***
Fairly moaned as he slammed his open palm against the snooze button on his alarm clock. The bright red letters were an unwelcome sight. He knew he had work at eight but did seven have to come so early? He had only been up until midnight the previous night, so it was not as though he had not slept much.
His phone was set to go off ten minutes later – an insurance policy in case he fell asleep after hitting the snooze button – but he was awake enough to turn it off. He had not received a single text that week, a new mark of excellence for a Thursday. Fairly wanted to get to the weekend and then worry about talking to people. Another two days of work and then he could make everyone relevant again…
A loud knock sounded on his door, jarring him awake. Can’t I shower first? Fairly thought forlornly. He moaned louder and then rose out of bed lethargically. He felt relieved that he had slept in boxers and socks, finding no reason to put anything else on before answering the door. It’s what whoever it is gets for coming here this early. He had been expecting a package in the mail, so he presumed it was just the courier anyway.
A second, louder knock sounded as Fairly shambled across the carpet toward the door. “I’m coming!” Fairly yelled. That only prompted a third, even louder, knock.
Fairly undid the latch and opened the door to find a tall, broad man of about fifty, with a receding head of beech-coloured hair. He wore a black suit with a faint pinstripe, a pressed white shirt with a subdued grey and white tie, and a pair of black leather gloves. Fairly sincerely doubted this man had arrived to deliver anything.
“You must be Fairly,” the man said cordially, extending a hand. Fairly shook it hesitantly. “My name is Elden Anderson. I am the lawyer of a… very powerful man, that’s how we’ll put it. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
Fairly stared blankly. He recognized the name from somewhere, maybe one of the mass emails he had received at work or from the news or somewhere. He knew Elden was indeed a very successful lawyer. He was not in the mood to admit that. “I have no idea who you are and I have work in an hour.”
Elden chuckled. “I know you know who I am, at least vaguely, and I know you have work in an hour. This will be a short talk. It is important enough that showing up a few minutes late for work won’t end your life. You’re so close to the subway it won’t matter.”
Fairly was a little taken aback that Elden seemed to know he had work in an hour but did not think much of it. “Okay, then, what’s going on?”
Elden reached into his suit and pulled out an envelope. “You may have guessed by now that I’m a government lawyer,” Elden mused as he straightened out the envelope, “and you wouldn’t be totally wrong. That’s how I heard about you, anyway. Here, take this.”
Fairly accepted the envelope. It was normal size, the kind that would fit a letter in the mail, and plain white with his first name typed on it in black ink. Cambria, Fairly reflected momentarily. The man knows his fonts.
“Don’t open it just yet,” Elden warned. “I should explain something to you first. This… very powerful man and I have decided to present you with an offer we hope you’ll like.
“In giving you this envelope, what I’m really giving you is a choice. You can either open it or you can refuse to open it. I understand you don’t know me, so all this might be difficult to believe, but I really do mean this when I say it. I also really do mean it when I say that while I hope you believe me, it won’t matter if you don’t.
“I’m giving you an opportunity to live a life far better than the one you have now. It’ll be everything you ever wanted and then a few things you never knew you wanted, but believe me, I know you’ll want them when you see them. You can try to imagine it, but don’t bother – you need to see it to understand what I’m envisioning for you. The… very powerful man I work for has arranged for all of this, accounting for variation in what your preferences might be upon seeing certain aspects of the deal. I assure you, though, I have seen your options and they are nothing short of great. You only get them if you open the envelope.
“As a condition, you’d have to accept that you’re leaving your life here mostly behind. You can visit every so often, and you can still have your family and friends, but nothing else will really be the same. Your girlfriend will dump you and your band will fire you, I can nearly guarantee. You won’t have your job anymore but I suppose that’s just an added incentive to take this offer. Regardless, you will find that the moment you open that envelope, life will be much different for you.
“Alternatively, you can refuse to believe me and just throw away the envelope. I’ll be disappointed but I won’t stop you. Or you can wait on it so long that the offer expires. Either way, or if you do anything outlandish like burn the thing or use it as toilet paper, the offer is null.
“Of course, you may want it that way. You do have a decent life as is, and my proposition lies so far in the unknown you can’t see its tail. If you turn down this offer, your life will continue just as it would have if you had never opened the envelope. Open the envelope and it changes forever.”
Fairly was far more awake than he had been earlier that morning.
“One last thing,” Elden interjected before Fairly could form a coherent thought. “You have until seven o’clock tonight to open the envelope. If you open it after that, there won’t be a deal for you. Your life will continue as it would have had I never knocked on your door.
“Do you understand?”
Fairly nodded.
“Good,” said Elden curtly, as though the preceding speech had left him out of breath. He checked his watch. “You think you have to be at work soon? I’m the lawyer for a very powerful man, you know, and I’m running late.”
Elden shook Fairly’s hand, turned and then walked out the door, shutting it behind him. Fairly stood there bewildered for a moment before contemplating the envelope more closely, not that there was much to look at about it. He set it on his kitchen counter. He would be home at around four-thirty, which would give him more than enough time to open the envelope – if he chose to do that at all.
Fairly’s day at work moved more quickly than usual, which was the exact opposite of what he had hoped would happen. Eight to four was typically a painstaking experience, bracketed in portions by the periodic breaks he would take when his superiors were elsewhere in the office. He mostly did “the less glamorous aspect of statistical research,” as they put it, while always wondering whether there was really a more glamorous aspect of statistical research. There were enough down moments for him to relax, sip a coffee or play some online games at least a few times each hour. Those moments were the highlights of his day, especially when there was so little supervision he could make a call.
He alternated between thinking about his life and looking up every bit of information he could on Elden Anderson. It’s not like he goes around making these offers to everyone, or if he does, it’s not like people blog about them. Fairly did not expect to find any information on an offer of this sort – and indeed, he did not – but he did find quite a bit on Elden more generally. The semi-aged lawyer had spent his younger years ascending large firms, to then work for the government… Fairly bored of the man’s life story fairly quickly, interesting as it may have been under less strenuous circumstances. The man was clearly very important, which was all Fairly could glean that could possibly be of any use.
Checking to see if he’s trustworthy is pointless, Fairly realized after a few minutes of fruitless clicking. That is, even if I could ever know for sure. Fairly’s conclusion was simple: If he isn’t telling the truth, and opening the envelope wouldn’t change my life, opening it and not opening it have the same effect. It’s only if he’s telling the truth that there’s any difference in what my actions could do. I may as well trust him if I want my life to change – the worst thing that could happen is that I open the envelope, the contents are meaningless, and I end up in the exact same situation as if I hadn’t opened it. If I don�
�t want my life to change, I can just shred the thing and that’ll be that whether he’s telling the truth or not. If I’m that curious, I can open it tomorrow. That must be why he said it doesn’t matter if I trust him.
Did Fairly want his life to change? That was the only question he could answer, and the only part of the puzzle he could control. The question dogged him as he sifted through that morning’s remaining research, causing him to have to read the same pieces of information multiple times. Sometimes his vision blurred, making numbers and axes appear where they should not have. Other times he panicked to the point of having to get up and pace back and forth across his small section of the office. The trend data says you’re insane, he joked inwardly. His coworkers probably would have believed it.
More than anything, he wanted to be alone. Work had become a useless distraction in the face of his decision, albeit one he could not have avoided if he wanted to keep his job. If I’ll need it, he smirked. Maybe if the cute administrative assistant down the hall would go out with me… he chatted with her during much of his downtime, and they had eaten lunch together a few times, but he wanted to stay away from her that day. He had conveniently forgotten to tell her about his possible girlfriend. He was more concerned with the envelope than with both of them combined.
Fairly finally managed a long break at about noon. Once he had thrown his empty coffee cup in the recycling bin (perfect shot from ten feet), he did the one thing a man who had just been gifted a supposedly life-altering envelope did: he called his mom.
The small talk ended abruptly when Fairly explained his situation. His mother replied, “So you’re meaning to tell me Elden Anderson came to your door at seven this morning and told you opening some envelope he gave you would change your life?”
“Yeah, mom… I know it isn’t too plausible, and I’d show you the envelope if I could, but it’s at home and I’m at work right now.”
“And he said…”
Fairly told her everything.
“I don’t even know what to tell you, Fairly. Do you feel your life is that bad you need to leave so much of it behind? I know you’d still have us…”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling.”
“I don’t like this idea. It happened a little quickly, you don’t even know why this well-known lawyer was at your door, and you don’t know what opening this envelope would do. What if it’s anthrax? He was wearing gloves!”
“I don’t think one of the city’s most prominent lawyers would deliver me an anthrax letter, mom.”
“Okay, fine, but I don’t want anything bad happening to you. He might be telling the truth, but who’s to say his idea of a better life is the same as yours?”
The conversation ended shortly thereafter. Fairly could barely focus on anything after that question his mother had just posed. It added another issue to contemplate, as if Fairly was not sufficiently frustrated already.
What is a better life? Fairly wondered, or, rather, what is a better life for me? Everything as it was but with a dollar per hour pay increase would make his life better in an objective sense, but Fairly was almost certain nothing of the sort would happen. Beyond that, it was mostly subjective. What if Elden has me wrong? Fairly wondered. He’s only interacted with me for a few minutes, and he concocted the offer without ever having met me. It’s not like I can back out after opening the envelope and seeing what’s inside – he made that quite clear. Fairly quickly realized the talk with his mother had left him more confused than when he had picked up the phone to dial her number.
Faced with an hour-long lunch and a specific desire to avoid his favourite administrative assistant, Fairly did the one thing a man who had just been gifted a supposedly life-altering envelope and then subsequently called his mom did: he called a friend.
Once again, the story went as Fairly recalled it. “If you’re not shitting me,” his friend replied, “Elden Anderson – a guy even I’ve heard of – was at your door offering you an envelope full of something that’ll bring you a better life? He probably put money in that thing!”
“I don’t think he’d do that,” Fairly said, exasperated. “If it was money, my life wouldn’t necessarily be as altered as he made it sound. Only periodic visits with you guys?”
“Maybe you’d have a new social circle, like celebrities or someone.”
“What about the thing about the offer expiring? That wouldn’t make sense with money. Money doesn’t just expire.”
“It could be a cheque that’s void after seven. People don’t do things like that often but this seems like the kind of situation when someone would.”
“It wasn’t money, okay?”
“Okay, then promise me a K if it is money. It’d be so much more than that you’d barely notice the difference.”
Fairly only had six and a half hours until the decision became final. He had better subjects to discuss than what he would do if Elden had given him money. “Okay, fine, I’ll give you a thousand dollars if it’s money.”
“Awesome, thanks.”
Fairly smacked his forehead with his palm so hard his friend heard it from the other end.
“Look,” his friend insisted, “if you want my advice, here it is. Do you feel your life is that good you can’t leave part of it behind? I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone before. You got what we would probably imagine as some hilariously unrealistic daydream delivered right to your door. You’d still have your family and friends, as he said. What are you scared of losing? Your job? The girl you’re kind of dating but might not like as much as that secretary you go on about? That secretary you haven’t asked out on a date yet? Your band? Just open the damn envelope. Elden Anderson is a smart guy, whatever he’s got planned for you is probably something better than you could think of anyway.”
“First of all, it’s administrative assistant-”
“Oh, and if it’s money, remember, a thousand bucks right here.”
“Fuck you. You’re right, but fuck you.”
“That may be the nicest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Seriously though, thanks.”
Fairly’s last few hours went by so quickly he had no time to consider what his mother or his friend had said anymore. He liked it that way – if he opened the envelope that evening, this could be his last real day at that job. He had a tiny bit wider smile when he said goodbye to the administrative assistant, and the subway ride was just a little more satisfying. For once, Fairly was going through his daily routine because he wanted to do it, not just because that was what he had to do to make money and get home. Had he been that certain he wanted to open the envelope, he could have stayed home from work or left early. If he planned to open the envelope, each optional hour felt better than all the obligatory ones ever had. If he did not plan to open the envelope, he had to be at work anyway.
He picked up the envelope and held it to the light. It looked like there was a letter inside but that was no surprise. Still unsure, he placed it on his coffee table, putting a knife beside it in case he wanted to open it. He collapsed onto his couch, exhausted from a day of sitting at a desk and taking the subway. The subject of the envelope would have exhausted him had he been immobilized.
Fairly had chosen a good place and a bad place to sit: directly in front of a clock. He watched the clock in front of him tick away the seconds, which became minutes, which became hours. Until seven, he had no reason to open the envelope other than to defuse any tension he could be feeling. I can open it now, he thought every couple minutes, or I can douse it in the sink, set it on fire with a match, rip it into confetti and throw it out the window, and this can all be decided. An early idea was to throw it in the garbage can, but that would just invite him to dig it out and put it back on the table. Or I can smash this clock, open the envelope when I feel good and ready, and if it’s after seven, so be it.
One smashed clock later, Fairly was staring at his cell phone, watching the numbers change every minute. Wish I still had that c
lock, Fairly contemplated regretfully. It was already six-thirty. The couch felt scratchy against his arms. He was getting extremely thirsty, having completely forgotten to fetch himself a drink of water after getting home from work. He sat there and did the only thing he had left to do. He thought the same thoughts for the hundredth time.
His phone showed ten to seven. He thought about his life, of all he could possibly lose. He thought about what his mother had said, about whether Elden could have had some grandiose conception of Fairly’s life that Fairly would not enjoy. He thought about what his friend had said, about how rare this kind of opportunity would be. If I don’t open that envelope, I’ll regret it, Fairly knew. Will I regret it if I do?
The end decision was far less philosophical. Fairly looked over at the envelope, and then at the knife, and then at his phone. It was 6:52. Fairly was sick of waiting. He had to act, and he had to act then. The best reason not to do something is to not have a compelling reason to do it. The best reason to do something is to not have a compelling reason not to do it.
Fairly threaded the knife inside the seal. He sliced open the envelope, letting the letter inside fall face-up on the table.
You have done well in opening this envelope. You may find that this letter will be of concern to you – hopefully it helps.
I regret to inform you that there is a slow-acting poison in your system. The poison was developed by a crack team of government scientists to kill in exactly two weeks. Death will not come to you particularly painfully, thankfully, but you will notice it. Aside from those few who fall asleep and never wake up, I would hope to think we all notice our deaths, after all.
Remember your recent blood test? You may recall it was thirteen days ago. It was not really a blood test at all, as you may be understanding by now. Consider this: did you ever actually see the syringe after the nurse removed the cap? We both know you did not. You looked away while she drew a lethal dose into that syringe and then shot it straight into your blood.
Come to the address below if you want the antidote. You will not find it anywhere else.
Fairly only needed to glance at the address to know it was a ground-floor suite in an office complex a few blocks away. It would not be more than a ten-minute walk. That was not what concerned Fairly; he found it difficult to believe the letter. He imagined anyone would, for reasons so obvious he did not bother reciting them to himself.
Had the address finished the letter, Fairly may have spent some time considering whether to go to an office complex on a Thursday evening on the whim of a highly suspect letter. Elden appeared to know far more than he should have, but anyone with a private investigator could obtain pieces of that information and take an educated guess at the rest. Anyone with blood-injection phobia would have looked away, and dates are easy to get, Fairly reassured himself. Why someone would hire a high-powered lawyer and a PI to deal with me is the bigger question.
P.S. Alissa says you are a nice young man but you should really learn to deal with your anxiety better. You looked so scared when you were watching her pull the cotton pad and alcohol swab from the boxes in the back of the cupboard. You should have been watching the rest of the room. The needle should have been the least of your worries that day.
Elden’s words from that morning ricocheted inside Fairly’s skull. I’m giving you an opportunity to live a life far better than the one you have now… You can try to imagine it, but don’t bother – you need to see it to understand what I’m envisioning for you… If you turn down this offer, your life will continue just as it would have if you had never opened the envelope… You have until seven o’clock tonight to open the envelope. If you open it after that, there won’t be a deal for you. Your life will continue as it would have had I never knocked on your door. For the first time that day, everything made sense.
Fairly’s head imploded.
He threw his loafers at the back of his closet and rummaged for his running shoes, which he laced up faster than he could remember. He took a quick drink of water, straight from the tap. He picked the letter up off the table, grasping it so tightly it crumpled partially, and then bolted from his apartment so quickly he forgot to take his keys or to lock the door. He remembered a minute later but was not about to turn back.
Six minutes and fourteen seconds later, he arrived at the office complex, panting and wheezing. Most of the offices were unoccupied. One had its lights on, the only illuminated beacon outside of the few stray streetlights that had guided Fairly there. Fairly desperately wanted to see what was going on in the office but the blinds were drawn.
He walked up to the front door of the suite that held the lit-up office. He knocked at first before noticing that the door was unlocked. He let himself in, turned on a hall light and walked toward his destination. The halls were off-white, the ceiling was light grey, and the floors were dingy custard tile.
He hesitated as he reached the door, not knowing whether to knock or whether he should simply open it like he had with the front door. It was an old-style door with a frosted window comprising its upper half, with, as Fairly should have supposed, the name ELDEN ANDERSON, SOLICITOR scrawled in black block letters on the glass. Maybe this guy is a PI, Fairly joked to himself nervously. He already has the door for it, now he just needs the hat. What interested Fairly more was the audible chatter inside. He would have given almost anything to have known what the people inside were saying.
A minute of silence preceded the inevitable. “We know you’re out there, Fairly,” cackled Elden. “Open the door.” At this point, Fairly saw no option but to do what Elden said.
The room contained only a massive oaken table and three office chairs. Two of the chairs were situated on the window side. Elden sat in one, and a man Fairly did not recognize sat in the other. Elden was wearing the same suit, shirt and tie, but without the gloves; the other man was dressed similarly, although far more vibrantly, and looked to be about ten years older. Fairly may have felt out of place had he not instantly started babbling about needing the antidote. He may have also noticed that the third chair, which was on the door side of the table, was unoccupied.
“Please,” Elden calmed, “sit in the chair and we’ll talk. You aren’t getting your antidote until you do, so may as well. Close the door first, though. This is a private matter, as I’m sure you are aware.”
Fairly could not argue with that logic. The first thing he did was close the door, as Elden had requested. He sat down and then asked for the antidote in a slightly more composed manner, waving the letter in front of him.
“Don’t worry about the antidote,” Elden guffawed. The other man had still not said anything since Fairly had entered the room but had cracked a smile and looked as though he was holding back laughter. “Tell me when you’ve calmed down so we can talk.”
They waited until Fairly calmed down. The more time passed, the tougher Fairly found the task, yet he eventually reached a state Elden considered acceptable.
“Now that you’re ready to hear me speak,” Elden said kindly, “there are a few things I’d like to say. First of all, I’d like to commend you for taking me up on the challenge. Not everyone would do that. You are truly a more ambitious man than some of your peers might have guessed. We like you for that.”
“…Thanks?” Fairly managed, if barely.
“Secondly, and you may have guessed this by how casual I seem right now, you were never poisoned. I told you we wanted to give you a better life. How would poisoning you have achieved that? I needed to know you’d opened the envelope, then I just needed to get you here and I figured that would do the trick. I’m a lawyer, not an assassin.”
“But the blood test…”
“Maybe you just got a blood test. Alissa is my niece, I’ll have you know, and she’s one of the finest nurses I’ve ever seen. I should hope she can tell the difference between a blood test and a lethal injection, otherwise we’re all doomed.”
Fairly thought for a moment and then responded. “What if I�
��d opened the envelope later and seen some useless letter about obviously non-existent poison in my bloodstream? Or if I’d opened the letter on time but not come here?”
Elden looked amused. “Then you would have simply accepted the letter as a hoax, discarded it and gone on with your life. You would have had a hilarious story to tell people at bars, but you already did just by having me arrive at your door unannounced this morning. Again, nothing changed. Had you bothered coming to this office at some later date, you would have merely been going to an office for what I could have only presumed was no apparent reason at all.”
“…but I could have exposed you for writing the letter-”
Elden waved a hand to cut off Fairly. “No, you couldn’t have. You think I actually put my name on my office door like some private eye from the Great Depression? This is rented space. I painted my name on the door with a stencil in five minutes after work. Had you come on a different day, you would have certainly found someone else here, and that someone else would have been very confused to see you. Showing the letter would have only made you look like more of a crackpot. You may notice my name appears nowhere on that letter, nor does any other piece of information that could possibly trace back to me. It’s typed in a somewhat common font. Any specific information relates only to your health clinic visit, and there’s certainly nothing there that could implicate Alissa. Remember, at that point your state of being alive confirms she didn’t inject you with anything. There’s no better defence she could have.
“To be honest with you, I haven’t even touched that envelope or that letter. As far as I’m concerned, you can keep them as entirely worthless but certainly entertaining souvenirs. Why do you think I was wearing gloves when it’s not that cold out?”
Fairly set the letter on the table. Neither Elden nor the other man showed interest in it.
“Enough about that letter, and definitely enough about the non-existent poison,” Elden urged. “My associate and I wanted to go home at eight. We have families to see. That’s why we had you open the envelope before seven, to give some lag time in case you needed to determine whether or not to come here after opening the envelope. We’re cautious that way.
“Now go back to right before you decided to open the envelope. As I said, forget about the letter and the non-existent poison. They’re irrelevant. What’s important is why you opened that envelope. Whether you truly do thirst for power the way my associate and I do, or whether you simply find your current life so blasé you opened the envelope out of uncut boredom, it’s okay. What’s important is that you want to live a better life, even at great cost. Opening the envelope proved that.”
Fairly smiled.
“Now that I’ve explained myself far more than I was hoping would be necessary,” Elden began, clasping his hands, “you really should learn about what we can do for you. We’ve given you an offer we know you’ll love, that will make you far happier than you could have been otherwise, that will make you so excited about your future…”
So Elden went on explaining the plan.
* * *
About the Author
Matthew Gordon is sporadically motivated and perpetually displaced. He writes stories just long enough to get to the point.
I Drank the Toxic Cocktail Page 2