My grandfather was famously stingy—reused ziplock bags, pocketed restaurant sugar packets, and gave me clearance socks for Christmas. So when the lawyer handed me a sealed envelope labeled For My Grandson, I wasn’t expecting much.
Inside was a coupon.
$100 off any in-store purchase.
No expiration. No recognizable store.
Out of curiosity—and spite—I tried to use it at a run-down store across town. The cashier froze. The manager took me to the back and showed me a binder labeled Legacy Coupons — Level 7 Clearance. Only five had ever been printed in 1972. All but one had been used. Every time, the user’s life changed in impossible ways.
Mine was the last.
I spent the coupon on an antique camera priced at $99.99. When I left the store, the camera hummed faintly. Later that night, I realized what it did.
It didn’t take pictures of reality.
It took pictures of possibility.
Each photo shifted the world—moving me to different places, opening paths that shouldn’t exist, erasing dangers that had just been there. Eventually, I found my grandfather’s journal. He’d spent decades guarding the camera, hiding it behind the mask of a “cheap old man.”
He never used the coupon.
He passed it to me.
Not because I deserved everything—but because he trusted I wouldn’t abuse it.
Now I take photos sparingly. Never in anger. Never out of greed.
Because some inheritances don’t look valuable at all.
Sometimes, they look like a coupon you almost throw away—and change everything once you use it.
