANGE PANTS”- A Dead Anonymous

Elijah fingered the red coin as he looked out the window of his apartment. The sunlight was just burning away, and the shadows stretched across the furniture of his apartment. He looked at the coin again. It gleamed a bit deviously, as if it knew a wicked secret, and it felt rough yet smooth at the same time. What a paradox.
Elijah looked outside. The setting sun was the same fire-blaze as the coin, and he had a thought that he ought to show it to his Uncle Jerry, or Aunt Bos. He held it up to the sun, and watched it light up
as if it was a priceless artifact. No, he decided. It was his. He
wasn’t going to give it up for anything.
A chill went up his spine, shivering him thoroughly. Perhaps he could just be done with it and throw it into the fire. Yes, it seemed wicked and cruel, but Elijah can’t do it. It was as if a numbness had spread over his brain and corrupted him, and he held the coin close,
and snuck it into his pack, less he needed it for something
important.
Elijah went to work the next day. The sunny climate forced him to relax the tiniest bit, but by the time an enjoyable meeting ended, and a bump with an old colleague, he was confident that the red coin had brought him only good luck.
Cupping his hands together, he stared desperately at the coin. It pulled the words out of him like a puppeteer with a puppet.
“I wish… I wish for a … new pair of pants!” Elijah joked, looking down ashamed at his torn brown ones. He thought he saw a flash out of
the corner of his eyes, but when he turned around, it was just the setting sun.
He went back to his old rickety apartment happily, half expecting, half not, that a pair of pants would be by the doorway. A fine silk blue pair of pants hung from his railing, and kicking off his old jeans, he wore the new pants with a feeling of pride.

Suddenly, black clothed men kicked open the door, causing dust to poof up. They pointed a gun at Elijah. “You’re under arrest by the order of the law!” a tall man called out. “Fight back at your own risk.”
“Who are you?” Elijah shouted out trying to peer through the heavy smoke in the air.
They surrounded him, grasping his arms with a bear-like grip, and a click echoed throughout the tiny room as his fate was sealed in the black handcuffs of doom.
A man gasped. “Look!” It pointed down at Elijah’s new blue pants, the one that the red coin had granted him. “I know,” said the policeman grimly. He stared hard, at Elijah, and gave a rough shove into the blazing police car.
It dawned on Elijah that he had been tricked in the most wicked way.
“No!” he screamed. “No no no!”
He was still screaming no as they hauled him into the police car.
∞
It had been five months since the fiasco of the silk pants. Elijah had been put in jail for 12 years, a dark dank place. Letting out a weary sigh, he pulled out the red coin for the hundredth time. Every day he had debated whether to use it, and had debated no.
Suddenly a friend he had made while in prison called Hank, asked,
“What’s that Elijah?” Elijah looked up and found gleaming eyes.
“Nothing,” he said quickly.
“Come on,” his friend Hank assured him. “I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
Elijah shook his head. “It got me in jail.”
“Then why do you still have it?” he asked. When Elijah didn’t answer, he said, “Tell me Elijah.”
He felt something break his resistance as he poured out the story of the red coin. When Elijah had finished, Hank had turned away.

“Are you alright?” asked Elijah. “Do you promise to never tell this to anyone?”
“Of course not,” replied Hank in a strange voice. “Why would I?”
∞
Elijah woke up to somebody shaking him wildly. “Wake up!” a familiar
voice insisted, over and over again.
“What?” Elijah said blearily. He made out the figure of Hank. “Hank!”
Elijah screamed. “What are you doing here?”
“Shhh,” whispered Hank. “Look at what I have? Do you know what I’m
doing to use it for?” He held up the red coin casually. Elijah felt a
knot in his stomach harden.
“Hank!” Elijah said. He stared at the coin. He was struck speechless
by the confidence of Hank, of how he could twirl it so casually
without feeling a sense of horror in those blue eyes of Hank’s.
“Escape!” Hank whispered urgently. “We could escape. We could both
escape. I’m helping you out of this. You’re my friend.”
“No!” Elijah said horrified. “No no no. I’m not ever using that again, never even if you persuade me to do it I’ll never do it never and never and never…”
“Don’t you see Elijah?” Hank said. “We could escape… This is the chance we’ve been all waiting for…”
“NO!” Elijah screamed.
Hank backed away, his face hardening. Elijah heard his steps pounding away, and a voice whispering under its breath.
Elijah curled up like a lost child, and didn’t sleep a wink that night.
∞
The police came around at noon the next day, talking about a prisoner found dead outside the prison walls and the gleaming red coin that was now in their hands. Elijah stared in horror at the wink that had seemed so innocent, but had taken everything away from him.

“Give me that,” Elijah spit out, filling every tone of his voice with desperation and madness.
“Under the order of the law..” a policeman meekly retorted.
“Who cares about the law when that is violating it and destroying it
in its evil path?”
The policemen handed it over.
“A match please.”
The policeman started to reach for one, but then hesitated, looking at Elijah uncertainly. Elijah snatched it away from him, and lit it on fire. “Fire destroys fire!” he cackled as the bronze of the coin melted into the gooey puddle of metal and mush, with the police watching in horror; and him repeatedly saying, “I did it! I finally cheated the curse; begone evil foe…”
Elijah was executed a few moments later, with sunken mad eyes and staring at nothing, utterly nothing.