In the Red

Cliff Daniels loved order. As a veteran IRS agent, his greatest joy was the smooth clicking of a calculator and the neat, satisfying rows of balanced accounts. He wasn’t popular at the office—“by-the-book Cliff” didn’t make friends easily—but that didn’t bother him. He believed in the system, in fairness, in everyone paying their share.

So when Doris Thompson’s case landed on his desk, Cliff approached it with the same precision he applied to every audit. Doris, an eighty-year-old widow, had been making payments to the IRS for decades. The problem? Her “debt” didn’t exist. The payments—thousands of dollars over the years—weren’t attached to any active account.

“It’s a simple mistake,” Cliff muttered as he flipped through her file. Still, something about it gnawed at him. The payments were consistent, accompanied by handwritten notes referencing obscure account numbers and IRS terms he’d never seen before: “Inherited Liability” and “Reassigned Compliance Adjustment.”

The next day, Cliff paid Doris a visit. She greeted him in her modest home with a warm smile and a plate of oatmeal cookies.

“You’ve come about the debt, haven’t you?” she asked, her frail hands trembling slightly as she poured tea.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cliff replied, placing her file on the table. “There’s no record of you owing the IRS anything. These payments you’ve been making—they aren’t necessary.”

Doris’s eyes widened, and for a moment, her smile faltered. Then, relief swept over her face. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “You have no idea how heavy that’s been.”

Cliff frowned. “Heavy?”

Doris laughed nervously and shook her head. “Never mind. Thank you, young man. You’ve done me a kindness.”

Cliff chalked her odd reaction up to age and wrapped up the case, feeling uncharacteristically pleased with himself. For once, his work had helped someone.

A week later, Cliff returned home to find a letter from the IRS waiting for him. It wasn’t unusual—he often received interdepartmental mail at home—but this one was addressed directly to him.

Inside, the letter read:

> NOTICE OF OUTSTANDING BALANCE

Amount Due: $13,847.65

Reassigned Obligations

Thank you for your cooperation.

Cliff frowned. He knew every detail of his finances, and he didn’t owe a cent to anyone. Assuming it was a clerical error, he called the IRS hotline. Forty-five minutes of hold music later, a monotone representative informed him that “Reassigned Obligations” were outside their department’s scope.

“Then whose scope are they in?” Cliff demanded.

“Please wait for the next notice,” the representative replied before disconnecting.

Three days later, a second letter arrived. The new balance was $27,452.98. This time, a note at the bottom read: “Balance adjusted per previous case resolution.”

Confusion turned to irritation. Cliff called the hotline again, only to be bounced from one department to another, each transfer accompanied by vague apologies and more hold music. His coworkers started giving him strange looks as he muttered about “phantom balances” under his breath.

“Is this about Doris Thompson?” he finally snapped into the phone during yet another call. The line went dead.

The letters kept coming. Each one listed a higher balance and increasingly cryptic phrases: “Inherited Compliance,” “Balance Stabilization,” “Ongoing Adjustment.” The amounts grew absurd. $50,000. $100,000. $250,000.

Cliff’s once-orderly life began to unravel. His apartment, once pristine, became a chaotic mess of unopened mail and coffee-stained paperwork. He barely slept, obsessively combing through Doris’s file for answers. But the more he searched, the more the details seemed to shift—her notes referencing terms and balances that hadn’t been there before.

Finally, in desperation, Cliff withdrew $10,000 from his savings and made a payment. A week passed without a new letter, and he dared to hope the nightmare was over.

Then, the next letter arrived:

> NOTICE OF OUTSTANDING BALANCE

Amount Due: $512,394.21

Status: Ongoing.

Cliff laughed, a wild, hollow sound that echoed through his empty apartment. He was losing his mind, and he knew it.

In a final act of desperation, Cliff returned to Doris’s house. She opened the door with a serene smile, as though she’d been expecting him.

“What did you do?” Cliff demanded, his voice hoarse. “What is this debt?”

Doris gestured for him to come inside. The house felt colder than before, the air heavy with an unnatural stillness. She lowered herself into a chair with a sigh.

“I told you,” she said softly. “It’s a heavy thing to carry.”

“What does that mean?” Cliff snapped.

Doris looked at him with something like pity. “Some debts don’t go away. They just move. When you resolved my case, you took it on yourself.”

“That’s not how debt works,” Cliff said, his voice rising.

Doris just smiled. “Not all debt is money, dear.”

Cliff stormed out, her cryptic words echoing in his mind.

The letters became relentless. They arrived at all hours, in impossible ways—one slipped out of his refrigerator, another appeared inside his locked car. Cliff tried burning them, shredding them, even flushing one down the toilet, but more always arrived.

His paranoia deepened. He began seeing IRS acronyms everywhere: on license plates, in graffiti, even in his breakfast cereal. His coworkers avoided him, whispering behind his back. “He’s lost it,” one muttered after watching Cliff argue with a letter in the break room.

One evening, Cliff sat at his desk, surrounded by unopened envelopes and empty whiskey bottles. The latest notice declared his balance at $1,345,098.74. He stared at the number, then at the calculator in his hand.

“Why bother?” he muttered to himself. “They can’t kill me over this.”

His phone buzzed. A new email appeared with the subject line: “Delinquency Notice: Further Action Required.”

Cliff’s chest tightened. He opened the email, and a single line stared back at him:

"Failure to comply may result in collection."

Something snapped. Cliff grabbed the bottle of whiskey, took a long swig, and laughed until tears streamed down his face. “Fine,” he said, slamming the bottle down. “Let them try.”

The next morning, Cliff’s neighbor knocked on his door, irritated by the growing pile of mail spilling into the hallway. When there was no answer, she peeked inside.

Cliff was sitting at his desk, perfectly still. His face was frozen in an odd expression—not fear, not pain, but something almost like amusement. His hands were folded neatly over a single sheet of paper stamped in bold red letters:

FINAL NOTICE

Balance Resolved.

On the desk sat a calculator, its screen flashing 0.00.