Rory and Xander were roommates on the 10th floor of a 20-story apartment building in the Hades neighborhood of Hell. They met shortly after arriving in the underworld, and they just seemed to get along well together, they had both relied on their wits to survive in life, they both liked the same music and films, and they both died at relatively young ages, Rory died of an overdose in the backseat of a London cab, and Xander jumped from the top of a skyscraper when Federal agents raided the offices of his multi-million dollar corporation. One thing was for certain, finding a friend in this place was a rarity, and they were both wise enough to recognize that fact. They were also both smart enough to figure out that it was well worth-it to both split the costs of a more expensive high-rise than it was to spread out in a floor-level unit. For one thing, after climbing the stairs to the tenth floor, most muggers burglars and rapists were too tired to do very much to you. Another advantage was that the noise of the city down below was a lot more tolerable at the higher elevation. They had both been happy with their decision—on their choice of apartment, and their decision on rooming together. The two of them had spent countless hours sharing stories with each other, and counseling one another as they both racked the deepest regions of their minds to find the reasons why they were both in this place to begin with. These rigorous conversations proved additionally helpful whenever either of them was forced to sell a particularly sentimental memory—the other could gladly re-tell their story back to them, as best as they could recall, to fill in the void of the missing memory that they could only feel had used to be there.
Despite their best efforts to get by, Rory and Xander were pretty broke. They often consoled one another regarding this topic: Xander would inquire about how it was possible that a career junkie for more than 20 years wouldn’t have amassed any juicy stories that could be used to nourish the bloodthirsty Hell economy? To this, Rory would explain that most of that life time was spent staring up at a ceiling, lying in a pool of vomit—not a story that’d be worth very much.
In reciprocal form, Rory would query how it was that Xander had millions of dollars at his disposal and yet he failed to afford himself any memories rich enough to buy himself a car in the afterlife. Xander would counter by explaining to Rory that he, like many in his similar position, had spent all of his time making the money, and never found the right time to stop and really spend the money like he would have wanted to.
Their afterlives together continued on like this for years; if not happy, then at least they were content with the way that things were. That is, until the morning that Rory returned to their apartment after picking up some groceries, and found the hallway filled with a handful of fellow residents, all stooped over and peering through the holes in the wall to his home. The neighbors were pleasuring themselves at the sight on the other side of the wall, and Rory knew from protocol that meant that he’d have to sit and wait for Xander’s guest to leave. Typically it wasn’t a problem, he had benefitted from the same arrangement countless times before. It is pretty standard when sharing a confined space that an agreement is made that when one roommate has company of a personal nature, that the other roommate will wait out in the hall and jackoff like everyone else, until it is through. Just, this morning was little disappointing to Rory, having just climbed those ten flights of stairs, and finding that now he had to slink back against the wall and slide down onto the floor of the hallway and watch his ice cream melt, while Xander got his rocks-off all over their apartment.
Rory patiently waited there in the hallway, he wasn’t even curious to see who Xander was in the room with—or if there was even anyone else in there with him. Rory sat out the whole noisy experience, content to just drink his ice cream, and gnaw on some plain slices of bread.
Using his quick reflexes, Rory quickly moved the rest of the bread loaf out of the way, just as an elderly woman collapsed to her knees in that spot. She clutched her crotch with one hand and pinched her nipple tight with the other hand, as she slowly doubled over into a fetal position on the floor next to Rory—ultimately she let out a deep sigh in post coital bliss.
“So, he’s got a good one in there?” Rory asked the woman, in the same polite casual conversation that the two had often expressed whenever passing in the halls over the years. The best reply that the woman could muster was an enthusiastic sideways nod as her head lay on the carpeted floor; a little drool seeped from the corner of her mouth and fell into the dirty carpet that half-smothered her face.
Rory nodded in understanding and leaned his head back against the wall to wait out the event. It seemed from the escalating fervor that the session should be ending soon. The old woman let out a slight cough, that also sounded like it could have been a laugh, and she attempted to pick up their conversation from where she had left it off moments before.
“A red-head.” She added “A real fire-crotch.”
“That’s nice.” Rory replied in conversational reflex as he automatically tuned out everything that old people say.
But right after he started to tune out, Rory started to feel somewhat dizzy. His stomach began to turn and he thought that he might have to vomit soon. His mind was spinning with thoughts like a room full of roulette wheels; and the wheels landed on “Dawn,” the red-head who lived upstairs and with whom Rory had courted since they first moved in.
“Red hair you say?” He asked the woman.
The woman had risen back up to her knees at this point, and now she was tuning Rory out—in the same way that he had been tuning her out.
The woman seemed concerned about the room around her “What was that?” she asked, staring at the floor.
“You feel this too?” Rory puzzled. He had thought that he was getting sick, but then he had thought that what he was feeling was just a jealous paranoia overcoming him with the thought of Xander banging Dawn on the other side of their wall. “Like you’re sick?”
Rory rose to his feet, only to feel his legs give out from underneath him, and his head banged against the wall. He could hear a deep rumbling noise and he looked around the hallway to see that everyone else was hearing the same thing, and feeling the same, as they all stumbled to keep their balance too. Rory saw his mayonnaise jar roll out from his grocery bag and roll halfway down the hallway, then stopped, half turned, and started rolling back toward him again. Rory’s mind put together what the mayonnaise jar was trying to tell him, so he tried to enlighten the rest of his hall-mates. “HOLD ON TO SOMETHING!” he shouted, but they couldn’t put his words into action before the ground fell out from beneath their feet.
For a few moments it felt like gravity had just quit and walked off of the job. People and things started to elevate above the ground and the floor and walls seemed to buckle into catawampus angles from one another. The rest of the visual experience was obscured by the stars that Rory saw as heavy objects collided with his head, and then the stark blackness that followed after his chest caved in under the pressure of the beam above him.
Hours later, a bright light returned to Rory’s eyes as some people pulled the debris off of him. He let out a strained gasp as his punctured lungs tried to take in air again. Rory’s agonizing pain was too much for him to fully take in, pain in general was such a frequent state of being that older Hell citizens often found themselves desensitized to an alarming degree of pain. But the same was true for incidents of sudden extreme pain, where there was too much to perceive and a soul condemned to survive the violence has no choice but to tune out the pain and find humor in their circumstances. “Silly lungs” Rory thought to himself as he watched his organs struggle inside of his opened chest cavity “You don’t do anything anymore, you’re just going through the motions, so don’t try so hard.” Rory paused for a moment and mused that he should give himself that same advice—but then he returned to the events at hand.
Rory stood up and gathered together his sprawled and flattened body parts back into the same centralized shape that they had been originally. As he dusted himself off he looked around at the debris of their fallen building. It seemed to have been just their building that had fallen.
This was exactly what some of the other tenants had warned about happening a while back. Some lower level tenants had complained that the building was built too hastily and that there were certain signs of structural failure, like windows blowing out for no reason, cracks forming in the walls and floors, doorways jamming and not opening or closing anymore—that sort of thing. But their building owner was also the building developer, who also wasn’t just any building developer; he was J.J. Galt, maybe the best-known developer in the history of Hell. Needless to say, those tenants who had complained were evicted, or disappeared, and they were charged for the damages that they had identified—accused of having caused them to the building. After that, nobody complained again—problem solved.
As he surveyed the damage, Rory passed the old woman from the hallway; she was standing on a pile of rubble and covered in grey dust and debris. The old woman looked dazed and confused, and she didn’t know which direction to focus her attention amidst all of the chaos. Her right arm had come detached from the shoulder and it dangled wrist-down from between her legs, like some curious and very forward python. Rory moved toward her and kindly removed the hand from its snug resting place, turned the arm around, and returned it gently to the woman’s shoulder.
“Thank you dear,” she said, finally able to focus her attention onto something.
“Don’t mention it.” Replied Rory, already tuning her out again and moving on to his next order of business.
Helpful community volunteers had already started to peel away the debris that had once been Rory and Xander’s ceiling. Some of the reasonably-good Samaritans were snickering at the sight of Xander and the girl’s deflated bodies intertwined together in a wrinkled knot on his flattened bed. Rory peeled Xander’s body back off of the girl. Xander coughed and gagged a breathless complaint as each joint painfully bent back against its natural direction.
“Ow, ack, watch id, hey, wadtchidt-it! Ouch, ah, hey!” he exclaimed through his collapsed throat.
Rory stared at the twisted, Picasso, face of the red headed girl beneath Xander. She looked just like a deflated blow-up doll—except for the fact that she was blinking and her tongue was darting around trying to push her mouth back into shape.
“Is that who I think it is?” asked Rory, still not sure who he was looking at embedded inside of the flattened mattress.
Xander massaged his limbs back into shape and then pulled his jaw forward and into position. He winced from the pain and then looked down to see the girl in the mattress. “Yeah buddy, it is.” Xander replied guiltily.
By now the girl was starting to take shape again and she pulled herself out from the springs and fluff. Just watching her naked body re-inflate was enough to make Rory weak and unable to speak. Dawn composed herself, as best as she could, all while still laying reclined amidst the remains of the bed frame. She winced from the waves of aches and pains, then re-tussled her hair and looked around in a stunned amusement at the surrounding carnage. She groggily looked up at Rory as if waking from a nap, she strained her eyes against the light and regained focus as her irises returned to their proper distances within her eyeballs.
“Oh, Hi… Rory? Was it?”
“Yeah, Rory.” He replied, offering Dawn a hand to stand up.
“What the hell happened?” she asked, to nobody in particular.
Looking around, Dawn started brushing away the debris and broken glass from her body.
“The building fell down” Rory replied, absently helping brush her body clean—before realizing that in doing so, he was fondling her naked curves. He quickly retracted his hand. She was amused by the gesture. But when she turned away from him, Rory smelled his hand and wiped her sweat from his palm onto his face to savor it for as long as he could.
“Yeah I know that, dummy.” She replied, stepping down along a cascading pile of bricks that they had been standing on.
Xander sifted through the remains of their apartment to find his clothes. He also found her white(-ish) dress and tossed it down to her over the railing of what was becoming a split-level railing to the 9th floor—beneath their unit.
Dawn casually intercepted her fluttering dress and watched the masses of people carrying away the wreckage and helping other people out of the layered ruins. She slipped her dress on in one swooping motion, and then she turned to Xander. She opened her mouth wide and started digging something out from her gums. “Hey Xander, I think I have a tooth of yours.” She said, nagging at it to get it loose.
“Keep it!” he replied in a failed attempt at chivalry.
Dawn gained a new momentum and she leaned in toward Rory and Xander while extending her leg in the opposite direction for a hasty retreat. “Hey guys, it’s been great, but I’ve got to run and help some of these people out.” She said, and started leaping along the piles to join one of the rescue teams.
“Will I see you again?!” Xander called out to her.
Dawn stopped and turned around, a little confused by the question. Then she called back to him “I doubt it! I mean, we’re all homeless now right?!” she then turned back away and continued to run off to people’s aid.
“Right! Silly Me, of course!” Xander called back to her disappearing image.
Rory punched Xander’s shoulder, indicating that he did still harbor resentment about Xander’s recent tryst.
“Sorry dude.” Xander apologized.
Rory handed Xander back his eyeball that had been missing somewhere in the rubble up until then. “Thanks dude.” Xander said sheepishly.
Rory started walking, and Xander followed.
The residents of the fallen building made themselves temporary shelters as they sifted through the ruble to retrieve their belongings. They were joined by strangers who cleared away the debris—in their own pursuits of valuables to loot. By day number two, the helpful volunteers were replaced by self-serving looters, and then the area became swarmed by lawyers, each hoping to represent the residents in lawsuits against the building owner. Rory and Xander set up their own three-walled fort, which they used primarily as a staging area for whatever stuff of theirs that they could find.
The plethora of lawsuits against J.J. Galt were met by a single counter-lawsuit by him against all of the tenants by name—charging that they were collectively engaging in destructive behavior that eventually caused the building to collapse. During the trial, the Galt legal team presented an arsenal of accusatory evidence, ranging from crime statistics at the building, damage and repair bills going back 50 years, evidence of roommates exceeding the posted occupancy limits (thus causing too much strain on the floor and structure) and so on.
The lawyers for the tenants had anecdotal evidence from witnesses, and photographs of the original construction that clearly showed the building being slapped together by inferior workers. They also brought in the past tenants who could still be found, and heard testimony of tenants who had been silenced for trying to warn about the state of the building.
In the end, the trial was decided by a mutant bull-man-lizard crossbreed who was the judge appointed by the government of Hell. The judge shrugged after the closing arguments had been read, and he delivered his verdict as such:
“I guess I find for, um, our distinguished citizen, Mr. Galt, because he builds a lot of things, and they very rarely fall down. Therefore these ‘filthy vermin’ tenants must have done something to break their building. My ruling is that the tenants of the building owe Mr. Galt 100,000 EM’s each for each apartment in the destroyed building.”
The displaced tenants were upset, but once a ruling was posted on a public bulletin board, it became the law—and Mr. Galt had the enforcers to ensure that he got paid what he was owed.
Reconstruction of the building began immediately, and the displaced residents found new places to call home. EM-100,000 was a lot of currency for most of the residents of that apartment building, it represented about a year’s worth of wages for the average citizen—for those lucky enough to find steady work. The only tenants who could actually afford to make a payout like that and continue unaffected, would have been those who lived in the penthouses—but, as things often turn out, the lawyers for the penthouse residents were able to win an appeal by arguing that the Penthouses at the top of the building could not have been responsible for the structural damage that occurred beneath them. So the Penthouse residents owed nothing to Mr. Galt.
Rory and Xander were living out of the burnt-up shell of an ice cream truck that was a semi-permanent fixture fused to the corner of a building across around the block from their previous home. Rent was pretty cheap in the truck, a hand-job per week to the building owner—of which the two roommates took turns delivering.
“This sucks.” Xander exclaimed as he returned home for the evening, still picking some of their rent’s residue out of his hair.
“I don’t know, I’ve lived in worse.” Said Rory, still unpacking his boxes of stuff and stacking them neatly in the built-in cabinets of the back of the truck. In the center of the ice cream truck was a dining room table that took up most of the space. Xander’s bed was the reclined drivers seat of the truck, which lay almost all the way flat thanks the raised angle of the front of the truck where it had smashed into the brick wall of the building long ago. This style of ice cream truck had only one seat unfortunately, but Rory’s bed consisted of hundreds of melted popsicles packets, all still wrapped. The liquid bags filled the recessed passenger side stairwell. These conditions together formed a cozy waterbed nook that Rory slept in.
After entering the truck from one of the two double doors of the rear of the truck, Xander had sat down at the dining room table. He regained some of his energy while sitting there watching Rory put away his things.
“Why do you think it is that we were able to recover so much more of your stuff than mine?” Xander asked.
“I don’t know, maybe you just had nicer stuff?” Suggested Rory.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Xander admits, looking around at the mostly useless stuff they currently had cluttering up their even more confined space.
“Plus…” Rory offers. “I figured that a burglar wouldn’t be very likely to go through someone’s dirty laundry, so I kept all of my really good stuff packed around my dirty laundry.”
“Is that why we used to have dirty laundry all over the place? Brilliant!” an Impressed Xander exclaimed. “Here let me help you with some of this stuff.” He offered, getting up from the table.
“What do you think they’ll do to us if we can’t come up with the money?” Rory asked while emptying out a banker-box full of stuff.
“I hear that people who can’t make payments are getting placed on the work crews for the J.J.G. Company. “ Xander replied solemnly, while lifting the lid off of a new banker-box.
“I don’t think either of us would make it a week on a construction crew. We’d get pulverized and end up embedded in a wall as mortar or something.” Rory whined—although it was obvious from his tone that he’d rehearsed this exact scenario a lot already in his mind.
“I know! Right?! Plus, I hate the idea of having to pay a single EM to that sneaky, rich, lowlife, criminal, bastard. But what options do we have? Work for him? Work somewhere else and pay him?—I hate the thought of that even more than I hate the idea of working it off for credit. Or, we run away—but there isn’t a corner of hell where his people wouldn’t find us.” Xander complained, while picking through skid-marked underwear.
“Right, and getting caught would be worse. They’d likely pull out our teeth and mount our heads to the walls of public restroom as public glory holes.” Rory suggested casually, but the idea made them both pause and shake the thought off.
Just then, Xander came across something at the bottom of the banker box that made him stand open mouthed in shock. He reached in and pulled out a large golden coin that glowed with a dim yellow light.
“You son-of-a-bitch! You’ve been holding out on me this WHOLE time?!” Xander exclaimed.
Rory turned to see what in the hell he was talking about, but once he saw what Xander was holding, his eyes went dim and he returned to his sorting of stuff. “It’s fake.” He scolded.
“The hell it is.” Xander held the coin up to his nose and inhaled. “It doesn’t seem fake to me… and what the hell do you mean—Fake?”
Rory set down his stuff and turned to face Xander.
“It’s not a real experience, it’s a joke—an ‘Aristocrats’ joke that was told to me by a girl once.”
Xander studied the coin and then looked back to Rory. “I don’t know… It resonates as an original, it’s soaked in emotion, and I can see it all happening.”
Rory took a deep breath and explained. “Back in year 11 of school, I dropped acid with this girl, Shelly-Anne, and while I was tripping balls, she started telling me about Aristocrat jokes, they’re this joke telling tradition whereby you start a story that takes place at a talent agent’s office, a family steps in, they do the sickest shit you can imagine, and then they end it with ‘We’re the Aristocrats!’ but whatever depraved stuff they do in their act is all up to the joke-teller. So there she is telling me the sickest shit, and I’m seeing it all vividly as she’s telling me. And we’re naked in bed together, and I loved her so much at that moment… But it’s not real. It’s like a deep dream, or a made up story, I can’t exchange it anywhere, plus, it’s the last memory I have of her.”
Xander understood everything that Rory was saying to him, and he knew better than Rory did about how significant his memories of Shelly-Ann really were. But he looked back down at the coin and he was compelled to have Rory re-examine it.
“But check this out, it’s a complete story from beginning to end. With the emotions and the visuals, it’s just as good as the real thing. And with the sexual kinky stuff—and the real sexual tension underneath it? You are sitting on a 100,000 EM coin and it’s just stagnating in foot sweat and crotch-rot.” Xander implored.
“Forget it Xander, you know what happens to counterfeiters.”
“But that’s the best part here. You’re not dumping it on the open market; you’d just be ripping of fucking J.J. Galt. Even if you did get caught, nobody would fault you for trying it—and half of the city would think of you as a hero.”
Rory looked down, as if he was seeking a second opinion from the duct-taped plate and the broken candle stick on the table. “That does sound pretty good.” He conceded.
“Right on my man!” Xander cried out at the top of his lungs.
A wild boar-headed, 4-foot tall humanoid studied the coin through a monocle style loop magnifier. He let out a grunt and wiped some running snot from his snout with his tongue.
“It’s a little cloudy around the edges…. I’ll give you sixty grand for it.” The Boar-man grunted.
“Aw come on man! I was a junky—every day of my life was ‘a little cloudy’ around the bloody edges!” Rory defended. Xander stepped in. “Come off it, that’s a EM-100k note, right there on the face of it!”
The Boar slammed the coin down on the table in front of him. The gesture caught the attention of everyone else in the three lines of former residents all waiting to make their installment payments to the corporation. “I’ll give you 75,000 because it’s blurry on the edges and it smells like feet. You’ll take it and be thankful that I’m not making you leave your assholes here as collateral for the rest!” the Boar-Man barked in his grunty voice. The two men sign their names on the line, showing that they have made a payment towards their debt and they shuffled off timidly. Once they had rounded the corner, and were out of eyesight, they cheered and congratulated themselves.
“Oh fuck, it worked! We need to celebrate!” shouted Xander.
“With what?” Rory countered soberingly. “We’re still broke. Worse than broke, we’re still worth negative 25,000 EM’s!”
“That’s only EM-12,500 each?” offers Xander. Rory just glares at him. “Okay, we’ll head back to the place, we’ll split a beer, and we’ll come up with the next great scam.” Xander counter-offered, and Rory liked the idea—although he was a little skeptical of the idea of another scam.
That night, the two drank their beer—watered down for two, and laughed together, joked together, and got themselves higher than any one beer should have gotten two grown men. In the process, they both spat out about twenty coins apiece, although most of them were ludicrously bad forgery attempts. For example, one was an EM about getting a blowjob from an ugly and racist girl, but with eyes closed the observer imagined the intercourse to have been with a popular music singer at the time. By that point in the evening, while reviewing the EM, it had seemed to Rory like a plausible story of shagging a pop star—up until the surprise end, when the eyes of the observer opened and the narrative jumps to this scary looking thing with a full mouth and a glare in her eyes that could shrivel a cactus. Rory fell backwards from shock and fear from the surprise ending, and the two of them cracked up at the thought of their audacity trying to pull off the imposable task at hand. The next morning arrived however and the two woke up to a trashed apartment(-sort of) and a hangover from whatever they had tried to consume after the beer had run out.
“There must be something good here on the floor somewhere.” Xander said, surveying the gold coins scattered across the floor amidst the mess.
“What makes you say that?” asked Rory, nursing his achy head.
“Because it’s all covered in your dirty laundry.” Smirked Xander. The two men laughed until the futility of their efforts sank in, and then they both collapsed backwards.
After picking the place up later in the day, they did seem to come across some promising prospects. Rory had produced an EM of being a holocaust survivor. “Where in the Hell did this come from?!” Xander inquired suspiciously of Rory.
“I got a blowjob while watching Schindler’s List.” Rory explained matter-of-factly.
Xander threw the coin back at Rory, it landed with a thud against his chest.
“You should hold onto that one, that right there could be the reason you’re down here.” Xander scoffed.
Rory stared at the coin, questioningly. “You think? …But I reciprocated with the girl afterwards.” Xander just shook his head until he found the coin that he was looking for. He picked it up and tossed it to Rory.
“What do you think of that one?” Xander asked proudly, sitting down in his seat to watch Rory take it in. Rory cautiously brought the coin to his nose. Shortly following his first sniff he became more intrigued. He started inhaling deeply and then stopped. He looked to Xander. “This is Good! …Did this really happen to you?”
Xander smiled. “No, it’s one of those letters to the editor from a nudie-mag—but I imagined real people that I knew. So I both got-off, and felt guilty and ashamed while doing it.” He said proudly.
“This is good!” Complemented Rory.
Just then, the two double doors to the ice cream truck swung open. Standing in the bright gaping doorway stood a huge brute, both tall and wide with massive muscular arms, holding the doors agape. He had a full red beard and he wore a helmet over the top of his head to try to cover the fact that it appeared that the top of his head was missing. The net effect of wearing the helmet however looked off-putting because it rode lower on his head than where you would expect to see a hat ride on top of a head and hair. Instead, it made the brute look as if he were constantly scowling with a massive metal brow. Behind the brute stood short plump grumpy looking man in an old grey suit and an oversized tie. The man was balding and wore thick glasses. His appearance begged the question from the average damned citizen: ‘was this the best look from this man’s life that he could conjure up? Or is he so bad-assed that he doesn’t care how he looks to others?’
The man tries to peer past the brute, into the back of the truck, while the brute just stands there vacantly, looking menacing.
“What the hell are you two doing here?" The balding, squat, man in the grey suit shouted out, in a surprisingly shrill voice.
“Yeah, what duh hell you guys doon?” The brutish man echoed.
“We live here! Who the hell are you?!” Xander shouted back, he could be quite aggressive when call upon to do so.
“The hell you do! Who said you guys could stay here?” The bald man barked back.
By now Xander and Rory had stood up and they started advancing out from the truck shell and stood face to face with the brute and the grouch.
“The owner did! Mr. Robertson!” Rory chimed in, trying his best to also be intimidating.
“Who the hell is Mr. Robertson?! I own this building! –and this truck, and the building on the other side of the alleyway, I own this whole goddamned block!!” baldy shouted, his head was now noticeably turning a bright shade of red.
It started to occur to Rory and Xander what was going on, and they both froze, standing there ashen faced and wide eyed as they processed the fact that for over a month now, they had been ‘paying rent’ to some random guy.
“Son—of –a—bitch.” Said Rory out loud.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Xander added.
The bald man in the grey suit started to catch on to what was going on, and he started to chuckle. “You boys been paying rent?” They both nodded, staring off into the distance.
“Can we stay here? At least?” Rory asked the man—now changing his tone.
“I suppose, but where am I going to store my trash?” Rory and Xander looked over and saw that the two men had several bags of food waste piled up from the restaurant around the corner of the block.
“Can we get the same deal?” Xander asked.
“What was the deal?” Asked the man.
“A hand job a week.” Replied Rory.
“Hell No, son. I can’t take less than 100 EM or it’s better off being a trash can.”
“Per week?” Xander squawked.
“PUR WEEK!” The brute bellowed.
“Plus the back rent. How long have you boys been living here?” The man added.
“Two weeks”
“One Week”
the boys both answered—without comparing notes.
The man looked at them suspiciously but then he seemed to pity them for however many hand jobs they had handed out.
“All right, get me EM-300 for the past two weeks and for this next week, and you two can stay.” The man conceded.
Rory and Xander looked to each other panicked, suddenly realizing that they don’t even have EM-300 between the two of them. Suddenly Rory got an idea and he grabbed Xander by the arm and turned to the man in the grey suit. “Give us an hour, we’ll be right back, we have to go to the bank!” Rory excitedly called out as he pulled a reluctant Xander away.
“My office is on the third floor of this building over here, when you get back, try to get it right this time! I’m locking this up until you boys get back!” the bald man shouted back. Rory and Xander continued running around the corner and then slowed down.
“What the hell was that?” Xander wearily asked Rory. Rory turned around and flashed the two coins to Xander.
“This one has a face value of EM-15,000, and this one has one for EM-20,000. So we go back to the restitution tables today, we pay them the rest of their EM-25,000 and they give us back change of EM-10,000 in real currency. We pay off our bogus debt, rip off Galt for EM-10k, we pay our rent, and we live like kings with EM-9,700 in our pockets.” Rory explained.
Xander’s expression changed from looking concerned, to feeling excited. The two ran the rest of the way to the restitution tables at the site of their former home.
“Back again today I see!” exalted the boar-man from behind his table in front of the construction site for the new apartment building. The boar man was excited to see Rory and Xander and he beckoned them forward to his table. It was early in the morning still and the lines to the tables weren’t too long yet. The boar man excitedly leaned in to tell Rory and Xander the good news. “You know, with a little spit and polish, that EM you paid the other day? It was up to EM-200,000 by the time we deposited it into the bank!”
“How much spit could you have used? It was only yesterday.” Xander asked angrily.
“So are we even then?” Rory asked optimistically.
“Nice try gentlemen.” The Boar smiled. “So what do you fellas have for me today? You know—I never would have pegged you two for being rich, you never can tell… very shrewd you two, very shrewd indeed.”
Rory handed over the coins. The Boar excitedly picked up each one and quickly sniffed each in turn.
“Hmmm, a Holocaust memory? Very timely—with Hitler running for office this year. Surely worth face value on this one.” The boar set the coin down and examined the other. “Oooh, I say—Steamy.” The Boar man set the coin down. “So a combined face value of EM-35,000 here eh? I suppose you’ll want some change?” The two nod in agreement, trying not to show their nerves.
The boar motioned over to a skinny pale younger man with hollow eyes. The skinny fellow ran over to the table in an awkward tall skinny person stiff-walk. He comes across as timid, like he’d been kept in someone’s dungeon and beaten for decades.
“Yes Mr. Boarman?” the skinny guy asked.
Rory and Xander look to each and both mouth the question ‘boar-man?’ to each other.
“Finish up this appraisal, I have to run to the safe.” Mr. Boarman said, as he stood and waddled off to the construction office. The skinny man sat at the table, placed the jeweler’s loop on his eye and inspected the coin. Rory gets nervous, but Xander gave him a reassuring look.
The skinny man paused in his analysis of the coin. “Oh my.” He said in a concerned voice. “This is your EM ?” the skinny pale man asked Xander.
“Yes…?” Xander replied.
“Oh my, excuse me for a moment.” The skinny man apologized and stood up to speak with some other staffers.
“What the hell? How does that one end?” Rory asked.
“I don’t remember.” Xander replied.
Xander and Rory watched as a dominoes effect swept between the behind-the-scenes staff. The news eventually reached Boarman who was returning from the office with a bag of coins. The smile faded from Boarman’s face. He marched over to the table. Two large brutes joined him at the table, one handed him the coin. Boarman sniffed the coin deeply, winced with his eyes closed and then opened them to look at Xander.
“This EM? This EM doesn’t end. It’s counterfeit.” Boarman explained casually.
Rory turned to Xander disgustedly “You never made it to the end?!”
“It was a really hot story.” Xander replied apologetically.
“Oh, you wanker.” Rory said shaking his head in absolute disbelief.
Rory and Xander were suddenly seized by their shoulders from behind by two Praetorian Guardsmen who had been summoned. The Praetorian guards are very large muscular humans recruited by the administration of Hell to serve as a police force of sorts. Their imposing presence is feared by all citizens of Hell, and nobody knows for sure if they are simply recruited for their appearance, or if they are imbibed with some magical supernatural force that gives them their physical dominance. Either way, they are known as a presence that cannot be questioned, and when apprehended by them—it is often unclear what becomes of those who disappear under their custody.
As the two are carried away in the grip of their two captors, and thrown into the back of Praetorian security truck, Xander turned to Rory.
“Well, at least now we don’t have to worry about where to live.”