Romans & histoires Karma's Gonna Come Collect Your Debt

Chapter 20- Why Can’t You? LENA >< >< “I am sure you might have perceived me coming. I am here to collect the debt you owe me.” Her voice was smug, like she owned me already. I sucked in a deep breath, frustration bubbling up inside me. What fucking debt? The same one she caused in the first place? I bit my tongue hard, deciding right then to keep my mouth shut. If I stayed quiet, maybe she’d get bored and leave me alone.

He who casts the spell will owe. Dante let out a low whistle. “That’s… not scary at all.” Kael swallowed and continued. “The debt is blind. You don’t know what it wants until it comes to collect." Alpha ran his fingers through his hair, and frustration filled his face again. "It could be tomorrow. It could be fifty years. It could also be now. Could be your...” Alpha cut him off. "Stop... there's no way I'm letting you do that... this is so wrong."

“I promise next Wednesday… I promise… Next Wednesday I’ll return your money…” “Last week, you said this week you’d pay your debt. This week, you say again next week, you’ll pay your debt. So, when actually are you going to pay your debt, Buddy? Next week and next week again, you hope that I can forget about that money and you can be free from your debt, don’t you?”

It wasn't until then that Ethan finally allowed Rosalie to leave the house. I followed Rosalie, who was in a disheartened state, back to the Talbot residence. Roxanne cried so much that her eyes were swollen. Roxanne was used to being dependent her entire life. Now with a huge debt on her shoulders, she was completely at sea. Her eyes lit up when she saw Rosalie. She walked up to Rosalie and held her hands. "Rosalie, we've lost everything! Everything! Your dad left us such a huge debt too. What should we do, Rosalie?"

The sound was like a car crash—high-pitched, grinding, and violent. "The debt must be paid in full!" Vane’s voice boomed, now sounding like a distorted loudspeaker. "Kaima of the Origin, your existence is an unmanaged liability! Your Knight is a depreciating asset! Yield the seed, and we will ensure your deletion is painless!" "I'm tired of your ledgers, Vane!" I shouted.

"When are you going to pay back the money? That ten million you borrowed has snowballed into 50 million with interest." Mom, Dad, and Archer froze. They were so shocked that they forgot to turn off the livestream and save themselves from further humiliation. Meanwhile, the chat was exploding. The number of viewers watching this spectacle increased exponentially. Mom looked confused. "What ten million are you talking about?" The debt collectors weren't having it. One of them pulled out the loan agreement—signed by Mom herself—and shoved it before her. "Here, in black and white. You signed it. Don't you remember?"

The Debt. I’d almost forgotten. In the chaos of living, of dying, of loving, the original sin had faded. The power we’d stolen, the chaos we’d unleashed, the interest compounding in silence. It was always there, a line item on some infernal balance sheet, and now the collectors had come. But they aren’t collectors. They are assessors. One of them steps forward. Its face is androgynous, ageless, utterly devoid of malice. Or pity. “Lily. Arthur. The obligation has come due. The principal. The interest. The collateral damage. The sum is… considerable.”

I moved through the information slowly, like every thought could be a trap. At first, the debt seemed simple. Numbers usually are. There were lists of money sent and received. There were dates that lined up with the months after my mother died. The story I always believed was that Gideon borrowed money from Black Tide to keep us alive, to help us hide, and to buy us time. But as I looked closer, I realized the numbers were just a cover. The real debt wasn't about money. It was about silence. It was about what Gideon promised never to say, never to show, and never to remember out loud.

They took loans bigger than their balls and gambled it all down till there's nothing but their shriveling flesh left to offer, when the time came to pay up. Then they begin to beg, cry, whine for their pathetic lives. It's always so fucking ugly that I wanted to grab their neck and snap it every time they did, so they never utter a sound again. Or better yet, rip out their vocal cord from their mouth. I was here to collect. As per usual. It was my job. I even earned a nickname for it. The Debt Collector. Or for short, The Collector. Under the command of my master I visit whom I'm told to visit to collect the debt owed when it's due. And when it’s not met, well, you know the drill.

Me: Hello, Mom. Mom: Irene, I’ve been waiting for your call for a long time. The debt collectors will come to collect the money in an hour. If we can’t pay, Wayne will be in serious trouble, my mother said bluntly. On the other end of the line, I could hear her trembling voice, as if she had been crying all this time. Me: Mom, I’m sorry. I couldn’t manage to collect enough money to repay the debt. Mom: What did you say? How could you fail to raise the money? Didn’t you promise me earlier? And your brother? my mother exclaimed angrily.