Adopted Words

“You want to sell all these coins?” asked the collector, as he fingered lazily through the box of coins.

It was a cool November day and the rain was drizzling down out in the street, but the little upscale collectors shop was warm and inviting. Even so, Milo didn’t particularly want to be here, but his divorce was getting dicey, and he needed liquid assets if he was ever going to maintain the lifestyle he had become accustomed to.

When he was a kid his grandmother had always told him that his senile grandfather’s coin collection was worth a lot; he even remembered the word priceless being tossed around a few times. When she had handed them down to him, she had left very clear instructions that the coins were never to be sold or given away. She had made it clear that they must always stay in the family.

Milo cared nothing for sentimental baubles or the tall tales told about them though, and his silly old grandmother had probably embellished the value of the coins. Still, Milo thought what the hell, maybe he would get lucky, and at the very least it was one less thing his wife could take from him. And if he did get lucky, a large sum would keep him in designer suits and exclusive restaurants while his lawyers secured his assets from that harpy of a wife.

“Ya, I want to get rid of them, what are they worth?” Milo replied casually.

“Oh, a few thousand.”

The guy said it far too nonchalantly, but Milo was in no mood to shop around a silly little coin collection, he had better things to do, “Ok, fine, give me my money and let me get out of here.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Money in hand, Milo made for the door, but the obese guy with the eastern European accent running the counter stopped him, “just out of curiosity, do you know what this coin is?”

He held up an old coin. In fact it was barely even a coin, it looked like someone had taken a hammer to a round piece of metal. There was no value, no discernible markings except for a picture of an ugly little creature with a big grin on his face.

“No,” Milo said as he continued for the door, “should I?”

“It’s called the soul coin, or the devil’s coin. Supposedly it gets passed down through generations in families.”

Milo stopped, turned, and gave the guy a withering look, but he kept right on with his stupid story.

“I always thought maybe it was an urban myth, and I certainly never thought I’d come across one. If this coin is what I think it is, that means someone in your family tree made a deal with the devil. Whoever it was sold their soul, but managed to buy it back, which is not an easy thing to do, it being a deal with the devil and all. The story goes, when you get your soul back from the devil, he doesn’t put it back where it belongs, he puts it in a coin instead. I don’t really know why, maybe as a reminder. The twist though is that whenever someone new inherits the coin, the soul in the coin is allowed to go free, and the soul of the person inheriting the coin gets put in to the coin.”

The fat guy looked up at Milo and grinned. He wrapped the coin up in his big sweaty hand and turned to the safe behind the counter.

Milo wasn’t sure he believed the story, but his grandmother’s warnings were dancing around in his head, and he was becoming a little worried. “So what does me selling the coin to you mean?”

The guy spoke over his shoulder, “it means I own your soul now, I can do what I want with it, I can even use it to make a new bargain with the devil.”

“Hey,” Milo said, a little worried now, “sell me the coin back buddy, it’s a family heirloom, I shouldn’t have sold it to you.”

“No I would never sell this coin,” the guy turned and the grin was gone, his face was all sadness and pity now, “it’s the reason I became a coin collector. You see my dad inherited one of these, and he sold it. He sure regretted it though, once he found out what it was, and he died terrified of an afterlife with no soul. His dying wish was that I find another coin and make a bargain to get his soul back from the devil. Now I have the coin, and I can make a deal for my Dad’s soul and my father will be able to rest in peace.”

The coin dealer turned around and slammed the safe door, “anyway it’s only a story, don’t take it seriously, just forget about this whole thing. I’m sure your soul is fine.”

Milo was shocked, too shocked to say anything, and he stumbled out in to the rain. Suddenly, he left a little lightheaded, a little sick. Suddenly, he felt a little hollow inside, like something important had been ripped out, like there was a hole now where something had been before.

He went back the next day with this lawyer, but the coin collector was gone, and no one could tell Milo where he had gone.

After that he became obsessed, and spent his whole life looking for another coin, another unsuspecting stranger who would be glad to get a little spending money for an old and useless coin. He searched everywhere, but he never found another coin.

And lying in the hospital, surrounded by machines which were only barely keeping death at bay, he confessed everything to his son, and crying pitiably, he begged his son to find another coin, to save his soul.

But his son became an engineer, and lived his own life. He forgot all about his dad’s drug induced death bed ravings, and the story of the soul coin passed out of the family and was gone forever.