The Girl and the Coin

There was once a girl, and there was once a coin. The girl was named Gwyneth, and the coin had belonged to her for as long as she could remember. It was a toonie; bright, shiny, and entirely untarnished, though it had been minted in the year she was born. It was a constant companion to her. It was her lucky coin.

She’d had, like other children, many such trinkets that she’d declared ‘lucky’ and carried for a while on her person before forgetting about them entirely, but the coin was different. It was special in a way no other mundane artifact could be. She wouldn’t use the word magic, because she was a sensible girl, but there was something undeniably arcane about the little stamped metal disc.

For one - and she’d only ever told this to one person – the coin would always land on the side she called in a coin toss. It wasn’t just any time she tossed the coin by herself and called it, however. Whenever she tried that, the coin would toss like any other coin: randomly, or at least, it seemed random. No, the coin demanded to be tossed in contest. Only when the stakes were named - a contested stuffed animal, the last bit of ice cream, what-have-you - would the coin prefer Gwyneth. She would carefully balance the toonie between left forefinger and thumb-knuckle, toss the coin and snatch it out of the air with practiced smoothness, and slap it onto the back of her right hand. She would always take a small pause there, with her hand over the coin. She would savor the feeling of the cold metal on her skin, and the comforting, inexplicable sensation of the coin warming as if heated from within. After a moment had passed, she would reveal the outcome of the toss.

To Gwyneth, the winning of the coin toss had come to be a simple fact of inevitability. This, of course, she would say to herself, couldn’t be magic. Her mother said there was no such thing. She was just lucky.

So, with that weapon against the world firmly in mind, she grew from girl to quite the successful young lady. She was lucky, and no matter how things went wrong (which, said her friends enviously, they rarely seemed to do), she knew that her luck would swing back ‘round to good soon enough.

And, unfailingly, it always did. Her life was a charmed one. She went to school to study law, funded by her many scholarships. When she graduated, she moved to Vancouver, where she had a job waiting for her at a law firm, and settled into the big city goings-on there. It was hard work, and stressful, but she was living the dream, and could not complain; not really.

One day, a year or so after her arrival, she met Damien Moore at a coffee shop. He was a musician; a drummer, and he was perfect, in an aggressive, overwhelming kind of way. Tall, dark, handsome - you name it, that was him - Gwyneth was sure she had never seen him before in her life. She spent that entire afternoon staring at him - no, that’s not quite right - appraising; him. She was undeniably attracted to him, that much was sure, but she couldn’t help but feel as though he were too good to be true. What if he were utterly boring in conversation? What if he were terrible in bed? What if, what if, what if. Gwyneth grew tired of doubts. She fished out the toonie from within her blazer - navy, pinstripe, accented her red hair well - and for the first time in over a decade, she’d fitted it carefully between left forefinger and thumb knuckle, and sent it spinning upward head over tails.

Later that night, as she lay naked next to Damien twining her slender fingers through his dark, curly hair, she did not doubt her decision. The coin had never led her astray before, and if she dared say it, she thought maybe she was falling in love. The way she melted under the gaze of those brown-almost-black eyes was certainly indication enough for her. However, in the pit of her stomach, she could not help but wonder, and worry. It wasn’t a worry that she could adequately put to words, though, and the very fact that it was present at such a time seemed ridiculous. She refused to pay it any heed, and when Damien tilted his head to the side in the way he did and fixed that gaze of his upon her, she forgot her worry altogether.

Time passed, and Gwyneth found that being in love suited her just fine. Damien thought so too. He was perhaps a little distracted from time to time, as touring musicians tend to be, but whenever he was with Gwyn, he was hers. Her friends were happy for her, though they did harbor a certain suspicion of Damien and a natural jealousy of Gwyneth. That being said, it came as no surprise to them when, a couple of years later, Damien proposed. It was as romantic as you please. She had received a call at work that day from an associate asking to meet in Stanley Park. It was important; he’d come across some evidence that would make or break a case for her client. It was all fairly elaborate, and the whole thing had the pervasive tone of a detective noir case - a genre Damien knew her to be very fond of. When she arrived at the arranged spot, she had found her associate missing. Through a brilliantly orchestrated series of clues and exciting developments that took place over the course of the day, Damien eventually led her into a climactic encounter in a long-abandoned warehouse with the culprit of her associate’s disappearance - himself. He dropped to a knee and proposed then and there, much to Gwyneth’s bewilderment and delight. He explained the whole thing after, but she had said yes, which didn’t much surprise anyone either.

No, what came as a surprise was Damien’s sudden illness and death mere months later. There were whispers of something exotic and insidious; some blood disease, maybe. The doctors didn’t know what it was. It was like nothing they’d ever seen. Her friends worried terribly about her, but none of them knew what it was like. None of them knew the pain of losing your husband; the utter desolation of the soul that is brought about by the death of the love of your life. No; they didn’t know anything. I could feel their pity, but I could also feel the quiet triumph behind it. They had always hoped my luck would run out one day, and it had. I was lost. Lost for a long time.

“And then I found the box, stashed away under a floorboard in what had been Damien’s apartment.” The light of the bare bulb is dim, and casts only enough light to illuminate a small radius just around the chair in the middle of the room. As Gwyneth tells her story, she paces just out of view of the man chained within it. He is bleeding from a wound above his eyebrow; a by-product of his capture. He is blinking rapidly in an effort to clear his eyes of a mixture of blood and sweat, both of which are running down his face in rivulets. Droplets fall from his chin onto his expensive looking suit. It is silent but for the sound of Gwyneth’s footsteps and the muted thunk of metal on concrete.

“Please, lady, I didn’t know he had a wife! I--”

“Do you know what was in the box?” Her voice has become hard and dangerous; unstable. The man clears his throat in the nervous way people do when they are unsure of the correct response. In fact, he does know. He pales visibly.

“Oh, shit...It was his fucking Rememberer.”

There is a soft sound of displaced air, a sharp, ugly sound of bone breaking, and an ear-splitting scream that fills the room. Gwyneth steps into the light. Blood drips from the head of the sledgehammer dangling from her grasp, and her eyes betray a hatred that is at once wildfire and cold snap. Her features are weathered by hardship, and her exposed skin is scarred in many places.

“It was the truth!” Her face is inches from his. She can smell the fear and agony rising in waves from his body. Her lip briefly curls in disgust, then all expression leaves her face as suddenly as her outburst had brought it. When she speaks again, the man’s screams have quieted to whimpers. Her voice is calm. “It was the truth. I touched it, and then I knew.

“I saw them through Damien’s eyes, which is to say, mine. I was standing over the body of a boy that had been ripped apart by gunfire. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. My partner was prying the boy’s fingers apart in order to get what we had come for. The Pen. A simple thing, and yet the Curators had gone through so much trouble, killed so many people to find it. Looking at the boy, I knew I had to get out. Later that night, I disappeared. I moved to Canada, to Vancouver, where they would never find me. I laid low for years, posing as a musician. And then one day, I met Gw--” Gwyneth pauses, closing her eyes and coming back to herself. “He met me.

“He was the only person I’d ever told about the coin, and he knew right away what it was. He knew that people like you would come for me eventually.” A short laugh, utterly devoid of humour, escapes Gwyneth’s lips. “And to think, I was excited for him when he told me he was going on tour. You and all of your dead Curator friends know what he was really up to. He hunted your kind. For me. And just when he thought we were safe, that he’d wiped us off the map, you found us. You poisoned my Damien.” Her voice is flat and emotionless as she speaks. The man has ceased his whimpering, and now watches her fearfully.

“Why are you telling me this?”

A tense silence stretches between them. Gwyneth steps backward into the shadows.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, you know.” A knife of fear twists within the man’s gut. A soft rustling of cloth is audible. “Eight years, in fact.”

ting

snap

The man’s heart has jumped into his throat and threatens to suffocate him. He swallows ineffectually. “How did you find me?” he asks, finally.

ting

snap

Gwyneth steps back into the light. She drops the sledgehammer in front of her, where it stands handle-up. She is holding a toonie in her right hand. The dim light reflects off its bright surface like the light at the end of a tunnel. She smiles at him. There is no warmth in it. “I guess I’m just lucky.” She carefully places the coin between her left forefinger and thumb knuckle.

“Now tell me. Heads or tails?”

ting

snap