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A Shiny New Penny By Stacy Taylor
He kept a penny in his pocket and a penny in his bedroom. The penny in his pocket was from 1845, large and burnished to a gleam at all times. His father had given it to him when he was a boy of eleven. The penny in his bedroom was created in 1973. It, too, was shiny; it, too, had special meaning. But the penny in his bedroom was new; he'd only owned it for a little over two weeks. "A penny saved is a penny earned, Mikey. Never forget that." Mike's father, Stony Samuels, would often say. Mike had not forgotten. The cliché had come to him more often than not as he worked beside his father, feeling small beside the older man's height, feeling less than his father's greatness. Even as an adult, the phrase popped into his mind at the oddest moments: at work, as he made love, as he ate oatmeal in the morning. And always the weight of that 1845 penny pulled him deeper into himself and the past.
"This old penny is worth a lot of money, Mikey. It's worth more than you are, and it's all I'm going to leave you when I die. This here penny, and an education. Mind you keep it spit-shined all the time and remember your dad when you look at it." Mikey nodded, staring at the shiny penny until his father brought him into the moment with a slap to the cheek. He glanced at his dad and then ran off, hauling a bulky burlap bag over sharp stones. When he reached Stony’s truck, he struggled with the weight of the bag, pulling and wrestling until he deposited his heavy load into the truck’s bed. Proud of his strength, he ran back to his father and waited for more bags. He was given another load, and then another, each time dragging the bags to the truck, and returning for more. After a long while, their work for the day was finished. Mikey had loaded the truck in one location and then emptied it in another. He sat silent in the passenger seat, his dad, as always a formidable force, by his side. He fished the penny from his pocket and stared at it, entranced by how it gleamed in the late afternoon sunshine. Beside him, Stony picked his yellowed teeth with the corner of a business card that Mikey made out as, Grade A Meats, Sweetbread, and special recipe sugar-cured Bacon at Barberies Butcher Shop. His father had never cared for monetary things. Stony cared only for gratification and instant reward. Even at so tender an age, Mikey understood that the penny was a rare gift. He vowed to treasure it forever, and had carried that vow with him throughout his life.
Stony had remained true to his word. When he died just two weeks past, he left Mike nothing but a funeral bill, the penny, and one other thing, which had always remained unspoken. A legacy. Mike could not quite understand his part in Stony's work. He remembered those burlap bags and that penny collectively, as if one could not exist without the other. His memories would pull the two together and each time he'd hauled the bags to the truck, and then unloaded them in the woods out past the county line, the weight of the penny would cause him great fatigue. Eventually, those trips with his father became a blur. A blur of burlap and shiny copper that left Mike exhausted and confused. The penny in his bedroom was rare, too. It was not a gift, but something he took for himself on the eve of his father's death. Often he would sit and gaze at it, overcome by some feeling he could not name. He would stroke it gently and whisper nonsense as the words of his father bounced about inside his head. A penny saved is a penny earned, Mikey. He would rise on shaky legs, stare at the copper-color one final time before walking away, unable to understand his emotions and the erection that accompanied them. A penny saved is a penny earned. He had saved that shiny new penny, and in turn had earned it. It was his, forever and ever. He could do what he wanted with it much more than he could ever do with the 1845 penny. In fact, the old penny belonged more to his father than it did to him. Often, when Mike looked at the old penny, he had the overwhelming sensation that he was only keeping it safe and that Stony would one day return and claim it for his own. He shuddered when he felt that sensation and realized that he never wanted his father to return, he might try to take his new penny away from him... (in burlap bags...) Mike looked down and realized he held the old penny clenched in his fist. The familiar heaviness washed over him and he threw it across the room, enraged. Memories of feminine bodies hacked apart and stuffed into burlap bags filled his mind and he was sickened. Stony had taken them one by one, named them Penny, and done unspeakable things to their corpses while his young son looked on. Mike's most powerful memory was of white cream overflowing innocent places. He fought his arousal and went back even farther. The first one had been his mother, Penny, and his father had fought with her until she lay broken, her still hand closed in a death grip over a small object: a penny from 1845. Mikey crouched low in a corner and watched his father remove his trousers and take his mother’s body. Even as young as he had been, he was excited by what he saw: lifeless flesh quivering, breasts bouncing, and open eyes unseeing as Stony thrust into her again and again, wailing and gripping her shoulders. From that day on, Stony had killed Mike's mother many times over, while the boy had watched on with sick fascination. He looked at his new penny, saved and earned, and well cared for. He realized it was time to let her go, but not inside of burlap bags like his father had done. His new penny's beauty should be unmarred, her shininess preserved. Gently, he released the bonds that held her and smoothed her copper colored hair. As she raised frightened eyes to his face, he settled his fists around her throat and squeezed until the breath left her lungs in a wheeze, much as he'd done to his father a little over two weeks ago when Mike had saved his shiny new penny from Stony's grasp. He searched for and found the 1845 penny then closed her fist around its gleam. A penny saved....
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