Balls Nasty huddled around the fire to keep warm. “Man, this is a long fuckin’ hallway,” he said to himself. He’d spent days traveling down the corridor to try and find the main office that lay at its end. He carefully sipped the soup he’d made using water from water cooler and leaves from potted plants in the hallway. The warm water heated his body. “What do they have the thermostat set on in here? 50 degrees?”
In the morning Nasty continued his trek. Finally, he saw the large set of double doors at the end of the hallway. They were quite tall and made of a thick, dark wood. Gold inlays ran through intricately cut grooves to create artistic patterns. Balls walked up and used the giant door knocker. The pounding sound echoed through the hallway. A small door within the door opened up. Out popped the head of a man with a thick moustache curled up on the ends. “What do you want?!” he yelled.
“I’m here to see the boss,” Nasty replied.
“No one sees the Boss!” the man yelled back. Balls put the barrel of his shotgun in the man’s face. He fell quite as his face turned into a nervous smile. After a few clicking sounds, the man and the door both slowly inched backwards and open. Nasty entered.
The office was large. The ceiling stretched into what seemed like infinity. Several yards away sat a very large desk with a man behind it. Balls Nasty stepped quickly and closed the gap rapidly. Soon he was standing face to face with Kit Piper. “Are you the man I kill?” Nasty asked as he pumped the shotgun, sending a round into the chamber.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kit said panicking. “I know it’s a long hallway, but that’s no reason to kill someone.”
“That’s debatable,” Balls said as he aimed his gun. “But the real reason I’m here is because you left me and my teammates for dead at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Then, you use my image to sell Hostess Twinkies.”
“What?”
“Twinkies, dick breath! I’m Balls Nasty! I eat Moon Pies! Moon Pies, motherfucker! Oh, and Vanguard Atlantis is dead.”
“Vanguard Atlantis?” Kit pondered. “Oh! You guys are behind on your franchise fees.”
“Behind on our..... They’re dead, asshole. They’re all dead. All my friends died at the bottom of the ocean. And you don’t even remember their names.”
“I don’t see a roster on the application form. Who were they?”
Nasty lowers his gun as he racks his brain to remember. “Um..... there was.......... Paco... No, wait.... Barry? I recall a Barry. That’s not the point right now. I’m here to make you pay for their deaths and the long ass walk to get to your office. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?”
Kit sighed. “It was the only way I could keep people away from me and myself safe. Most smart people would have turned away after a couple of days.”
“Smarts is for nerds.”
“Well, yeah, sure... ok. Anyway, I made a deal with the Metatithenai...”
“The what?”
“The Metatihentobu?” Piper said, less sure of his pronunciation.
“I mean,” Balls said puzzled, “we’re actually using that thing here?”
“Well, it was just this discarded idea kinda laying out there with nobody using it that really didn’t go over very well at first. I figured that enough time had passed that it was open domain now.”
The two stopped for a moment and looked at each other as if the realization that they were kinda moving beyond the parameters of a story and moving more into self commentary and critique and maybe they needed to get back on fucking track and move the story to its conclusion.
“Um... yeah... so this Metahenny thing you were talking about.”
“Yes! The Metahousey!” Kit exclaimed. “The living, omni-dimensional building... or something. I made a deal with it to anchor it here in Miami in my office. It really likes the Cuban coffee and watching the girls in their bikinis. Kind of creepy, but I don’t judge. In return it is to protect me from those wishing to do me harm. Though it seems to be ASLEEP ON THE JOB!”
“Gotta lot of enemies, huh?” Nasty said as he paced around the large desk. “Adversaries of Vanguard still attempting to extract revenge for foiling their evil plots?”
“No,” Kit said ashamed. “If only they were. I.... uh.... I’ve fallen on very hard times. Recovering from a gambling addiction isn’t as easy as some people think. I would think I was done just to have some random little something come along and bring back the urges. A school raffle ticket bought from your own daughter slowly leads to weekend sprees in Vegas and Atlantic City. Five dollars turns into five thousand. I did everything I could to hide it from Vanguard. If they had found out, I’d have been homeless and pennyless. So I used a series of small clauses in the contracts to help me generate money. That’s when I started the franchises. For a few grand people could have their own Vanguard, but the contracts were so limiting in the areas of operation so as to keep them off the radar.”
“Vanguard Atlantis.”
“Yes. And Vanguard Samoa. Vanguard Iceland. Vanguard Falkland Islands. You get the picture.”
“You must have made yourself quite a bit of money.”
“A grand total of $483.22. I really couldn’t charge much for the franchise rights if I wanted to keep the whole thing quiet. Plus, after paying a lawyer for the contracts, postage, a notary... It was pretty much all gone before I got it. I really didn’t think that one out. But I took over the whole Vanguard brand after they all retired after that last big mission.”
“Oh, yeah,” Balls nodded. “I remember that one. It was all over the news. Man, that was fuckin’ huge.”
“You have no idea,” Kit stood and began to walk to the front of the desk. “Being right in the middle of it was unbelievable. The tension. The moral ambiguity. The fortitude to forge through it all and make a stand. It was breathtaking and emotional. A real triumph. I feel sorry for any person who may have missed it as it is a tale that would make a grown man weep and inspire all to greatness.”
“You know... somebody should make a movie or something about that.”
“Yes, I agree. A telling of the story in some form would be fantastic. But back to the matter at hand.”
“Oh, yeah. Me killing you.” Nasty raised his gun once again. “So long, asshole.”
“No, wait! Killing me won’t bring your friends back.”
“Who?”
“And it’ll be something that you’ll have to live with the rest of your life.”
“Okay.”
“No, seriously, you’ll have to live with the pain and regret every day for the rest of your life. Can you handle that?”
“Well, I don’t really think I’ll regret it.... so, yeah, I can handle it.”
“My life isn’t worth taking,” Kit began to plead. “I have nothing left.”
“This office looks pretty swank.”
“All the Metahubahuba. It can generate any appearance it wants inwardly.”
“So, like, you weren’t sitting in a real chair but, like, on its tonsils or something. Gross.”
“It’s all an illusion. Everything is an illusion. All of the hotels, ad endorsements, toys, shirts, everything is only enough to cover my debts. I have no money. I have no friends. I have no family. My girls were taken from me.”
“Uh-huh,” Nasty said with a deep sigh as Kit began to blubber and pour his heart out like a two drink drunk in a bar.
“Seems I didn’t show the best judgement when my wife was killed by mobsters trying to collect my other debts. Instead of calling the police, I left the country with my two girls illegally. That made me a ‘person of interest’ for a while before I could clear that up. Then, the courts decided that keeping a family in a building that’s attacked on nearly a weekly basis wasn’t a healthy environment for children and took custody.
“And because I’ve whored out their images for my own personal profit, none of the surviving team want anything to do with me. They won’t return my calls or emails. A few of them have even started a class action lawsuit against me. I ask you, Mr. Nasty, have you ever seen a man in a worse state?”
“Well, I guess not.” Nasty grabbed the bowl of mixed nuts sitting on Kit’s desk. “I’ll just take these for the walk back.”
Balls Nasty walked back out the door and out of sight. Kit Piper began to smile as he wiped the tears from his eyes. He had been given yet another chance. This time, he felt it, he was going to make it all right. He was going to be a new man. A better man.
“You know what?” Balls said as he re-entered the room. “Fuck it!” He pulled the trigger. Kit’s body fell backwards, lifeless, onto the marble floor. Nasty stood over the body, contemplating for a few minutes. “Nope,” he said aloud. “No regret.”
The End
