The Bad Penny [FICTOID]

Who placed the curse is forgotten and unimportant.

What’s important is the coin, the particular penny -- a 1953 Lincoln one-cent piece from the Denver mint -- carried the power of life and death.

Representative Susane Larralda heard of the penny from her great-grandmother, a refugee who fled Franco’s Spain to come to America.

“Be careful with it,” her one-eyed great-grandmother said, passing the coin down generation to generation.  “It holds the power of life and death.”

“If it holds the power of life and death,” little Susane said, “then why didn’t you use it to kill Franco so you could return to Spain.”

“Magic doesn’t work that way,” said her great-grandmother.  “Besides, the devil knows his own.”

“But – “

“Listen, nobody likes a smarty-pants.  The coin is cursed, take it or leave it.”

Over the years Susane’s family did try leaving it.

They’d drop it into a Salvation Army Santa’s kettle; he’d get run over by a truck.

They’d leave it as a tip for a waitress; the restaurant would burn down.

They stuck in in their fuse box instead of using a regular fuse; their house burned down.

And always the coin would somehow find its way back into their possession.

At last they settled on a strategy to deal with the coin.

If they couldn’t outright nullify its power they could at least minimalize it.

They bought a coin collecting album, stuck the penny in it, then tossed it in a trunk in the attic.

Problem solved.

…or so they thought.

So long as the coin remained in their possession, its evil power could still manifest itself.

Case in point:  During a congressional hearing on cost overruns on a Federal project in Boulder, Susane Larralda felt frustrated by a particularly recalcitrant accountant who refused to give clear, straightforward answers to such basic, simple questions as, “Why did you use Federal funds to buy a yacht?”

After an excruciatingly egregious evasion, Susane Larralda thought of the penny tucked away in the attic back home and how she’d love to slip it in the accountant’s pocket.

Instantly the accountant gasped in pain, clutched his chest, keeled over, and was dead before he hit the floor.

Shaken by this, Susane Larralda returned home and confronted her family.  “We must do something about this once and for all.  We can’t destroy it; if it didn’t melt in the fuse box it never will.  Just sticking it in the attic won’t do.  How can we permanently get rid of it?”

Their great-grandmother -- now clocking in at well over a century in age -- provided the solution:  She died.

While saddened at her death, the family realized they could get rid of the coin by placing it on her eye in the coffin, then burying both.

Two days after the funeral, as the family gathered for a big farewell meal before Susane returned to Washington, they heard a loud pounding at their front door.

Before they could answer it, the door burst off its hinges and their great-grandmother’s reanimated corpse shambled into the house, the cursed penny glowing white hot.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she / it said.

© Buzz Dixon