Wednesday May 30th, 2018

The exercise:

First line week, day three: "Sorry sir, I'm not paid enough to rescue stupid people."

3 comments:

morganna said...

"Sorry sir, I'm not paid enough to rescue stupid people."

The Mayor stared at his assistant in disbelief. "What do you mean? Are you implying I don't pay you enough? You make twice as much as I do! And we need to get those idiots out of the hospital before they discover our scheme!" The Mayor looked a little wild-eyed and his assistant stepped back slightly, out of spittle range. "You know what is up there!! We need to go up there ourselves and take care of it next week, before demolition starts!"

"And we will. But there is no way in Hell I am going up there alone, at night, to deal with 3 sets of idiot twins risking their lives up there. You know the twins make everything more unreliable when they're present. In fact, you can't pay me enough to make me go up there tonight. If you want to deal with this, you can do it yourself."

"I'll call the police chief! I'll have you arrested, and then I'll have the chief go up there and deal with this!" The Mayor was starting to foam at the mouth and the assistant reached over to the door, opened it, and started to sidle through.

"Won't work. The Chief and I have already talked. You're on your own tonight." The door slammed behind the assistant.
==================
Cross posting with Empires.

Greg said...

@Morganna: these developments with Empires are really fantastic! I like how unstable the Mayor appears to be, and it's nice to see a glimpse of what might be going on behind the scenes. But it's also really impressive how you're taking the prompts and making it seem like they were intended for this :)

Sorry sir, I'm not paid enough to rescue stupid people
The paintings came of the walls with ease and Ben shone the torch carefully over the wall behind them, starting where the top of the paintings had been and going all the way down to the floor. Bill tapped gently on likely-looking spots, but nothing sounded hollow or like anything other than wood.
"Odd," said Ben. "Why hang paintings on the wall if you're not trying to distract attention from something else?"
"Maybe they actually liked the paintings?"
They laughed in unison. "May as well rehang them, I guess."
Ben looked at them. "Think they've got any value at all?"
"Not a chance. They're too mouldy to even sell for canvas. Do you remember what order they went in?"
"No, wasn't paying attention. The one with the cow and the pig was first I think. Isn't this the kind of thing we have the henchling for though?"
"Had. It's still waiting for its arm to regrow. We left in at the Hospice, remember?"
"Our Lady of the Rapids?"
"Hah, I bet the henchling wishes we had! I liked that one, that was the one with the insincere nuns. I had four sleepless nights there."
Ben shone the torch over the pictures again, and then picked up the nearest one. "I remember the nuns," he said. "So what Hospice did we get this time?"
"The Bulgarian one."
"What, the place with the mangey goats and the stuffed otter? I thought that was the restaurant?"
"No, the restaurant was the place with the over-runny cheese and the oven-cooked scarves."
"I thought that was just room-temperature butter... we didn't eat there did we?"
"No, but the henchling did."
"Ah." There was an all too familiar moment of silence. "So what was the Hospice called then?"
"The Sorry sir, I'm not paid enough to rescue stupid people."
"Sounds very specific," said Bill. "You have to wonder what the story behind that is." He set the painting on the hook, and hefted the next. "It's not quite what you expect a Saint to say, is it?" He set the second painting on hooks and picked up the last one.
"Some of these Bulgarian Saints have been a bit bolshie," said Ben "I had to sign a bit of paper saying that Hench wasn't stupid."
"They're not, right?" Bill set the last painting back on the wall, and with a creak a secret door opened, taking the painting with it.
"Not at all," said Ben. "I gave up trying to pick a sex for them though. We found our secret door; I knew they'd go for something clichéed. Find something to jam it open with, it's bound to be trapped."
"What did you put for sex then?"
"Twice daily, not fussy," said Ben. "I figured that gives them the best chance of enjoying it."

Marc said...

Morganna - appreciate the introduction to the mayor (and his assistant!)

Greg - ah, more classic back and forth between these two :) All while continuing your story! Very impressive.