Garfield rose from bed with a groan. He hadn’t been getting much sleep since his little heist. As he’d suspected it had taken till the next day for the missing money to be noticed, but once it had been the Farellis hadn’t been slow to start making things miserable. They’d gathered up every employee they had, and considering they owned every legitimate or otherwise business in the town, that equaled to just about the entirety of the town’s ten thousand or so residents. And then they’d had a demonstration.
Every person who’d bought a ticket for a train to leave town, the only way out of the desert enclosed settlement, had been rounded up and shot one by one. There were hundreds of them, and every.. one… was questioned on the money’s whereabouts. It took hours to get through them, and everyone was made to stand and watch. No one could leave, and quite a few younger or older members of the audience, for various personal reasons, were forced to go to the bathroom where they stood, though the vast majority had been desiccated and didn’t have to worry about such bodily mishaps, convenient for the Farellis and their tightfisted rule of the city and its citizens. The event’s enthusiastic emcee said it was meant to teach a lesson about stealing from “The Mother-fucking Farelli Dynasty”, but the only lesson Garfield learned was that it had been a good idea to wait it out rather than try and make his escape right away.
The whole thing was a massive hassle, but Garfield did his best to let it go, reasoning to himself that it was better to write it all off as a wasted day than spend any time dwelling on it. He had difficulty doing so though, his feet had been killing him ever since and he couldn’t help seething about it. He was the type to hold a grudge, even when it didn’t make any sense to, and being made to stand all day with the way his ankle smarted, even if it was his own fault, certainly hadn’t helped matters. In addition, the Farellis of course refused to push back any of their work deadlines either, so Garfield had been forced to spend hours working into the night catching up. He was exhausted. He resolved to make himself feel better by going to his favorite diner for breakfast. It was on his commute to work, only two blocks from home, and he figured he could use the pick me up.
They had the best tea, the only proper cup of the stuff he could find in the godforsaken town. They even spiked it with vodka for only a dollar extra, the absolute nutters. It would make the rest of his drive to work a gamble, but he was taking worse risks already. Speaking of, that reminded him of his first visit to the Greasy Spoon as it was rather uncreatively called. It had been quiet in there, what with most Farelli citizens having been desicatted, but it was the kind of place with enough loyal regulars that they managed to stay afloat regardless. Garfield had been staring through the window between him and the short-order cook, watching as the light bounced off the flashing knives. The green tint of cheap glass made the whole tableau a little nauseating, but Garfield went on staring and nursing his spiked tea regardless, too used to hangovers to mind. He was jolted out of this strange meditation when a voice rang out from the television, a panicked reporter sharing the latest local tragedy with the class.
One of the super men was rampaging the next town over. They were one of the worst parts of the desert that had left every city in the lower forty-eight an island. The sheer deprivation of the environment and the ascendancy of the desiccators who worked to counteract that deprivation had ruined quality of life and labor rights, sure. But the super men were nothing but trouble. They claimed to practice an ancient martial art, which was suspect considering no one had ever heard of it before the desert had appeared, but regardless of the truth of their claims they could pull off some crazy shit with it. For example, the one rampaging currently was at that very moment being filmed chasing down a family sedan on foot and gaining, despite the car going nearly eighty miles-an-hour. He was coated in blood and shouting out his demands in an absurdly loud voice, something about killing every single person that failed to pay him a thousand dollars cash within a minute of catching them. That was the weird thing about the freaks, they had an honor code. They would never steal, but they’d accept money in exchange for any service, including murder and a promise to abstain from such. Apparently extortion was hunky dory so long as it was understood by all parties that in-the-event the super man followed through on their threat and killed you they wouldn’t loot your corpse. Not much consolation to the corpse, but apparently enough to soothe the super mens’ consciences.
Leaning over to the man next to him Garfield whispered, “How much you wanna bet the bastard kills more than half of ‘em? I’ll put in a hundred if you’re willing to take that action,”. What Garfield had failed to realize was that the man he was whispering to had been staring enrapt at the news report with tears in the eyes. Likely practicing a bit of preemptive mourning for someone he knew that was caught up in the tragedy. As one less deficient in foreseeing the obvious would be easily able to guess, the man didn’t take it well, and when he pulled a gun the diner’s staff only managed to talk him down after a full hour, at which point Garfield had already fatalistically chugged an entire bottle of syrup, figuring he hadn’t anything to lose. He regretted that the next day. Boy did he regret it. Nothing burns more going down and coming up than a bottle of maple syrup.
Caught in his reminiscence as he drove he absently hummed along to the song on the radio, some classical dealie that he didn’t recognize. He never had quite gotten the hang of telling the difference between Bach and Mozart, and as shitty as his sleep-deprived ass was feeling now he doubted he’d be any better at it than usual. The extra work was killing him, more than he had thought it would. Maybe he was getting older. This lifestyle was for a young man, and he doubted an old fart could survive it. He considered the matter to as deeply as he was capable of. A full ten seconds of consideration later, he decided that couldn’t be the reason. If he was feeling sick it was because he wasn’t drunk enough, not because he was old. Not because he was slipping. If… he were. That would be a death-sentence, because he certainly didn’t feel like retiring.
He was shaken out of all this existentialism and musing on the aging-process as he heard a not-so distant explosion. Looking up at the road with a jerk of the neck, causing an unpleasant soreness that would be sure to linger, he spotted what looked like a man in a balaclava shooting an rpg through the open doors of his favorite diner before subsequently being mowed down by a drive-by courtesy of some screaming yahoo-morons in the back of a puke-green pick-up truck speeding passed. Figuring breakfast was off the table, he sighed and continued his commute to work, windshield working double-time to remove the bits of shrapnel and blood, which until recently had presumably been inside his favorite waitress.
Driving through all of that might sound insane, and to some degree it was. Ignoring a full-on war going on all around you tended to be a symptom of something, but Garfield wasn’t completely batty. He knew who these men were. He’d collated their pay stubs. They were the bounty hunters the Farellis had set loose in the town to cause trouble, to stir the pot a bit and smoke their thief out. Their job was simple. Rampage around, cause trouble, and capture or kill the thief if they found them. They were also paid to ignore any company cars with the Farelli Office’s logo on the side. Cars just like Garfield’s. Anyone who broke that rule would be flayed alive, and while Garfield wasn’t over-impressed with the intelligence of the wannabe-bounty hunters the Farellis had brought into town, he was confident enough in their ability to recognize shapes and colors to believe he’d be able to continue his drive to work unhindered. In this, Garfield was, through no fault of his own, right. He drove right through the middle of the massacre and arrived at work right on time.
As he walked through the door he was quickly intercepted by an arm draping itself over his shoulder. It was a bulky, lumpy arm, indicative of quite a bit of steroid use, and Garfield was ready to unload an extremely acidic tirade on its unseen owner, intent on expressing the obviousness of that fact, when he caught the face of his overly familiar assailant out of the corner of his eye. Robbie Farelli, his boss, and major player in most of the “demonstrations” he and the townies had been subjected to over the past week, which the train-commuter pogrom was only one of. Garfield still nearly burst out with his… opinions on the man, but luckily managed to stifle himself as Robbie burst, launching excitedly into his customarily grating greetings.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“How’re you doing Gar, I’m so glad I caught my number one ass-kisser here, in the lobby. It saves me the walk. Listen, I’ve got a job I need done, and I figure a brown-noser like you is the one to do it. I need you to give a contractor a tour. He’s important, and very violent. Those super men always are from what I hear. If he’s not properly sucked off he’ll go on a rampage, or at least that's what Grandpa says. And from what I’ve heard we can’t afford that happening. In an enclosed space like the office, he’d manage to kill damn near everybody. So I’d figured I’d send in the expert on the subject,”. Garfield couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Probably for the best though, considering how close to bursting the insulting spiel made him. He was slick, but he was impulsive too, so regardless of his knack for compliments, Garfield was not above indulging in ill-timed insulting outbursts. It had cost him quite a bit on past jobs.
Having said his piece, Robbie shoved a keycard into Garfield’s hands, hard enough to nearly bowl him over, and set off marching back to his office as if the matter was settled. Which, after a minute spent steaming to himself, Garfield figured it was. So, Garfield set on his way, reading the room number off the card to check to which of the many guest rooms he was meant to go.
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Garfield glanced down at the card in his hand and then back up at the number emblazoned in golden numerals across the door. No matter how many times he checked it didn’t change. Number forty-two. The penthouse. Usually reserved for the patriarch and the patriarch alone, forbidden even to other high-level members of the family like Robbie. And here Garfield was, about to knock on the door to meet a so-called “contractor”. Even a super man wouldn’t justify such luxurious accommodation, not unless they were some sort of one-in-a-billion talent. Garfield was convinced it must be some mistake, or, if not, some sick joke of Robbie’s. Pick out an employee and have them knock on his Grandpa’s door. Pick out an employee and have them shot to pieces for annoying the patriarch. As Robbie’s accountant Garfield could access the patriarch’s office, even his vault with no problem. With no questions asked. But the penthouse was different. Whereas the office and its vault were a public company space, or at least had been ever since the Patriarch’d abdicated most of his duties to his myriad sons and grandsons, the patriarch's penthouse was sacrosanct. The idea of an independent contractor being in here, that the patriarch would give it up and to a mercenary of all people was so unlikely that Garfield felt like crying. If this really were as crazy as it seemed then he’d be killed. If he tried to get out of this insanity he’d be killed for insubordination. He could only pray and gamble on the world being weirder than he’d imagined. So, hoping against hope, he knocked. And the door drifted open. Unlocked.
Cringing, Garfield waited for the inevitable hail of bullets, until, with a terrible start, he heard a voice call him in. “Enter. You are, I assume, to be my guide,”. It was a quiet voice, but in a way that felt wrong. It felt like the kind of voice that should boom like thunder, but somehow muted as if all the rumbling power of an avalanche had been impossibly tempered, all the rolling boulders wrapped in satin. Walking in, slightly less hesitant having recognized the voice wasn’t the patriarch’s but still distinctly nervous, he was treated to an unforgettable sight. There was a man wading his way up and out of the pool-sized bath at the far side of the room. As the man walked, brazenly naked, Garfield stared. He was a fit man, but that was not why. That fitness was unimportant in comparison to what had really caught Garfield’s attention. He was worn down- blunted; Garfield could see so just from the way he walked. He stumped along, as if rather than feet he had calloused lumps. He jerked forward suddenly with every step. Lunged almost, like with every loping stride he was pouncing on some prey animal like a cat. This movement, this violent hammering gait, was not the only reason Garfield thought the man blunt though. It was his hands that had really done it. The fingers on them were short, almost as if they’d been sanded down. They were rough and pitted like stone. They were not the hands of a working man, and especially not an artist. Such hands would be rough, but the fingers would be preserved, necessary as they were for any properly dextrous creative endeavor. No. The blunt man hardly had hands at all. They’d been beaten into the shape of clubs, blunt instruments of violence suited for destruction alone. Garfield supposed that those hands hadn’t been used as hands in a long time. He imagined that the man didn’t even eat with them, didn’t lift anything up, not even a spoon to feed himself. He likely had servants to do that for him, paid handsomely in the money the man had won in battle, carried off as prizes. Blood money. Staring at those ugly hands and mesmerized by his violent step, Garfield was surprised to glance up and find the man only a foot in front of him, shrugging his way into a robe held by a beautiful pair of male and female servants. He could have been an attractive man, but if he were Garfield was in no fit state to tell. He was too busy staring into the man’s eyes and thinking about his terrible hands. The man, the one in a billion talent Garfield had so dismissed the possibility of, gestured with a little nod of his head, and Garfield knew it meant “lead on”. And so he did.
He gave the man, the blunt blunt man, a full tour. He expounded on the history of the building, soaked in blood and built up by shoveling money onto the fire by the truck load. This was the hallway that the current patriarch had ripped the throat of his predecessor out in. That was the pool the Farelli brothers had once filled with champagne. He told every mildly interesting anecdote he knew, even made a few up. Anything to make sure the blunt man paid attention to something else other than himself for just a little longer. Because he knew. He knew the Farellis had hired this man to hunt him. Knew that if given time, this man would find him. Knew that when he did he’d tear Garfield’s fucking head off with those terrible hands. Garfield doubted it was working though. Even as the blunt man chimed in with little remarks on the stories he was told, every one of his quips impressively witty and cultured, Garfield could tell he was paying not the slightest bit of attention to what either of them was saying, much the same way Garfield wasn’t, relying entirely on his lizard-brain to kick into autopilot as his conscious mind stayed on high alert. He could tell by the way the blunt man nodded his head along to the beat of Garfield’s heart, as if listening and enjoying the panicked thumping. He could tell by the way he flared his nose and breathed in Garfield’s fearful stink. Could tell by the way he cracked his knuckles one by one, loud enough to shake Garfield’s brain about his skull. So Garfield decided he had to take a risk. A terrible risk. As soon as he reached the indoor football stadium, “where Robbie set a pack of wolves on his peewee football league when he was a kid,” he asked if the blunt man might like some lunch. When he received an affirmative response he told him to wait there while he went and fetched some. Walking just out of sight, he broke into a desperate sprint as soon as he turned the corner.
Garfield needed this manhunt to be over, and he needed it to be over now, before the blunt man got to work. So he rushed up one flight of stairs. Another. And he reached Robbie’s office. Taking advantage of Robbie’s absence, having fucked off somewhere to get out of work, he grabbed a few bills from the pile of stolen money and made his way to Mary’s purse, discarded near Robbie’s desk after their latest office tryst. While making his way there Garfield glanced out the office window overlooking the football field, installed for Robbie to watch games while he pretended to work, and, straining, managed to find the blunt man sat down and waiting for Garfield to return with his lunch. Relieved to see him where he’d left him, Garfield stuffed a few of the bills he’d stolen, with serial numbers that would be flagged as part of the robbery, into her purse. He knew the next time Mary made a purchase she’d provide the Farellis with a thief and him with a scapegoat. As he finished that up, furtively zipping up May’s purse, Garfield heard a quiet cough. He spun around in paranoid terror, and had his worst, least likely nightmares confirmed as reality.
“Now, just what are you doing there? I thought I smelled something suspicious and came to look.”. It was the blunt man! Nearly screaming, Garfield stammered out an excuse about looking for a coworker’s id card to borrow to access the commissary, having forgotten his own. Speaking through a slight smirk the blunt man replied, seemingly condescendingly, “Is that so? Well, I was provided my own guest pass. Why don’t we head down there now and use it to get some lunch?” Relieved that the blunt man had decided against killing him then and there, Garfield nodded shakily and followed him down to the commissary, which he couldn’t help but notice the blunt man knew the way to despite Garfield never having shown it to him. His head was slightly tilted back, as if following his nose, which made his earlier comment about smelling something suspicious quite a bit more terrifying. It pumped Garfield full of terrified adrenaline that he couldn’t help but wonder if the man could smell. Heavily breathing, exhausted from his run, and limping on his healing ankle, Garfield couldn’t help but wonder how the blunt man was, in contrast, breathing with so much ease when he must have run up three stories in the less than a minute that Garfield had glanced away from him down in the stands. What an impossible, terrifying man!