Money and Love In A Bank
She got a Doctorate in Economics. The Job at the bank had special benefits, and extraordinary security. Before the omens were apparent, she found love.
The Undocumented Bank Robbery
by Douglas Gilbert
By day she was always happy, but recurring nightmares always stayed, held in an extra dimension of weirdness lurking on the horizon; she was the prey, monsters waiting to leap into the day.
At twilight, a whisper among folk, jokes made behind a façade of calm, often about the portal around the corner, an odd opening site, guarded by a vigilant psi squad where passersby couldn’t help but flinch at the sounds.
Beyond her graduate studies, beyond even those fungible mystic numbers, those fat stats, reliable, measurable, things beyond those still tangible objects made for her doctorate in economics, made for her ordinary raison d’être, for a rational plainness, and made for comfort like the designs of circumspection she had analyzed when she had wanted to be an architect, yes, beyond were glimmers of uncertainty that walked with her phantom denizens in the background like a ghost flitting by in the corner dimension of the eye, a flash and buzz of some occult omen. Danger.
On a sunny day, thunderclouds on the horizon, gathered, but it was then that she, Miriam met her new boyfriend, Joseph G. with carefully manicured nails whose last girlfriend, Brunhilde, admired him for his imposing, ingenious, profuse prose.
Miriam was charmed telling Joseph all about her new job at the bank. It was
fantastic, a position at the world’s biggest greatest bank quest ever near the portal, preferred services
beyond belief, spurred by pie-in-the-sky enchanted campaigns.
It had the usual ATM disbursing, had friendly tellers conversing, had safe deposit boxes, private offices, and financial advisors, more: a cafeteria, a café, a bookstore internet café, and they had a childcare center with whirring toys and a playground.
In the night Joseph moved in with her. Seemed innocent in tone, but a wild love affair, of course. She smiled at nonsense words. She had a way of conjuring up a plethora of pet names. She wrote a poem for him about the sunrise.
But days had storms on the horizon. His political views were a bit thunderous, but she didn’t think it mattered.
The sex was mostly good until he wanted to experiment. She wondered if
her romance would lead to marriage and children.
Then began the torrents of rain and thunderclaps, whispering sizzles applauding hissing evils to come.
Her nightmares got worse, and she developed migraine headaches. But she just thought it was worry about when the city council allowed homeless people to pitch tents on the sidewalk and in the park.
On a sunny day, she went with Joseph to give out sandwiches, but on the way they met one guardian coming off work and he said, oh yes, he had pills for migraines.
The demonstrations by Harvard students in Nazi uniforms were small, and could be ignored she felt. Yet when she saw one she looked behind her, talked to herself in a hissy whisper, her pallid face betraying her with trembling lips.
Good news/bad news. Just as she got a promotion at the bank, the encampments came closer to the bank
In thunder and cacophony there was demonic music on the doom streets with drugs, laughter, guts. Weird at home.
Miriam let Joseph bite her on the neck, and he proposed eternal love. She glanced at him and looked at the door, her stomach was queasy.
Her nightmares and headaches got worse, but Miriam thought it was just adjusting to the role-playing meth zombies who pitched tents near the bank.
The coalition of religious leaders assured the public that the portal was well guarded by prayers, and by the quantum particle generators that the CERN team of physicists provided.
Extra dimensions of weirdness would not deter her from pursuing her career path. One week at a time Miriam coped with extra dimensions held back.
On Monday a Harvard student broke the glass on the front door. No one hurt and they gave him a ticket.
On Tuesday, a child at the daycare center had a nose bleed. They mopped the floor and the doctor came.
On Wednesday, a teenager tried to rob the bank with a note. A Mother coming out of daycare tripped and knocked him down, and she hit him with a can of formula.
On Thursday, Joseph, loquacious, came to have lunch with her to spew. She gave him a grand tour of the building.
On Friday, bank robbers with tanks rolled down the street and bestial men carrying machine guns and swords stormed into the bank.
Cur shouted, “Capitalism must die!”
With screams bullets tore, bodies fell in thuds and crashes, and blood spurted everywhere, bodies strewn like litter; the daycare was invaded. The scene was reviewed: one hundred children were slaughtered and their heads were cut off.
When the police appeared, the robbers threw a child’s head at them and promised one head for every demand the negotiators refused.
Hitler himself appeared to supervise the slaughter.
The police were outgunned, and all of them were killed.
100 in the bank were kidnapped and the gunmen marched them to the portal, where the guardian had been killed, and they all disappeared. The Army arrived too late.
Saturday was mostly quiet after the clean-up, and a delegation of congresswomen shouted, “Ceasefire! ceasefire!”
The Harvard students shouted, “Do not retaliate. The oppressors
brought it on themselves.”
Sunday was a banking holiday. The new video games, dolls, and a new Monopoly game were released, but the hostages were never seen again.
Miriam like Brunhilde was a good typist or keyboardist for the hunger board game, and in a week all was forgotten and the news media were quiet.
Joseph Goebbels and Rashida gave interviews to CNN while reporters went in and out of the time warp to visit old friends.
Forensic autopsies ignored. A mother and child bound by a steel cable, and
burned alive, soot in their lungs.
Open children’s coloring books covered in blood. Not much news, and
a few suspects out without bail, heroes in their neighborhood.
The robbers were re-named for the celebration at Harvard Yard.
The Squad demanded that they be known as “PUCK”:
People’s Undocumented Confiscatory Kidnappers.
By the Wayward 