Withdrawals

“A bank is meant to be ordinary—queues, tickets, numbers on a screen. But when you’re carrying secrets in your skin, even counting notes feels like a confession.”

The world beyond my skin seemed maddeningly indifferent, blind to the turmoil winding itself tighter and tighter within me. Cars screamed along Main Road in a blur of colour and noise, each one a fleeting obstacle between me and the silent fortress of the bank. Three minutes stretched like an eternity, each heartbeat marked by hesitation as I waited for a gap in the traffic. Then—an opening. My muscles surged forward before thought could intervene, and I dashed across, propelled by a strange mix of haste, dread, and grim determination.

The building loomed closer with every stride. Colonial Bank of Tasmania—the island’s oldest bank. Just another branch of an institution I'd used without thinking for years. Now it looked different. Now it looked like a place where my performance would be tested, where my mask would either hold or crack under scrutiny.

As the automated doors parted, gliding back with indifferent smoothness, a surreal calm descended upon me, as though my body—aware of the danger—had numbed itself in defence. The hum of air-conditioning, the muted shuffle of shoes on carpet, the quiet murmur of tellers speaking to customers—all of it merged into a cocoon of ordinary life. None of them knew. None of them could possibly imagine what coiled beneath my composure.

A mother sat in the waiting area, toddler squirming on her lap, flipping through a picture book with the distracted attention of someone killing time. An elderly man in a tweed jacket studied his ticket number as though memorising it for an exam.

Ordinary people. Ordinary concerns. And me, carrying the weight of murder and inter-dimensional travel and a stranger named Cody who'd driven off with a corpse.

I moved directly to the ticket machine, that innocuous object suddenly reimagined as a gatekeeper to the perilous choice I was about to make. My finger hovered for just a second too long, the hesitation an echo of my body's rebellion. Every instinct screamed to make it simpler—use the ATM, keep my head down, avoid unnecessary eyes. But I needed more than the machine would give me, more than its polite daily limit would allow.

Cash. I needed cash.

Notes. Tangible. Untethered. Untraceable in the way bank logs were. Last night's meticulous consolidation of our accounts had been a chess move—one that left just enough in place to keep up appearances whilst stacking the rest into a form I could physically carry. But that calculation had come with a price. It meant I had to stand here, in plain view, risking everything.

I jabbed the button with more force than necessary. Teller. A mechanical buzz answered, and the machine spat out the slip of paper that would tether me to this course of action.

"Seventy-eight," I read under my breath, my lips brushing the words as though saying them aloud could anchor me. The number burned on the paper like a countdown to exposure. My eyes flicked up to the glowing digits on the display. Seventy-one.

Six people. Six transactions. Six moments of ordinary life before mine would slice through the monotony with its jagged edge of risk.

I sank into a seat at the back of the bank, the green backpack coiled at my feet like a waiting animal. The spacious waiting area—airbrushed walls promoting home loans and credit cards, plastic plants gathering dust in corners, the faintly chemical scent of industrial cleaning products—felt at once too large and suffocatingly small. Every sound was sharper: the cough of the man to my left, the click of a pen in a teller's hand, the crinkle of a plastic bag as a woman stuffed receipts inside.

I studied the faces of strangers as though they held some secret knowledge. Did the man two rows down glance at me twice? Was the teller by the window too still, her gaze flickering in my direction? My eyes darted, sharp and restless, testing every gesture, every tilt of a head, for suspicion.

But no—no one was looking. Not really. They were wrapped in their own bubbles of mundanity. And that was the most disorienting thing of all.

Their normality only sharpened my abnormality. I was the anomaly here, the one carrying secrets heavy enough to crush me, sitting amongst people whose greatest concern was probably whether to transfer funds to savings or pay off a bit more of the mortgage. My heart hammered as each number flicked over on the display—seventy-two, seventy-three. Each announcement was another drumbeat of inevitability.

I sat still, but inside me, the storm raged louder.

"Ticket number seventy-eight, please proceed to teller number four," the sterile, automated voice announced. This was it. My cue. The moment I had both dreaded and, perversely, longed for.

I drew in a deep breath, steady, rehearsed, as if my lungs alone could trick my body into believing I was calm. Rising from the chair felt like stepping onto a stage—every movement deliberate, every step a performance in restraint. The bank's interior, so bland and deliberately nondescript with its off-white walls and scuffed blue carpet tiles, now pressed in on me like the set of a play in which I was both actor and audience.

I walked towards the counter, the distance between the waiting area and teller four impossibly long, impossibly short. The walls seemed closer. The air thicker. My senses sharpened, twitching at the faint scratch of pens, the quiet cough of an elderly man two booths away, the rhythmic counting of coins in a tray. The hum of whispered conversations swelled until it was unbearable, as if the entire bank was leaning in, listening, waiting to hear whether I would falter.

"Hello, Sir. What can I do for you today?"

The teller's voice hit me with almost disarming brightness. She was young—far too young to be handling the weight of the request I carried inside me. Professional courtesy, soft edges of youthful optimism that probably got her through the tedium of processing transactions all day. She had no idea what I was about to drop into her lap. The contrast made my stomach knot tighter. Her innocence against my intention—it was almost obscene.

I swallowed. My throat felt dry, sandpapered by nerves. My hands betrayed me before my mouth could: I rubbed my palms against my jeans, pressing hard as if I could scrub away the clamminess, the truth, the guilt. The gesture was small, but to me it felt enormous, a flare of weakness signalling to anyone observant enough that I was not at ease.

Confidence, Luke. Control the stage.

I pulled out my wallet. Even that felt loaded, like drawing a weapon in the middle of a crowded room. Every second stretched long as my fingers worked the zip, as if the entire bank was watching the ritual of leather opening, cards and notes sliding against each other. My heart thudded louder, a slow, insistent drumbeat.

But I forced my face into neutrality, a mask of calm. Outwardly, I was just another man at a counter. Inwardly, I was balancing on a knife's edge, paranoia and strategy twisting together into something uniquely dangerous.

"I'd like to withdraw twenty-five thousand dollars," I managed to say, the words slipping free with more steadiness than I felt.

Twenty-five thousand. The number sounded reasonable in my head—enough to make a real difference in Clivilius, enough to buy materials and supplies and whatever else we might need to build something lasting. Not so much that it would trigger automatic suspicion. Just a man withdrawing his own money from his own account. Nothing unusual about that.

Handing over my bank card felt less like a financial transaction and more like crossing an invisible threshold. A point of no return. The thin rectangle of plastic weighed more than gold in that moment—an offering, a gamble, a confession of intent disguised as banking routine.

The cashier's eyes flickered—just for a second—with surprise before she quickly rearranged her features into the neutral professionalism drilled into her. Still, I caught it. I always caught the tiny slips. A part of me wanted to read into it, to believe it meant more than it probably did. To her, this was a transaction out of the ordinary. To me, it was life or death.

As she reached for the card, our fingers brushed. A brief contact, a fleeting spark, and yet it jarred me. Here I was, drowning in the quicksand of secrets and desperation, and she—she was just doing her job, standing on solid ground. That tiny touch underscored the gulf between us. It reminded me how utterly alone I was in this crowded space.

Was that hesitation? My thoughts pounced on the flicker I'd seen in her eyes. Surely withdrawing that much cash wasn't unheard of? Unless... unless I looked suspicious. Perhaps it was my age, my scruffy jeans, the faint trace of sweat still clinging to my brow from the walk across the street. Maybe she saw me as too ordinary, too young to be handling serious sums.

A smirk threatened to tug at the corner of my mouth. A ridiculous flash of vanity, of all things—me flattering myself that she might have mistaken me for someone too youthful, too fresh-faced. That perhaps my nerves hadn't betrayed me after all, but instead had been masked as harmless inexperience.

Still, the thought didn't fully settle the unease gnawing at me. Perceptions of normality. They're a funny thing. To her, this request might have been extraordinary, enough to warrant second looks, whispered consultations. To me, it was just another brick in the wall I was trying to build around the chaos of my life. Another calculated risk in a chain that was fast becoming impossible to keep track of.

"Please hold on a moment, Sir."

Her tone was still polite, but clipped now, weighted with something more. She slipped away, brisk and purposeful, her shoes tapping against the sterile floor. She disappeared into the office alcove to confer with someone who could only be the manager.

Their hushed exchange reached me in fragments—the cadence of urgency without the words themselves. I caught glances, fleeting as they were, cutting back toward me. Each nod. Each gesture. They weren't dramatic, weren't theatrical—but to me they were magnified tenfold, a pantomime of suspicion.

The bank itself seemed to hold its breath in her absence. Every sound amplified—the click of a pen, the crinkle of notes, the shuffle of a handbag zip. The wait turned the very air heavy. I stood exposed, as though a spotlight had been trained on me whilst everyone else continued in soft shadows.

My mind went into overdrive. A hundred possible outcomes, each darker than the last. What if she calls security? What if they log my request? What if this becomes the breadcrumb that ties everything back to me?

And yet... another part of me whispered that I had this under control. That I'd already thought this through, and that my mask would hold.

Time stretched thin, taut like a wire about to snap.

Finally, the young woman returned. Her face was composed, carefully arranged into that polished neutrality banks trained their staff to wear. Yet I could not help but search it for cracks—for signs of what had passed between her and the manager. Had my name been typed into some silent database? Was my photograph even now being pulled up, linked to something else, some other thread that would unravel everything?

Her words hit me like an unexpected splash of cold water. "We can only give you fifteen thousand today. You'll have to come back in a few days' time for the remainder."

Fifteen. Not twenty-five.

The number rang in my head with a dull thud, far short of the amount I had demanded in my fantasies of this moment. Her eyes flicked—not long, not overtly—but enough, a quick dart toward the manager still watching us with the quiet vigilance of a hawk perched on a branch. My pulse quickened at that silent oversight, though I forced my expression into bland acquiescence.

Inside, though, frustration rippled through me. A bank was meant to be a fortress of wealth, wasn't it? Rows of vaults, drawers fat with notes. Yet here I was, reminded that most of their empire existed only as numbers on a screen, digits shuffled between accounts with barely a slip of paper to prove they'd ever been real. Of course they wouldn't have piles of cash lying in drawers. They had no reason to. This was 2018, not 1928. Most transactions happened electronically, invisibly, leaving trails that could be followed by anyone with the right access.

Her voice pressed on, polished and calm, like a teacher soothing a nervous child. "Banks don't actually carry much cash on premises. There's no issue, you just need to spread the transaction over a few days, is all."

I wondered whether she practised that line, delivered it to every jittery customer who thought a bank was a bottomless pit of notes. She was trying to reassure me—but the reassurance only sharpened the blade of my unease. A few days. Did she not understand that a few days might be the difference between survival and exposure?

I nodded slowly, deliberately, crafting the gesture into a mask of understanding. "Allow us the time to get more cash in," she added, her tone light, her smile professional, her words presenting this as routine, mundane, nothing to fuss over.

Another nod. This one quicker, more decisive. A silent performance of compliance. Inside, my thoughts twisted: frustration, resignation, and a grudging relief. Fifteen thousand was not twenty-five, but it was still something. Still enough to move pieces on the board, enough to buy me time.

The thought of returning for the rest hovered like a vulture—unfeasible, maybe even impossible. But I shoved it aside with the same force I'd used to bury every other doubt. Focus on the immediate win, I told myself. Small steps forward. Cash in hand was better than promises tomorrow.

This was a compromise, yes. But it was still a victory.

As the cashier began counting out the fifteen thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar notes, I felt my stomach twist. Each note, neat and sterile in her hands, was a contradiction—orderly symbols of stability and commerce, yet for me they were survival, blood money without the blood.

I could almost smell Joel again, his lifeless body in the back of the truck, the coppery tang that clung to my memory no matter how much I tried to scrub it away. And here I was, standing under fluorescent lights in a bank, pretending to be just another customer. The absurdity of the juxtaposition would have been funny if it weren't so grotesque.

I caught myself on the edge of a grin, and quickly reined it in. It wasn't joy—how could it be?—but the sheer incongruity of what I was doing. Murder one minute, banking the next. Each bill sliding through her fingers was like a domino falling in a plan that had no guarantees, no certainty of where it might end.

The lie came before I'd even consciously decided on it. "For a new car," I said, my voice steady, carrying just enough manufactured enthusiasm to sound believable. "They're giving me a discount if I can pay in cash." I smiled—too quickly, too brightly, but it was all I had.

"Lucky you," the cashier replied, tone flat, her eyes glued to the notes as she counted and rechecked. Her indifference should have soothed me, but it didn't.

Silence stretched, unbearable, so I filled it, the compulsion bubbling out before I could stop myself. "It's a new one."

"A new what?" She looked up then, eyes sharp for a fraction of a second. Casual, yes, but cutting.

Shit. Why did I say that? My chest tightened, the lie collapsing on itself, exposing my ignorance. I knew nothing about cars beyond their colours, maybe their shape if pressed. My mind raced for an answer, images of Joel's blood pooling in the truck bed clashing with the bland smile I was supposed to wear here.

"Car," I blurted, forcing a confidence I didn't feel, as if repeating the obvious would stitch my story back together.

She chuckled softly, the sound mercifully light, as though she'd dismissed me as just another eccentric customer, giddy at the prospect of a new toy. But my relief was short-lived.

What if she wasn't laughing at all? What if she'd seen through me? What if she was laughing at the pathetic attempt of a man who'd been flagged already—marked not just by the bank manager, but by something else entirely? Joel's killer could be anywhere. He could be watching from the café across the road, through the tinted glass. He could be standing behind me right now in the queue, phone out, pretending to scroll whilst recording everything.

Hell, he could be Cody himself—calm, watchful Cody, who had already shown he knew more about me than he should. Who had appeared at exactly the right moment, offered exactly the right help, and then vanished into Clivilius with the evidence.

My paranoia flared, hot and insistent, whispering that this entire transaction was bait, a trap disguised in routine. And yet, beneath it, a strange current of confidence pulsed. I was good at this, wasn't I? I could lie, adapt, improvise. I could walk away with the cash, keep my face neutral, my back straight. For all the eyes I imagined upon me, no one had stopped me yet.

I shifted my stance slightly, trying to appear casual, but inside every nerve was braced. I felt like a spotlight was on me, but I also knew—I hoped—that the show I was putting on was convincing enough to buy me another day.

"And that's your first fifteen thousand," she announced, her gaze meeting mine as she pushed the neat stacks of currency toward me.

I swung the empty backpack to the front, careful to keep it low, shielded by the teller's counter. My fingers trembled as I swept the notes into the bag, one bundle after another, each movement deliberate yet weighted with urgency, as though the notes themselves might cry out if handled too roughly.

"Great," I said, my voice pitched just right, a polite and measured word meant to blend seamlessly into the rhythm of normality.

"Good luck with your car," the cashier offered, her smile bright and genuine, her farewell so ordinary it almost cut me. She didn't know. She couldn't know. Her world was tills, balance sheets, and customer pleasantries, whilst mine was blood in a truck bed, secrets carried through shimmering gates, and the gnawing paranoia that Joel's killer could be closer than I dared admit.

I fumbled with the zipper, the backpack writhing in my grip like a restless creature, betraying the weight of my concealment. "Thanks," I managed, forcing levity into the word, then adding, "I'm sure it'll be awesome!" The cheer sounded tinny, grotesque, as though I were parodying myself.

I cringed inside even as I spoke, but it was necessary. Every word was a brick in the wall I was building between myself and suspicion. The car, the excitement, the grin—it was camouflage. A script to keep the wolves at bay.

And yet, as I stepped back, the cash secured, a surge of exhilaration hit me like lightning. My lips pulled into a grin I couldn't entirely suppress as the glass doors parted and closed silently behind me. For a fleeting moment, I felt untouchable, a master of misdirection, my deception a triumph.

Well, that went as smooth as I could have hoped for, I thought, savouring the victory. But even as I congratulated myself, a whisper crawled through the back of my mind: What if they're already watching you?

The paranoia gnawed at the edges of my high, but I clung to the illusion of control, striding out into the sunlit street as though I truly were just a man who'd withdrawn cash for a new car.

The outside world, with its indifferent hum of traffic and anonymous faces, felt almost mocking in its normality. Horns blared, brakes screeched, and strangers hurried past, each cocooned in their own trivial concerns, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing inside me.

I looked both ways, preparing to cross the road, yet my eyes betrayed me. They flicked toward the ATM standing against the bank wall, its glowing screen humming like a siren. It wasn't just a machine—it was temptation incarnate, a pulsing beacon whispering of more, always more.

The backpack on my shoulder seemed to throb in agreement, its unnatural weight pressing down like a conscience given form. Just a little more wouldn't hurt, would it? The thought slithered through my mind, silk-smooth yet barbed. The cash already hidden inside sang of power, of options, of security. And yet, the whisper urged me to reach again.

Guilt tightened its grip almost immediately. Jamie. His name alone was enough to make my chest constrict. To even consider using his card felt like betrayal, like slipping a knife between the ribs of the one person I couldn't afford to wound. But betrayal wore the disguise of necessity, and necessity was louder than conscience. This wasn't greed—it was survival.

The spectre of the police loomed in my thoughts, faceless, inevitable, piecing together transactions and trails. But worse still was the shadow of Joel's killer, whoever they were. Someone had slit his throat, left him bleeding in that truck, and that someone could still be watching. Cody's face flashed through my mind—his urgency, his calmness, the device he wielded so effortlessly. Ally or executioner? I didn't know. Perhaps I'd never know.

Resigned, I approached the ATM, Jamie's savings card a guilty weight in my palm. Sliding it into the slot felt like crossing another invisible threshold, my pulse drumming in my ears. The machine whirred, indifferent, as though it wasn't complicit in my deceit.

The PIN came automatically—Jamie's birthday, because of course it was, because he'd never been good at remembering complicated numbers and had used the same PIN for everything since we'd met. I'd teased him about it once, told him it wasn't secure. He'd laughed and said he trusted me with everything anyway, so what did it matter?

The memory stung now, sharp and unwelcome.

When the notes spat out, I felt the same electric thrill that had coursed through me at the teller's counter—a pulse of triumph shadowed by shame. I shoved the money into the backpack, my fingers fumbling to conceal it as quickly as possible, sliding Jamie's card back into my wallet with a whispered apology he'd never hear.

Another few thousand all sorted, I told myself, as if repetition might dull the guilt. But as I crossed the road back to Jamie’s car, the backpack tugging heavier on my shoulders, the high began to dissolve. The triumph bled away, leaving only the gnawing realisation: every step I took was laced with risk.

And sooner or later, someone—police, stranger, or Cody himself—was going to notice.