It's On Me.

This is a short story I wrote for class with the prompt "free Money".

It’s On Me.

Eve settled down at her desk and let out a slow breath. The bank wasn’t noisy at all. No-one was making small talk, no-one was typing or loudly shuffling papers, no-one was letting the door go at their backs. Everything was precise and deliberate. It made her skin crawl. Even the water cooler stopped gargling when someone took some water.
    Mr. Matheson’s office door was closed. That in itself was a bad thing. The man never shut his door, not even to take private conversations. He treated this floor of the bank like a family; everyone more or less knew everyone else’s business. Today though, today was different.
    Eve took last month’s stocks and statistics out of the folder that had been left in her “In” tray. She liked her job. The salary was ridiculous, the bonuses even more so and her car? Her car probably cost more than some people’s houses did. She’d been with the bank since she was sixteen having dropped out of school with a mere 100 dollars to her name and a dream of making it big.  Mr. Matheson had been a friend of a friend’s uncle and had given her a job in the bank when he realised how good she was with number crunching. Eve had eventually saved up enough money and put herself through college with a permanent job at the bank for whenever she qualified.
    But that was fifteen years ago and the times had changed. Computers did everything now; the human work force merely checked things. Well, up here anyway. Downstairs there was still man power; still person to person transactions and advice, but there were the shiny ATMs too. The ATMs where you could pay money in, take money out, change money to different currencies, the whole kit and caboodle.
    This was the problem.
    Every morning at seven am; two men from Securicor would show up to transfer the money to the machines from the bank vault. It was such an absurd thing; Eve thought, when workers could clearly do the same job. It was to stop theft. It didn’t work.
    No-one noticed until about noon when the bank started to buzz with activity. It was one of the largest banks this side of the state, but it never saw this much activity. Especially when there was free cashiers yet people were still queuing to use the ATM. Eve was just coming back in from her lunch, trying to push her way through the crowds when she noticed the sheer volume of people. Usually she would eat lunch at her desk and just work her way through from eight till eight then go home and finish off whatever it was she had been doing. She was in a rush that morning however, had left the house without making her lunch which meant she had to skip out through lunch time to get something from the Starbucks and the little sandwich bar beside it.
    The queue had been out of the door and half way around the block. Eve thought that there was a sale on somewhere that people needed money for. That someone somewhere was selling designer stuff for cut price, because everyone and their mother was there. The fact that Lyndsey, Monica and James were free should have been the warning; the three newbies staring at each other as the patrons queued to use the machine.
    Eve pushed her way through the line, ignoring the choice words from some of the customers reminding her that there was a queue. No-one was fighting; they were all just waiting there, getting their money and leaving. There was no cursing or rioting or anything. Until someone followed Eve through and pushed into the line about half way up. As soon as the first punch was thrown, all hell broke loose. In the almost century old building with it’s stunning architecture; the riot police were called. People were arrested. People injured. It took almost three hours to calm the violence and evacuate the bank.
    Eve looked up from her report when Mr. Matheson’s office door opened and he emerged. He smiled softly at those who were looking, before his faded green eyes looked down at the floor, the artificial light showing up the grey in his hair more than usual. The laughter lines at his eyes seemed deeper somehow but less happy. The first thing Eve noticed was the family photo at the top of the box, it was of Mr. Matheson, his wife their three sons, their daughter and their children’s families. Everyone was there. They’d asked one of the staff at the resort to take the picture. It was taken at Christmas time.
    The silent work stations fell even more silent. The clichéd pin drop wasn’t heard, even that seemed to have some respect for what this meant. Mr. Matheson had put his staff before his career. The faulty ATM had been loaded incorrectly resulting in it dispensing double money, which would have cost someone lower down the food chin their job. But the one thing Mr. Matheson had always taught was the value of  helping others. So that is what he was doing right now. One of the ATM technicians had made a mistake which had cost the bank hundred of thousands of dollars and the best CEO around his job.
    Eve watched in stunned silence as he elevator doors closed, taking Mr. Matheson from view. No-one reacted at first, still staring at the doors of the elevator waiting for the doors to open and Mr. Matheson to be standing there with one of his trademark smiles, his loud laugh booming through the whole floor and saying something like “You should have seen your faces!”
    But it never happened, the floor numbers on the little LCD screen changed from 11 to 10 to 9 to 8 and everyone returned to their little desks, still in silence. From where Eve was sitting, she could see the little manila envelope on Mr. Matheson’s desk. His resignation. Beyond Mr. Matheson’s desk was the outside world, the floor to ceiling windows that showcased the city in all it’s glory. Eve shook her head and gave a small, bitter chuckle. Free money was just an illusion. Someone always had to foot the bill.

Author's Note

Any Concrit is more than welcome :)