Whew!
Fallow stood, hands resting on his broom, surveying his handiwork in the now mostly cleaned tavern room. The crockery that had been strewn across the bar now lay in a neat pile at his feet. All of the detritus of the night before was conveniently assembled in one handy dandy package to be used as a measuring stick of the previous night’s success.
If the party you throw, whether in a house, castle, bar, cave, or secret moon base can only be judged by how much you have to clean up the next morning. It’s a sad story of the man who threw a huge party and woke up to a clean house. His reputation would be almost ruined and he’d have to move to Tulsa just to start a new life. The moral is to make sure, the next time that you are at a fancy party to break something. Secretly, the host will thank you for saving his face, because let’s be honest who wants to move to Tulsa?
The pile at Fallow’s feet wasn’t enormous, but it was tantamount to a throw down that helps the week pass quickly to get to the bigger ones around the weekend. The pile at his feet contained all manner of detritus; broken spoons, dust, dirt-grime, sawdust, glass, (is that a glass eye?) and more than a few dead flies that lay atop their temporary resting place awaiting the glorious final dinner triangle that’ll call them home to that great big garbage can cookout in the sky. Or at least the great big garbage can in the closet. But for now they were all content to play a celestial game of Parcheesi on top of the mound, passing the time while their bodies lay curled up in the rubbish heap.
Fallow turned towards his now cold dish of almost edible breakfast cooked up by the wife of Eustace, which had safely congealed into a large disk of solid matter. He absently picked it up off the bar and broke of a wedge of eggs. He munched quietly on the egg chunk while trying to remember exactly what had happened last night. He failed. He tried to remember how he got the huge bruise on his rear. He couldn’t. He tried imagining what kind of lowlife spends most of his time away from home and wastes his money on such an endless pursuit… He got about as far as most of us after a hard night’s drinking. He usually was able to stop short of the classic lie about never drinking again.
“Oh well” He shrugged.
He started to walk over to the broom closet unknowingly disrupting the celestial Parcheesi board, and the insectile game currently being played atop the pile of debris. One of the flies dropped the ghostly dice which vanished into the floor. As the board was disrupted, they all noticed that one of the more dishonest flies had been cheating, which caused a small-scale invisible ghostly riot to erupt on top of the rubbish. A small herd of dust bunnnies absentmindedly-grazing lint nearby was startled by the fighting flies and promptly joined in the rubbish rumble. The whole fiasco ended in a knock-down, drag-out brawl which culminated in a dust bunny stampede, a lot of hurt feelings, and the poor Parcheesi board lying broken and discarded on a pile of dead flies atop a pile of garbage.
Fallow reached the broom closet to retrieve the dustpan from the dusty closet interior. Instead of finding the dustpan however, fallow was greeted by the sight of Lucious Gildenroy hanging from the peg where the dustpan should have been.
Fallow was startled to say the least at the appearance of Gildenroy in the broom closet. He couldn’t help wondering why exactly Lucious was even IN the broom closet.
“Why are you in our broom closet?” He happened.
It turns out that Gildenroy’s wife, Bella, had while hammered, stumbled out of the bar with the obviously drunkenly dustpan last night. Such as there was no dustpan anymore in the dust closet, it seemed almost natural that the patrons of the Horny Dragon Pumphouse Bed ‘n Breakfast decided that Gildenroy would suffice for the stand-in role and should ceremoniously be placed in the dust closet as a stand-in dustpan. Crtics later agreed that his brief but vital stand-in role of the dustpan was widely acclaimed and written up in all of the trades as a “Tour De Force”, a “Mezmerizing Smash Hit” and other mindless critical drivel that no one in their write mind would ever say about this tome. Lucious himself cared and remembered little of these events, because at the time of the great and hilarious broom closet swap-out in three acts, he was extremely busy being unconscious and was extremely subconsciously glad for the night off from his wife, who the critics have very little positive reviews about her roles.
Fallow poked Gildenroy with the business end of the broom.
The groggy gentlemen awoke with a start and scrambled about until he dislodged himself free of the dustpan hook. Lucious brushed himself off and before Fallow could say a word, he took his coat from the nail on the door, and grumbled his way clear of the broom closet.
As he passed Fallow, he pressed a few coins into Fallow’s startled hands.
“Many thanks innkeeper. Yer lodgings was roomy and incredibly comfortable. Could you check to make sure that you takes frequent stay coupons and see that me points are remanded to me proper account? Oi’m almost platinum status Oi am, only three more stays til I gets one free!! No wait, nevermind!” He said with a bleary eyed wink. “Oi’m sure Oi booked through that online site with the retir’d star captain, so that’s fine. No time for the cont’nental breakfast me son, Oi’ve got to be off to the convention hall, giving a presentation on the ergonomics of business lunchrooms. Better place to stay than that other inn Oi stayed at last week, and a darn sight roomier too!*”
*The bathroom
Without another word except for goodbye, Lucious Gildenroy was out the door of the Horny Dragon Pumphouse Bed ‘N Breakfast and blinked his way into the bright morning sun, leaving a blinking, hung-over Fallow standing there, wondering what in the hell had happened to his dustpan.
He looked over to his breakfast dish and saw that somehow Lucious had made off with a large part of his hashbrown section and a small but vital portion of his bacon wedge.
Still there was no dustpan and since more than two thirds of his breakfast disk had already been eaten, he couldn’t just leave the job half finished. He’d have to go and get another dustpan. His job at the Horny Dragon was based squarely on the contractual obligation that if Eustace couldn’t find someone cheaper and more lazy. Even though Fallow considered that currently there was nobody in the tri borough area lazier than himself. He was a captain of the industry.
He also pondered for a moment or two an article he’d read in Wanderlust Weekly world Report about imported foreign lazy workers being lazier for less wages and benefits. Most disturbing was the government’s response to these people by starting up programs that helped out domestic lazy people to create an even playing field. By cutting out the middle man and being lazy on their own, the Wanderlust Federal Royal government subsidized these lazy entrepreneurs with a federal program called The Department Of Lazy Employees, or as it’s known in economist circles as getting on The Dole!
Suddenly Fallow realized that he would not only find himself out of a job, but he would more importantly find himself out of a hefty 30% discount on nightly booze.
Fallow grabbed his hat from the bar and stepped out into the sunlight the same way that Lucious did, except for an audible gasp he let out as the glaring sun hit his sensitive bloodshot hung-over eyeballs. And… by audible gasp I mean girl-like shriek that reverberated off of the kegs around the room.
The muffled reply “What?” came from the back rooms.
“Nothing!” shouted back Fallow, “I’m going to get a new dustpan.” Which basically means; I have no idea when I’m going to be back or how long this will take, but I should be here in time to booze it up tonight.
He pulled the bar’s door closed behind him and grimaced his way into the sunlight.
Closing the door agitated the dust bunnies that had all just calmed down and returned to their lint. They looked around and continued to graze. On the pile of dirt, the ghostly flies had patched things up between them and had decided that in honor of their truce, a rousing game of Spiritual Parcheesi was in order.
