Prompt: "The trouble started when they threw the book in the fire"
Word limit: 100-500, not including prompt.
Photo chosen by me
My Entry: Show Me the Money
The trouble started when they threw the book in the fire. Jason stood with his brothers, watching the pages blacken and smoke drifting up the chimney. Being back here in the house where he grew up made him uneasy, itchy, like ants crawling beneath his skin.
"Nobody will ever know," the eldest, Joseph, said, brushing the dust off his hands.
Those words seemed so familiar. Jason was the baby, the butt of their jokes for years. Now that he was as tall and muscled as the others, they left him alone. But it wasn't his brother's voice he heard in his head.
Jason shook off his unease. "Do you think anyone read it?"
"It was in the trunk with the money," said John, the middle brother. "I doubt anyone's been up there in the thirty years since Mom died."
"Who'd have thought Dad..." Jason trailed off, thinking about the man that married their mother and took on her three young boys. He'd been father to them, and mother as well when she died the next year. They were lucky to have him, as he reminded them their whole lives.
Jason shivered. Being here made it hard to breathe. He kept expecting... something.
"Do you think the money is marked?" asked John. "Or there's a record of serial numbers or something?"
"It was a long time ago," answered Joseph. "I don't know what the cops did back then, or the FBI, or whoever."
"Neither of you have said anything to anybody, right?" Jason probed. Unlikely. Like him, his brothers were unmarried, no women in their lives.
"Hell," Joseph said, "even if they come back at us, what's the worst that could happen? They'd just take the money. We're not doing anything wrong, just using the money we found in our father's attic after he died. He was the criminal, not us."
"Yeah." John nodded his agreement. "Without the diary, there's no way we could know the money was stolen. For all we know, Dad could have been saving his whole life and accumulated it up there."
"Let's get out of here," Jason said. "We can take it back to town to divide it."
Joseph narrowed his eyes at him. "Why such a hurry all of a sudden?"
"This place gives me the creeps." Jason started back up the stairs to the attic. "Come on, let's get the money and get the hell out of here."
He stood at the top of the stairs, waiting as his brothers passed by before drawing his gun.
"You knew, didn't you?"
They both turned, eyes widening. "Knew what?" Joseph said. "We didn't know about the money."
"Not the money." The ants under his skin were joined by bees buzzing in Jason's belly. "What he did to me."
"Jason, he did it to all of us." Joseph, always the reasonable one, the leader, started toward him, reaching out.
Jason shot them both, hefted the trunk of money onto his back and locked the door behind him. "He owes me," he muttered as he drove away.
Prompt plus 498 words
