Psychological Horror Story The Collector’s Finish The Price of My Greed Is Higher Than I Thought Preview
Delve into the shadowy world of a Havana mechanic facing impossible debts.
A pristine classic car arrives, carrying a fortune and a chilling proposition.
Discover the price of temptation and the terrifying consequences of one fateful choice.
What happens when a debt collector isn’t interested in your money, but what you truly love?
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Debts of the Soul
There are debts, and then there are debts.
Most can be settled with currency, with labor, with time.
They are simple, transactional things.
But some debts… some are of the soul.
They are incurred not in a grand betrayal, but in a single, quiet moment of weakness.
A flicker of temptation indulged.
A line crossed in the heat of a desperate afternoon.
And for these debts, the payment extracted is rarely simple, and never, ever fair.
The collector, you see, is not interested in what you have.
He is interested in what you love.
A Tempting Offer
The heat in Havana was a physical weight, a wet blanket that clung to Mario’s skin and filled his lungs.
But the heat inside the garage was different.
It was a dry, metallic heat, thick with the scent of grease, gasoline, and the sweet, cloying aroma of rust being ground from vintage steel.
Mario was an artist, and this was his sanctuary.
His hands, stained with the ghosts of a thousand engines, moved with the grace of a surgeon as he tuned the carburetor of a ‘57 Bel Air.
Its engine purred, a low, contented rumble that was the only music he needed.
He was a good mechanic.
An honest one.
This, he told himself, was true.
It was the other truth that soured the air, that coiled in his gut like a starved snake.
The truth of his gambling problem.
A few bad hands of poker, a disastrous bet on a cockfight.
Now, the whispers followed him through the neighborhood, friendly smiles hiding impatient eyes.
The debt was large, and the men he owed it to were not known for their patience.
Then, Mr. Roca had arrived.
A man carved from shadow and old money, his dark skin gleaming, his white linen suit impossibly clean in the dusty garage.
His car was a thing of impossible beauty: a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing, silver and pristine, a creature from another world dropped into the gritty reality of Mario’s life.
It needed a simple tune-up, Mr. Roca had said, his voice a low, smooth baritone.
He would be back before sunset.
For three hours, Mario had worked, losing himself in the clean, perfect lines of German engineering.
And for three hours, he had ignored the envelope on the passenger seat.
It was thick, creamy white, with no name on it.
Through the thin paper, he could see the unmistakable green and grey of American dollars.
A fortune.
More than enough to clear his slate, to buy his son, Leo, that new baseball glove, to breathe again.
As the sun began to bleed orange and purple across the Havana skyline, the temptation became a physical ache.
Mr. Roca was rich.
This was probably forgotten money, a trifle.
A test.
The word slithered into his mind.
What if it was a test?
He dismissed it.
Rich men were careless, not cruel.
His hands trembled, the wrench feeling heavy and foreign.
He thought of Leo’s face.
He thought of the cold eyes of the men he owed.
One bad choice.
That’s all it would take to fix everything.
The Trap Springs Shut
His heart a frantic drum against his ribs, Mario wiped his hands on a rag, the rough fabric scraping his knuckles.
He leaned into the car, the scent of expensive, sun-warmed leather filling his nostrils.
His fingers closed around the envelope.
It felt impossibly heavy, weighted with sin and salvation.
He slid it into his pocket.
A heavy, final thump-click echoed through the cabin as the locks on all four doors shot home.
Mario jerked back, his head striking the low roof of the Gullwing.
He fumbled for the handle.
Locked.
He tried the other door.
The same.
A cold sweat, entirely different from the sweat of the day’s labor, broke out across his forehead.
Through the windshield, he saw the garage door, previously open to the fading light, was now a solid wall of corrugated steel.
He was sealed in.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced the haze of his transgression.
He threw himself against the driver’s side window, his shoulder screaming in protest.
The glass didn’t even shudder.
It was thick, reinforced.
He hammered on it with his fist, the impacts doing nothing but sending jolts of pain up his arm.
The horn.
He slammed his palm onto the steering wheel’s center.
Nothing.
The wire had been cut.
Of course it had been.
He was a mechanic trapped in a car.
The irony was a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth.
The heat began to build, no longer the comforting warmth of a workshop but the suffocating oppression of an oven.
Hours bled into one another.
He screamed until his throat was raw, the sound swallowed by the soundproofed interior.
He tore at the leather seats, trying to find a wire, a mechanism, anything his skilled hands could exploit.
But everything was different.
Modified.
The car was a vault.
His prison.
As dehydration set in and the air grew thin and foul, he slumped against the door, his mind a feverish swamp of regret.
It wasn’t about the money anymore.
It was about Leo.
The thought of his son, waiting for a father who would never come home, was a pain sharper than any physical agony.
It was that thought that gave him the last surge of adrenaline.
There was one spot, a single place on this model where the wiring for the trunk release passed close to the chassis, just beneath the rear seat.
A design flaw.
It would be a one-in-a-million shot.
With trembling, bloody fingers, he tore away the leather, dug through the horsehair padding, and felt for it.
A thin, solitary wire.
Using the metal buckle of his belt, he began to scrape, to fray, to pray.
A spark.
A fizz.
A faint pop from the rear of the car.
The trunk.
He scrambled over the seats, his body a collection of aches and bruises.
He kicked at the trunk’s interior panel until it splintered, revealing the lock mechanism.
He hammered at it, a desperate, rhythmic, mad percussion, until with a groan of protesting metal, it gave way.
He spilled out onto the concrete floor of the garage, gasping the stale, hot air like it was the finest wine.
He was free.
And he was filled with a righteous, incandescent rage.
The Ultimate Collection
Standing in the corner of the garage, wreathed in the smoke of a fat cigar, was Mr. Roca.
He was smiling, a slow, appreciative smile, as if watching a particularly fine performance.
He held up a glass of dark rum in a silent toast.
“Bravo, Mario,” Mr. Roca’s voice was calm, amused.
“Truly.
I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Mario didn’t think.
He acted.
He launched himself forward, grabbing the heaviest wrench from his workbench.
The fight was short, brutal, and ugly.
It was the frantic struggle of a cornered animal against the cold, detached cruelty of a god.
It ended with a sickening, wet crunch as the wrench found its mark.
Mr. Roca crumpled to the floor, his white suit blooming with a single, crimson flower.
Silence.
The only sound was Mario’s own ragged, tearing breaths.
He stood over the body, the wrench dripping.
He looked at the dead man’s face, the smile now a permanent, mocking grimace.
On a small table next to the chair, another envelope, even thicker than the first, lay beside a single, ornate key.
Mario took it all.
The money, the key.
He had won.
He had faced the devil and won.
He unlocked the garage door and staggered out into the cool night air of Havana, a free man.
A rich man.
A father who could finally fix everything.
The walk home was a dream.
The weight of the money in his pockets was a comforting ballast, anchoring him to this new, hopeful reality.
He saw his apartment building, the familiar yellow glow in his window.
He took the stairs two at a time, his heart a wild bird beating against his ribs.
He used the key—it fit perfectly.
He swung the door open.
“Leo!” he called out, his voice thick with emotion.
The apartment was just as it should be.
The smell of ropa vieja lingered in the air.
Leo’s little wooden cars were scattered on the rug.
The worn armchair, the sagging bookshelf.
It was all there.
It was all perfect.
But it was silent.
A deep, profound silence that felt… wrong.
His eyes fell upon the small mantelpiece above the old television.
There was a collection of framed photographs.
His wedding day.
Leo’s first steps.
And a new one.
A five-by-seven, in a simple silver frame.
He picked it up.
His blood ran cold.
It was a picture of him and Leo.
They were standing in front of the silver Gullwing, the devil’s car.
Mario’s arm was around his son’s shoulders, and they were both smiling, beaming into the camera.
A photograph of a moment that had never happened.
His hand trembled, and he touched the wall beside the mantelpiece.
It was cool.
Too cool.
He tapped it with his knuckle.
It didn’t sound like plaster.
It sounded like metal.
Hollow.
He stumbled to the window, the one that looked out onto their street, and pressed his face against it.
It wasn’t glass.
It was a screen.
And as he watched, a woman walking a dog froze for a fraction of a second before her looping animation began again.
The familiar chorus of his neighborhood—the distant salsa music, the laughter of children—he strained to hear it, and a new dread, colder and deeper than any he had ever known, settled in his soul.
The salsa music was a loop.
The exact same three bars of a horn solo, repeating with flawless, inhuman precision.
The smell of food wasn’t from the kitchen; it was coming from a small, hidden vent near the floor.
This wasn’t his home.
This was a box.
A bigger, more perfect, more monstrous box.
The escape was a lie.
Killing Roca was part of the test.
This was the real trap.
A fail-safe.
A punishment designed not just to contain the body, but to crucify the soul with a vision of everything it had lost.
Then he heard it.
A sound from nowhere and everywhere at once.
A sound that vibrated up through the soles of his feet and rattled the teeth in his skull.
It was the heavy, final thump-click of the Gullwing’s doors locking him in.
They say hell is fire and brimstone.
A place of eternal, screaming torment.
A comforting thought, really, in its simplicity.
But perhaps true damnation is quieter.
Perhaps it is a perfect, silent replica of the life you threw away.
A place where you can see and smell and almost touch everything you ever loved, just on the other side of a screen you can never break, a door you can never open.
A punishment not for the body, but for the ghost it leaves behind.
A final debt, collected forever.