A Speedy Recovery Part 5 (Final)

Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4

Months went by and although business was gangbusters, Carl had a lot of questions. First, where was Dustin? Second, how did his business go from almost going under to breaking all previous sales records if basically nothing had changed? He sold his entire stock every single day since the promotional party that Dustin threw together.

One Saturday night, as Carl was sweeping up, Dustin appeared, from what seemed like out of thin air, walking from the kitchen into the dining room.

“Hey” he said, startling Carl half to death.

Carl was at a loss for words. On one hand Dustin had, for lack of a better term, pulled a Dustin. On the other hand, things were going great and quite possibly the promotional party that Dustin had produced may have played a role.

Carl sighed “Hey. Where have you been?” he asked.

“You’re never gonna believe this” Dustin answered.

“Try me”

“Well, let me show you” Dustin said, before vanishing.

Carl demonstrated his shock with a loud “Huh?”

Dustin appeared again. “Crazy isn’t it?”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m dead Carl!”

Carl just fixated on Dustin without blinking or saying a word.

“Well, I owed someone, like, a lot of money. So I decided to sell our stash to pay it off because they were going to kill me! But, the deal went bad and I got “got””

“Oh my…” Carl said, putting his hand to his mouth, “That’s why you disappeared”

“Yeah, but check this out. Apparently, on the other side, where you go when you die, you get to call up a favor. Even a scum bag like me! So, I felt bad, for like, fucking you over, so I asked to help out the shop with my favor”

“I’ll be…” Carl just stared at Dustin, even passing his hand through him.

“I know you said ‘no fuck ups’, but I made it right, didn’t I?”

They talked through the night until Dustin had to go. Carl told of the success of the shop and Dustin told what he was allowed to of the other side. Dustin also told Carl that the shop would only continue to have success if Carl personally ran it. As soon as he stopped or tried passing the shop along, the favor would not work anymore. It was part of the “Rules”. Dustin promised to visit Carl as often as he could and that made Carl very happy.

The End.

A Speedy Recovery Part 4

A Speedy Recovery Part 1

A Speedy Recovery Part 2

A Speedy Recovery Part 3

Weeks past and business boomed. The store was crowded from the time it opened until the last call. No one had seemed to be the wiser about the special ingredient.

Carl was very conscience about trying the sandwich himself. After all, he had watched the movie Scar-face and rule number one was “don’t get high on your own supply”.

Dustin was good about keeping the supply of product flowing but was a little flakey about actually coming in and working as per the agreement. Carl was okay with that as long as he had his special ingredient.

Carl didn’t worry much when three days passed and Dustin hadn’t shown up. On the fourth day, delivery day, he became rather upset when neither Dustin nor product showed up. In fact he panicked.

With the prior stress of being in the financial doldrums, mixed with the new stress of his illicit activities, he was already having small panic attacks. Now that his special ingredient, the chi of his success, dried up, he was experiencing full blown anxiety.

He needed an escape. He wanted to feel better. He wanted to at least feel different from what he felt currently. He decided to eat a sandwich to see if it would make him feel good. Thousands of local customers couldn’t be wrong, could they?

He sat down at a table with a root beer and thought to himself, here goes nothing. And that was exactly what he felt after downing half of the sub. Nothing. He thought he should eat more but he could only put down another half because he was so full.

He felt no different, except that he was stuffed. He was perplexed. The bread was made this morning. He went to the vat that held the remainder of the secret ingredient. He scraped enough to make a pretty decent sized line and laid it out on the stainless steel prep table.

He cut a third of a straw off and snorted the substance. “What the fuck?!” he yelled aloud, eyes watering. He knew nothing about drugs but was an expert in baked goods. It was nothing more than manioc flour.

“I’m gonna kill Dustin!”

 

To be continued…

 

 

 

A Speedy Recovery Part 3

A Speedy Recovery Part 1

A Speedy Recovery Part 2

A few weeks later on a Saturday afternoon, the place was packed.

“It worked! You really pulled it off. How did you get D.J. Cyanide, one of the biggest DJs around to agree to do this?” Carl asked Dustin.

“Well, I’m a fan of his and he’s a fan of a certain product. I just called in a favor” Dustin answered.

“I’ve never seen so many people here before. This is bigger than when 94.1 ZROK did a remote from here 15 years ago!”

“And everyone’s eating sandwiches!” Dustin added, rubbing his hands together in a sinister fashion.

The place remained at capacity until closing time. Dustin and Carl had to practically beg a few stragglers to leave so they could clean up and count the day’s money.

“We did well, Dustin. This is by far the most successful promotion the store has ever done” Carl said as he sorted debit receipts from credit receipts.

“This is nothing, bro. This just gave the public a taste. The real “W” will come when the people are trying to smash down the door to get more”

“Your mouth to God’s ears”

“Ha! God…I’m not sure He’s gonna be a big fan of this endeavor”

The next day Carl saw a crowd in front of the store as he pulled up. It was only 7:00am and the store wouldn’t open for another three and a half hours. He was there to make the day’s bread.

The crowd cheered as Carl stepped out of his car.

“Sandwich man!” a man in the crowd shouted.

“We’re hungry!” another voice shouted.

“Folks, we don’t open until 10:30!” Carl said “I still have to make the bread”

“I’ll take some dough raw!” a voice cried. It was followed with a salvo of “Me too!”

Carl had a sinking suspicion that he may have gotten himself in over his head.

 

Game Over!

Foot volley, which is a mixture of soccer and volley ball is a way of life in Guarã, a small city in a remote part of the Amazon valley in Brazil. Players use their legs, feet and head to get the ball over a net. It sounds like a fun way to pass the time and it can be, just not in Guarã. There, winning a game can mean you get to live another day or will be burned alive bound by old car tires and doused in gasoline. It harks back to the worst days of the Roman empire but instead of Caesars presiding over the tournaments, there are drug dealers deciding the fates of athletes.

If parents see that their child is particularly good at foot volley, they sometimes will sell all their possessions to ensure their child has a bus ticket, one way, out of Guarã. The child will sometimes grow up in the company of relatives without their parents because the parents are too poor to make the bus fare to get themselves out. In some cases, parents end up dead for sending away a good prospect.

José had no parents to care for him or to sell possessions to get him out of Guarã. José lived on the street in a pack of about 10 boys. He was the best of around 4 really good players. When they weren´t playing foot volley, training foot volley or trying to get something to eat from the trash, the pack was usually either sniffing glue or trying to get their hands on it. Not José. Some time ago, José found some text books in the trash while looking for dinner. José was taught to read by the church and he was grateful and did not want their gift to go in vain.

José had won so much that he had built himself quite the name in Guarã. He was like a local celebrity. He was forced to go to the big outdoor “funk parties” as they were called, thrown by the local drug dealers. He was paraded around like a mascot. He despised them all. He despised the drug dealers who he saw as poisoning the community. He despised the party goers and useless people lowered even further in his eyes for idolizing such horrid people. He despised the cops who were easily bribed by the drug bosses and would abuse street children in every sense of the word for their own pleasure.

One night José lay in his concrete bed, in reality a sewer tunnel opening, trying to get the images out of his head of what he saw that day. He had won a major day long tournament closed with not only the murder of every loser but their depraved torture as well. José had seen a lot up to this point but this was worse than anything he had seen. His mind went back and forth from the torture to the faces of the spectators who watched in ecstasy and cheered on the torturers. He was forced to watch from a rickety homemade throne that was spray painted gold and had worn purple pillows fixed to it to make it look like a real king´s chair.

As he laid there, tears rolling down his eyes, he smelled smoke. It was not the usual smell of bonfires which were frequent during the nights after a tournament. It had a more chemical smell. He went out from his makeshift bedroom and climbed an electrical tower. A few thatched roofed houses were on fire. There was little to no response, probably because of the level of intoxication of the people. For the most part of the population, they were passed out drunk.

José thought quick. He knew how he could help. Help himself, help his city, help his country, help the world. He made his way to the police precinct which looked no different than the front office of a land fill. He went to the patio where the few broken down vehicles were parked. He grabbed two 20 liter canisters and went running. As he approached the burning huts he poured some of the liquid from the canisters into discarded water bottles and aluminum cans. He then proceeded to throw them near the flames.

Where the bottle and cans hit, great little explosions took place and the flames quickly spread. He was throwing containers of gasoline into the flames! He then moved on to huts that were not on fire and started to throw flaming soda cans onto the roofs. When they were sufficiently ablaze he went to the only houses in the village, slipshod building decorated by what looked like by psychopathic children, and started to fling his mini Molotov cocktails over the walls. In no time they were on fire as well.

José, satisfied with his work, started for the outskirts of the village. It was getting hot as the fire was spreading rapidly. He was surprised by the lack of commotion on the street. Surely some people were not so drunk as to burn to death without waking. He didn´t care either way. He made his way to the outskirts of the village, climbed a little foot hill and watch the fire do its cleansing.