The Hightower Gang Blog

The One opened a pissed-off, annoyed eye. The blatant sound of the alarm clock on his night table had mercilessly hauled him out of his deranged dreams. With a pounding morning erection similar to the protagonist of the movie "The 40-year-old Virgin", he bounced out of bed and hobbled through his dismal flat, letting out a jaw-cracking yawn. It was time for another day of back-breaking monkey labor in the Slovakian forests. He opened the fridge and took out some ham, cheese and butter, before opening a drawer and taking out a bread. With a childishly pouting look on his Neanderthal-like face he made himself a sandwich which he flushed down his throat with milk from a plastic jug.

For the observant reader, the giant did not consume any beer that morning. These shocking news had a perfectly good reason: He operated fairly heavy machinery at work, and it was strictly illegal to be under the influence.

The even more observant reader might ask himself how a premium oaf like that managed to not only get a job, but get a job where one operated potentially lethal machinery. There was really only one answer: Dumb luck. The One was a lucky bastard, of which the world seemed to be riddled. Luck did not strike the right people, it seemed.

With a pissed, pouting look on his face, he left the cockroach nest and hit the streets. He made the 0645 bus just in time, throwing his offensively over-sized person into the bus. Four businessmen were nearly squeezed to Death by him. Burping and clearing his throat, he let out a thundering fart that brought tears in the eyes of his fellow passengers. One of them even attempted to off himself with his own tie. The One just let out a sneer and a chuckle, before a very sombre look came on his face. Friday and beer were still two long days away.

The bus and the giant rode into the sunrise.

***

Zoe opened a fresh, invigorated eye. The pleasant music from the clock radio on the night table quietly escorted her out of her REM world. She stretched her fairly slim body like a cat, letting out a deep, satisfied groan. She turned to Solitaire, who was still asleep. She turned over to her and gave her a soft kiss on the neck, something that made Solitaire let out an unconscious, barely audible moan. Around her neck there was a new, glittering necklace with a combined S and Z pendant - Zoe wore an identical one around her own neck.

The red-haired, noticeably skinnier American bounced vigorously out of bed and headed straight for the shower. Her new job as a camerawoman for an Austrian local TV channel required rudimentary hygiene. After an invigorating morning shower she went into the kitchen and started making breakfast for her and Solitaire. The flat looked far more decent now that certain unpleasant elements were gone; a certain person of above-average size whose name should never be mentioned again - a man in his 60's who, despite his sudden and tragic demise, still contributed to the high levels of daily nuisance by being constantly intoxicated, smoking and flatulent - an ethereal concept currently in the body of a male member of a tribe belonging to an obscure Pacific island, and who had now left Austria, Europe and even the planet to seek other, more healthy means of living. The flat seemed pretty big now that only the two of them were sharing it.

With an uncanny timing Solitaire entered the kitchen at the precise moment that the breakfast was done. She sneaked upon Zoe and gave her a hot, erotic kiss on the neck. Zoe's face twisted in pleasure and she turned around and started making out with her. It did not take long before the two of them decided to have a morning 'mound-pound' in the Chesterfield coach. After all, the breakfast had neither eyes nor ears - and it certainly did not run away. Solitaire let out a deep gut groan as Zoe formally ripped off her silk underwear.

***

At a caring facility in the outskirts of a nameless Italian city there was great activity in the living room area. A merry, chubby, young man was sitting before the television watching cartoons. He laughed, giggled and clapped his hands of the comic nature of what he was watching. Watching cartoons in the morning was one of his favorite activities, followed by drawing, reading children's books and going for walks in the beautiful park in the neighborhood.

All of a sudden one of the caregivers came over to him, a beautiful, stunning woman in whom the young man had really no interest.

"Raffi," she said, 'Raffi' being colloquial for Rafaele. - "Your grandparents have come to see you."

"Yay!" Raffi said and hovered both of his hands in the air. He bounced up and saw his 'grandparents' standing in the doorway. - "Grampa! Gramma!"

"Hi there, Raffi!" the old man said with a genuine smile on his face. His wife smiled just as heart-felt. Raffi ran eagerly over to them and hugged the both of them. The old man took out a small bar of chocolate from his pocket. - "Look what I brought to you."

"Chocky!" Raffi exclaimed. - "Lovely beautifully chockiness! Me likes!"

He got the chocolate and started indulging it. He savored the sweet simplicity of the generic chocolate just as heartfelt as any little child.

"You know what we're going to do today, Raffi?" the old man asked. He got Raffi's immediate attention. - "We're going to the zoo! It's Tuesday today, you know. And Tuesday is Zoo day!"

"Yaaay!" Raffi exclaimed. He ran to his room to get his jacket. Back stood the elderly couple and the caregiver. She turned to them with a genuine smile.

"I really like what you're doing," she said. - "Most parents, let alone grandparents, never visit the patients here. But you, you come here every Tuesday and every Saturday and really takes care of your grandchild. You even put him in here after the horrible accident he was in."

A dark shadow crossed the faces of the elderly couple. The shadow did however disappear when Raffi came scurrying with his jacket, his brown eyes shining beautifully in the sunset. The old man took his hand and they went into the hot summer air.

Life was beautiful. He had no past and no future. No yesterday, no tomorrow. He was always living in the moment, because moments were all that was left in his world of concepts. He was never afraid of anything anymore; everything was fun and exciting. Living in the sunny world of a little child, he was happier now than he had ever been. Gone were the memories of NHH, The One, Veronica, the BDSM cellar, the date rapes, the nocturnal ejaculations, the pyramid schemes, the horror of insomnia. It had all been miraculously wiped from his mind, never to return. He had no worries, no responsibilities, and, most importantly, no enemies. They all knew him as the happy guy on third floor, a harmless philanthropist who could not hurt a fly. He had finally found peace from his anguish and mental torment.

And he never ever had trouble sleeping again.

The One opened a blood-shot eye. He found himself lying in the Chesterfield couch with a blanket over him. Hearing Solitaire and Zoe speak friendly together on the kitchen, and smelling and hearing food being fried, he got up, feeling a ravenous hunger. On unsteady feet and with a throbbing headache he hobbled into the kitchen, his eyes red and hazy of drunkard's fatigue. He cast a curious gaze at the two women, as they were both topless, standing there with white aprons around their lower body and white chef's hats on their heads. None of them covered their naked boobs, however. The One scratched the back of his head over this fetish-like scene, before taking a bottle of beer from out of the fridge.

"What's all this, then, my food-making boobarellas?" he asked, opened the beer bottle with his confusion (!!) and drank from it in big man sips.

Moments later the entire contents of the bottle came out of his nose, mouth and ears (!!). He coughed, wheezed and gagged himself, before staring in disbelief at the bottle. He let out a bawl of shock.

"Non-alcoholic beer?!!" he screamed. - "Are you trying to kill me?!! Are you out of your 'eads 'opping mad?!!" He threw the half-full bottle through the flat, smashing it in the wall. The loud, deafening bang caused Ayn to wake up with an anxious moan.

Marty, however, did not even stir.

"If you're gonna behave like a madman, you can just fucking leave," Solitaire said with a cocky grin. She then put her arm around Zoe, both of them standing there and crushing him with their stares like two topless boob godesses.

"Don't use that tone to me, woman," The One sneered, clutching his fist menacingly at her.

"Hah!" Solitaire exclaimed, bursting out in mocking laughter. Zoe did likewise. Both of them pointed at him while laughing heartily, bending over with their boobs quivering and bouncing. The One soured like milk before a useless singer. - "You think you're scaring me? I knocked you out cold last night, remember?" She fleered. - "And I'm happy to do it again." She held the spatula up in a menacing manner. - "Piss off, One."

"W-what?!" The One roared in falsetto. - "You dare throwing me out of the kitchen?!"

"We're busy," Solitaire said, pushing him out of there. - "Go sit in the living room and watch a documentary about victims of the Afghan war."

Thunderstruck and dumb-founded, the giant went like a spanked dog into the living room. Pouting like a little child he sat down in the couch. He took a bottle of beer, made sure it was REAL beer, and opened it with a nearby bottle opener (!!!). He turned the television on and drank from the bottle in big man sips.

Moments later the entire contents of the bottle came out of his nose, mouth and ears (!!). He coughed, wheezed and gagged himself, before staring in disbelief at the television screen.

"Holy fuck!" he wailed. Ayn stared at the TV screen with equal surprise. - "Girls, you've gotta see this!"

Out of mere curiosity Solitaire and Zoe came out of the kitchen. Both of them gasped in shock.

The headlines of a news broadcast read "DIRECTOR IS DEAD" with wartime fonts. The One turned up the volume to the point of making the glass items in the room vibrate:

"The businessman, art collector and former logistics company owner known as Director has passed away. According to doctor Robert Ryland by the Rikshospital in Oslo, Norway, the 27-year-old man was misdiagnosed with a rare, incurable disease known as Fatal Familial Insomnia. Believing that he had the disease, he went to a euthanasia clinic in Zürich and ended his life by means of assisted suicide. We have not managed to get in contact with the leader or the staff of this clinic, which for the respect of the people involved will remain nameless.
Despite his young age he had already gained a name in the business world of Europe. An NHH graduate, he became a billionaire after making successful investments in various companies, at one point even running his own, Thailand-based company. With all he accomplished in his short life he is believed to be one of the 21st century's most influential people.
His last wish was to be cremated as soon as he was dead. The ceremony has allegedly taken place already. A memorial will however be held at NHH by the principal of that respectable institution.
His early Death came as a shock to several prominent socialites and businessmen all over continental Europe, and he will be greatly missed."

A montage of different pictures of NHH and Director was then shown while classical music was playing in the background. The pictures of Director ranged from a young and virginal Director all the way back to his arrival at NHH in August of 2004, and to pictures taken only last autumn by some paparazzi. The One, Ayn, Zoe and Solitaire sat there with their mouths agape. Their nefariously deviant friend seemed to have made himself quite a name in the short time he was on Earth.

"Shit!" Solitaire exclaimed. - "Director is dead?!" A wide smile then formed on her face. - "About damn time!" She hugged Zoe and The One (!!) out of mere joy. - "What half of Europe couldn't do, a simple mis-diagnosis did! Oh, this is indeed a most happy day!"

"Dying thinking you have a deadly, incurable disease must be horrifying," Ayn said, but his words drowned in the speech waves of the two dominant personalities in the room.

"Director is dead, Director is dead," Solitaire sang with her merry, Chinese eyes shining beautifully in the sunshine. One could see a heavy burden being lifted off Zoe's shoulders. Even Ayn looked like somebody had pulled a nasty little bug out of his arse.

"Well, I'll be damned," The One muttered. - "I wonder what will happen to his many elaborate pyramid schemes now that he's kicked the bucket. A lot of investors will suddenly lose their money. Poor fuckers."

Upon realizing what he just said, the giant paled to the bone, nearly (but only nearly) dropping his half-full bottle of beer.

"Oh shit... I was one of the investors of his pyramid schemes! Actually the main one! That's what's giving me shitloads of money the last years! Shit! Shit! I need a laptop! I need to check my bank accounts!" With angst sweat dripping in beads down his chalk-white face he turned at Zoe and snapped his fingers. - "You! You have a laptop! Go and get it, woman!"

"How dare you talk to my girl like that?" Solitaire asked briskly. She did however back away a bit nervous when froth started coming out of the giant's mouth.

"GET ME A LAPTOP BEFORE I TEAR THE PLACE TO THE GROUND!!!" he roared, looking like he was about to transform into a werewolf.

Seconds later Zoe came scurrying back with a laptop. An anxious minute followed as The One clicked his way into his bank account. His big man fingers barely managed to type anything on the comparably miniature keyboard. He let out a yelp, a fart and a gasp. Holding to his heart(s), he leaned back. This time he did drop the beer bottle. Ayn gazed at the bank account overview. There was not a Euro left. As the monetary house of cards had fallen apart, all the money accumulated had been reverted to its former investors - or, most likely in this case, been seized by the IRS's of the respectable countries in which Director had resided. The One was lucky to escape a decade in prison.

"You've gotta be fucking shitting me!" The One whimpered, holding to his head. - "I'm... I'm flat b-b-b-broke!"

"I do believe you are..." Ayn said with a flabber-gasted face.

"I... I have to get a job!" The One whimpered. - "I can't rely on phantom money anymore!"

Solitaire and Zoe got a devilish look on their faces. They turned at the giant with merry faces, holding each other. The nipples on their naked breasts were stiff and swollen with both desire and Schadenfreude.

"So, Ony boy," Solitaire said. - "How are you gonna pay the rent now?" The One looked at her with dread. - "The rent's due tomorrow, and you don't have any money..." She giggled.

"Oh fuck..." the giant said, scratching his head. He stared with a sombre look on the many zeros on his bank account overview. - "This is bad. Real fucking bad." He got up. With a begging look on his face he turned at Ayn. - "Ayn, my dear friend... Could I borrow a few dimes to pay the rent?"

Ayn just looked the other way, feeling very awkward. In addition he had not forgotten the infamous wine bottle incident.

"Money doesn't grow on trees, One," he said. - "I barely have any money to pay the rent myself."

"A nice friend YOU are," The One muttered, before hobbling over to Marty. He shook his shoulder in an attempt to stir him. - "Hey, Marty, dear old chap! I know you have heap-loads of money from your 40-year disability payment swindle. Could you help me this month? I'll pay you back handsomely! I'll even give you a complimentary case of beer!" Solitaire and Zoe laughed heartily in the background. The One shook the old man more eagerly. - "Hey! I'm talking to you! Don't pretend like you're sleeping! I know you're awake! Hey!" The two women's laughter were now near-deafening. He got red with anger. With a roar he lifted the old man up and shook him like a rag-doll. - "Dammit, Marty!! Don't do this to me!!"

He dropped the old man into the couch like a sack of potatoes. Marty did not even stir. The One looked curiously at him. Ayn too started growing suspicious. The two women on the other hand, were too busy laughing of the giant's richly well-deserved misery.

"Marty?" Ayn asked, holding a hand before the old man's nostrils. If his face had not been the color of a mocha bean, he would have been pale as the blind-side of a halibut. - "Shit! He's not breathing!"

"What?!" The One asked. Solitaire and Zoe slowly stopped laughing. Their faces stiffened into horror. Ayn frantically checked for pulse.

"He has no pulse," the demi-god said. He felt the old man's temple. - "He's very cold." He gulped, struggling to keep a straight face. - "I... I think he's dead!"

"What?!" The One roared. - "Who's gonna pay my rent now?!"

Zoe then attacked him and pushed him through the small corridor.

"Marty, our dearest friend, is dead and all you think about is the bloody rent!!" she screamed, before slapping him in the face. - "You think of nobody but yourself, you mean, vile, horrid, insufferable, ghastly, foul-smelling, hard-drinking, hard-farting, retarded, offensively over-sized, mean, cruel prick of a rapist!!"

"Jeezes, relax, Zoe!" The One cried, leaning against the bathroom door. Zoe's mouth was foaming, her face was red as a tomato and proverbial lava came out her ears. - "Go and pound some pussy, uptight, obese twat!"

Zoe went straight for his throat and actually managed to grab around it as well. The One looked like a fish on too deep waters, his eyes bulging and his face getting red. Ayn and Solitaire had to haul Zoe away before she strangled the giant.

"We'd better call an ambulance to come and get poor Marty," Ayn said with a sad, gloomy voice. Zoe tried to attack the frightened giant again, but Ayn stopped her. - "And I think we need an ambulance for One as well if you keep this up!"

The One fled the flat with something that actually looked like genuine fear in his eyes. Needless to say, the world as he knew it was about to end. And a 'lowly woman' had frightened him.

"I don't wanna see that rude sod before my eyes!" Zoe roared, tossing an empty wine bottle after him. The bottle hit the door and virtually exploded from the impact.

Solitaire sat down in the couch next to her dead friend and lit a cigarette. Ayn and Zoe sat down, Zoe so agitated that she could not stop fidgeting. She poured wine into a glass and downed the entire glass in one gulp.

"This is indeed a sad day," Solitaire said, smoke coming out of her mouth and nose. - "Marty's dead, Ony's broke and I'm hung-over."

Ayn and Zoe looked at her with sad eyes. In the distance sirens were wailing, along with the wails of a certain flat-broke oaf.

***

Director opened his eyes, finding himself lying in the bed of his new flat in a generic Italian city. For a moment he thought he had just dreamed it all; how his criminal deeds had finally caught up with him and how the Neapolitan mafia had to save his tight, sexy ass. Then the awful truth came to him: It had not been a dream. He had indeed been relocated to another city under a new name. From now on and for the remainder of his natural life he would go under the name of Rafaele, a man who today was going to start in his new job as an assistant at the nearby fish market. Rafaele, a man who was born in Sweden by Italian parents, and who had recently moved to Italy following their tragic demise. The story was figured out pretty well. He could never stand out in any way ever again. He was destined to lead a boring, eventless, completely ordinary life.

The world as he knew it had ended. Veronica and her latex lackeys had won.

Shuddering and attacked by a bout of existential crisis, he got up. He did not take a shower since he was going to do hard, manual labor anyways. He made himself a cup of instant coffee, the cheapest brand. He ate bread with peanut butter and flushed it down his throat with milk from a big plastic jug.

"Welcome to your punishment, Rafaele," he muttered to himself, before bursting out in hysterical laughter, nearly bursting into crying as well. Shaking his head, he managed to get himself composed again. Compared to the horror show he had endured lately this "punishment" was offensively mild. He took the keys and left the flat. The first day in his new life had now begun.

Out in the street there was busy traffic, the streets being riddled with cars, scooters and people. People looking essentially like him hasted to and fro everywhere, exchanging quick phrases in Italian, the language of love and passion. Director luckily knew enough Italian to make himself understood; a crucial thing to know, since almost nobody understood English in this city. It was not a typical tourist place - most people outside of Italy had not even heard about it. It was such an obscure city that Director barely knew how its name was spelled.

A dark shadow crossed his face. There were beautiful women everywhere he turned. Top model-beautiful. Women that he would never get. Women who would never know who (and what) he really was. He could never have sex with a woman again. Not without revealing that he was the most wanted man in Europe. His pitch-black world had just taken a turn for the worst. Now everything was going to go straight to Hell on a gray boat of mediocrity and anonymity.

Lost in his own thoughts he crossed the street with a sombre look on his stunning face. All of a sudden a car came out of nowhere. The driver did not have time to react, and Director did not even have the time to turn around. By the time the driver had hit the brakes, it was already too late. Director was hit by the bumper, thrown over the windshield and the roof and landed head-first on the ground behind the car, bloody, bruised and severely maimed.

People gasped in shock. The devastated elderly couple in the car hasted out of it and gathered by him. He was bleeding from basically every orifice and even had his skull cracked. Needless to say, he was unconscious. The old man cried in shock and terror and the woman was no less in distress.

An ambulance came to the scene of the accident. The elderly couple watched in horror as the medical personnel found no pulse. They started resuscitation. Several angst-filled minutes later they finally managed to bring him back. He had escaped Death.

The elderly couple followed the ambulance to the hospital. At the ER an entire staff of surgeons and nurses spent the rest of the day trying to paste together the maimed young man. At sundown a doctor came to the agonized man and woman. The old man got up, fidgeting nervously with his old-fashioned bowler hat.

"How is he?" the old man asked.

"He is alive," the doctor said. - "However, he suffered severe brain damage both from the accident itself and the handful of minutes he was clinically dead." The old man sighed while the woman wailed. - "Right now he is in a coma. If he ever wakes up, he will probably be a vegetable."

"Oh, dear God!" the man exclaimed, sitting down with a cry. - "This is my fault! I did this to him!"

"This accident was completely inevitable," the doctor said. - "According to what you told me, the man just stepped right into the street without looking or without any warning. It wasn't even a zebra crossing. There is nothing you could have done."

"Take me to him," the old man said. - "I want to see him."

The doctor nodded, before escorting him through the corridor. In a pleasantly lit room Director was lying, covered in bandages from head to toe. His head was entangled in several meters of bandage and cast, and he was given oxygen and nutrition through an intricate system of tubes. Despite his horrid appearance, he seemed to have great peace over him, like he was in a far happy place than the dreary real world. The old man and the woman sat down by the bed.

"I will sit here until he wakes up," the old man said determined.

"Are you sure, sir?" the doctor asked. - "He may never wake up again. He is so severely damaged that he may die tonight."

"Then I will watch him die," he said stoically.

The doctor, who had other patients to tend to, left the room. The elderly couple sat by Director's bed all night. Eventually they dozed off the both of them.

In the morning the old man was stirred by a strange, nasal voice. He opened his eyes and shuddered. The young man in the bed was looking at him! His blood-shut eyes were staring curiously at him and the many apparati around him. He stared at them like he would stare at an alien. He tried to speak, but the tube stopped him.

"Doctor!" the old man cried. His wife was stirred as well and bounced on her feet. - "Doctor! He's awake!"

A doctor and a retinue of nurses came scurrying into the room. The tube was very carefully removed. The young man smacked his lips and tried to move his head. The collar around his whiplashed neck did however prevent him from moving. He looked at the old man, a smile forming on his bruised, swollen face.

"Grandpaaah?" he asked with the intonation of a little child. - "Is it you, grandpaaah?" He was drooling.

"Oh, dear God..." the old man said and burst into tears. His wife had to comfort him. The doctor looked at Director with raised eyebrows, and so did the nurses.

Director looked around with the curiosity of somebody new to the world. It was all new to him, he could not make any sense out of it.

"I am thirsty," he said and smacked his mouth. One of the nurses fed him water through a straw. He licked his lips, a childish smile forming on his face. - "That water tastes funny." He giggled. All of a sudden he got a weird look on his face. - "I need to pee-wee." He simply let go of his bladder control. Soon urine seeped through his catheter and into a plastic bag by the bed. He looked at the bag with wide eyes of stunned surprise and pointed at it with his right arm, the arm that had not been broken in four places. - "A pee bag!"

The old man was so distressed that they had to escort him out of the room.

At 1430 CET precisely the party started. The One, already well into his own little party, was inevitably absorbed into the main party. Simultaneously he, Marty, Ayn, Zoe and Solitaire opened a bottle of beer and drank from them in big multi-gender sips. Immediately afterwards "Queen II" started playing in the background, while the television (which showed a documentary about rare genetic disorders in children) was turned off.

"Cheers to open borders and open pussies!" Zoe declared and opened a bottle of low-quality Slovakian red wine.

"Word!" The One exclaimed and held up a beer bottle like he would hold a first-born ready to be sacrificed to some obscure deity.

Marty held to his chest and moaned, before goffling beer with other-wordly zeal.

At 1530 CET, one hour after Zero Hour, "Queen II" was into its second play that afternoon. It was not that there were not other records in the flat, it was the fact that everyone was too darn lazy to suggest or put on other albums. Zoe, Solitaire and Ayn were into their third bottle of wine, while The One was into his second case.

"Cheers to border and pussy control!" Solitaire declared with her words ending in a foghorn-like wail.

"Totally un-word!" The One exclaimed and opened a beer bottle with a nearby candle (!!). - "Pussies belong to the domain of men! Women have no right to control their pussies!" Solitaire and Zoe sighed in indignation, frustrated over the bottomless half-wittedness demonstrated by the ogre. - "A woman who've never masturbated and doesn't even know what an orgasm is, shouldn't whine when the man of the evening can't satisfy her! She should have been thought by force how to come!" He drank religiously from his beer bottle, before letting out a sweet beer fart that blew straight in the women's faces.

"Fucking moron," Zoe said, rolling her eyes. She put her arm around Solitaire. - "I'm with you all the way, baby."

Solitaire sent her a dumb-founded glare, especially when Zoe rested her head on her shoulder.

"Cheers to the inherent flaws of modern society!" Ayn proclaimed theatrically to save the mood.

Marty gripped around his chest and moaned with a look of pain and horror on his face, before goffling beer with a wrinkled forehead. He did not feel good.

At 1630 CET, two hours after Zero Hour, "Queen II" was into its third play that afternoon. Solitaire and Zoe were now making out eagerly, much to the shocked gazes of the other drunken partiers. The One's mouth was agape, but not out of shock, but out of mere arousal. His slightly crossed eyes had its pupils dilated the the point of being high. He noticed how Zoe kissed Solitaire on the neck, making Solitaire groan with delight. He noticed how Zoe clung desperately on to her, and how Solitaire did the same. He noticed how both of them massaged each other's buttocks and thighs. The two clearly wanted to take each other. While Marty tried to look away, more occupied with his own malaise, Ayn could not help but admire the sensuality and brutality of the two. He tried the best he could, however, to avoid staring at the giant's raging hard-on - the fool did not even try to hide it from everyone else like a normal man would. His bulging crotch was not a pretty sight.

"Let's get into my room...!!" Solitaire groaned with a deep, raspy voice. With an intoxicated look on her face, Zoe got up. Just as they disappeared into Solitaire's room, Zoe grabbed Solitaire's leather-covered buttock. Then the door was shut.

"Damn," The One muttered and groaned deeply. - "Talk about egoists. Why couldn't they mound-pound each other silly in here, before the approving eyes of three men?"

Ayn let out a chuckle, pouring himself a shot of vodka. Marty got a shot as well, despite him shaking his head with a pale face and a dripping forehead. The One got a shot too, to his immense surprise and unfathomable gratitude.

"You must remember one thing, One," Ayn said. - "You're the only real man in the room."

The One's face shone of pride and slight disbelief. Had Ayn really said that? Even though, in his mind, it was as clear as water that The One was a Real Man, it was still odd for him to hear someone say it out loud.

"Really?" The One asked. - "I'm the only man in here? The only Real Man?"

"Well, Marty hasn't really been a man for ages, while I as an ethereal entity don't have a gender." Ayn then hovered his shot glass in the air. - "Cheers to real men who don't take no for an answer!"

"Totally word!" The One exclaimed vociferously. Then he, Ayn and a little bit reluctant Marty drank the vodka in one gulp. All three of them coughed, Marty holding to his chest and gasping for air.  - "Lemme tell ya something..." The One's speech was slightly slurred. - "Lemme tell ya something fucking brilliant." Marty and Ayn listened with their heads tilted, Marty massaging his chest. - "I think Solitaire is using Zoe to get back at me! Hah! I figured that vile cunt out!"

"Oh..." Ayn said, feeling a bit awkward. - "Well, you did rape her, and that's pretty mean, even for a Real Man."

"Bah, she's a whore. She can take it. In a few days the longing after a big and hard cock will drive her back to me with a humid love crack and a begging stare."

Ayn served another round of vodka, having a rather worried look on his face. The One's cold chuckle and soulless stare did not make the scene any better.

At 1830 CET, four hours after Zero Hour, "Queen II" was into its God knows what play. Solitaire and Zoe returned to the living room, both of them looking like they had fought wild animals. Their faces were red and blushed, their hair was a mess, and Solitaire even had claw marks on her back, visible from her neck and downwards. The two gave each other a kiss and sat down together in a couch, Solitaire sitting on Zoe's lap. The One sent them a drunken glare.

"So..." he started, before hiccuping. - "Whatcha been up to, women?" He had a cross-eyed Dirty Harry frown on his face, looking like he was going to pass out, vomit or start a gunfight in the streets of San Francisco.

"It's pretty fucking obvious, isn't it?" Solitaire asked with a haughty and very confident grin, crushing The One with her triumphant stare. He looked down into the floor with his face contorted in childish pouting. - "Zoe was a wild cat! She nearly tore me apart! It was like making love to a lynx!"

"I hadn't had sex with another human being for ages!" Zoe exclaimed, opening a bottle of piss-cheap Slovakian white wine.

The One let out an emotionally dead chuckle.

"And that human being was MOI!" he declared, while pointing at himself. He sent Solitaire a cross-eyed, triumphant stare - however, his gaze was so out of focus that Solitaire could not determine if he was looking at her or at the plasma screen behind her.

"Don't remind me of THAT!" Zoe wailed with a very hurt look on her face. She held Solitaire in an anxious embrace. - "You know what that insufferable clod did to me when we were in Thailand? He shaved my pussy, had sex with me and then took me to a restaurant where he treated me so badly that he was attacked by a gang of Irishmen! You should have heard how he verbally abused me, and you should have seen how he beat up a handful of grown-up Irishmen! I was so scared that I wet myself!"

"Oh, you were pretty WET when I had shaven that pussy beard of yours," The One said with a psychopathic grin. - "Suffise to say, your swollen lips of womanhood were pretty quivering after ages of complete disuse."

Solitaire got up, grabbed an empty wine bottle and attacked the foul-mouthed (and foul-smelling) giant. She smashed the bottle towards his head, but he managed to lower his head and raise his arm. The bottle hit his elbow and made him wail in pain. Ayn and Marty watched the scene with terror on their faces. Zoe, in contrast, laughed and clapped her hands.

"Go Solly!!" she hollered. - "Take that rotten-arse gorilla!"

The One grabbed Solitaire's arm and twisted the bottle out of it. He reached for her throat, trying to strangle her. She screamed with her beautiful face contorted in pain. She used her unseized hand to hit him in the groin, making him let out a falsetto roar. The giant fell very noisily to the floor, making every item in the room jump - and the CD player skipped several seconds of the penultimate song on the "Queen II" album. Solitaire flung herself over him. She hit him with a clenched fist straight in the nose. A massive bang came when he hit the back of his head in the floor. The giant let out a moan, before passing out. It was unclear if it was the punch or the alcohol that knocked him out. Solitaire wanted to believe that it was her girl power fist which sealed the deal.

"High five, sister," Zoe said, her face shining of admiration. Solitaire high-fived her, before she lifted her up from the couch and gave her a very erotic and sensual kiss.

"You know Zoe, I'm tired of sitting in this rotten joint drinking every god-damn day," she said. - "Let's go out and drink instead! I'm buying!"
When Ayn then bounced zealously out of the couch, Solitaire just sent him a hostile glare with her teeth revealed. - "By 'we' I mean Zoe and I! You losers are excluded!" Ayn sat down in the couch again, looking like all the air had been thumped out of him. - "Come on, Zoe love, let's go!"

The two put on jackets, grabbed their purses and left the flat giggling, Solitaire groping Zoe's fat, bouncy buttocks.

Back sat Ayn and Marty, looking at the closed door and at the lifeless giant on the floor. Marty, despite being horrendously drunk, had a look of sheer horror on his face. He put his fist in the mouth, wailing.

"Good Lord!" he cried. - "I think she killed 'im!"

"Noooo, she didn't!" Ayn said, shaking his head in wild disbelief. - "He ain't dead! That's impossible! He's just passed out." He padded the scared old man on his back. - "Relax Marty. You know what that means? That means that One's beer is free for you to 'borrow'! One man's loss of consciousness is another man's gain of beer!"

"Yeah... That's right," Marty said. His face had that uncanny sadness over it all of a sudden. Ayn took two bottles out of the nearest case and handed one of them to Marty with a friendly smile on his face. - "Good Lord, I hope she didn't kill 'im!"

"He ain't dead," Ayn insisted, casting a look at the giant. - "Judging by the bubble of blood and snot in his left nostril, he's still breathing. Dead men don't breathe."

Marty nodded, before drinking eagerly from the bottle.

At 2130 CET The One was still lying on the floor passed out. His loud snoring suggested that he was far from dead, just passed out from all the alcohol (it was utter unthinkable that Solitaire's feeble kitten punch could knock a half-gorilla like him out - it was more like the punch that tipped him over the edge into the warm lake of drunken unconsciousness). Ayn had passed out too, and lay in the corner of the couch, snoring with his drooling mouth agape. Marty, however, was still sentient. The old man were listening to absolutely no music - "Queen II" had long since stopped playing and nobody had bothered putting it back on again.

Marty had trouble breathing and felt very feeble. He barely managed to open a new bottle of beer, leading it to his mouth. Tears were running down his wrinkled, bearded face as he drank from the bottle. He doubted that the beer could ease the pain - he doubted that the beer would calm him down. He had not been feeling well today. Something was not right.

All of a sudden a sharp, stinging pain made him drop the bottle of beer. He let out a groan and clutched to his chest. With a face contorted in pain and horror he bent over in the couch. A long, loud fart made his worn-out, stained pants whirl. In an act of panic he got up, trying to reach the mobile phone lying on the table inbetween three dozen bottles. He tried to scream, but suddenly found himself unable to draw his breath.

He fell back into the couch, his head bending backwards over the couch. Several blood vessels in his right eye burst, and his pupils dilated.

He closed his eyes, all of a sudden with a peaceful expression on his face.

***

Doctor Ryland, the replacement of doctor Johansen (the doctor who willfully misdiagnosed Director), sat behind his desk and scratched his head. He had got back the results of a DNA test for a patient Johansen had not told a word about. It was very odd that an old, respectable doctor could forget telling him that there was a patient in Norway which had been tested for a very rare inherited prion disease. The young doctor read from the test that the patient did not carry the gene which led to development of Fatal Familial Insomnia - no big surprise, as there had only been about 100 cases documented world-wide in the history of modern medicine. So why did the doctor order a test in the first place? Could there have been incidences of the disease in that patient's family?

Via the intercom he instructed the nurse to bring him the journals for Director and his mother, which had recently died. Moments later the nurse came with them, placing them on his desk before him. Ryland could not help admiring the chubby but well-shaped body of the nurse as the wiggled her way out of there. With his wise, alert eyes he went through the journals. He let out a baffled grunt. His mother had not succumbed to that rare inherited prion disease. She had been "lucky" enough to die from an aneurysm, something that could, sadly, happen to anyone. As the prion-caused fatal insomnia was genetic and could thus only be inherited, he could not stop wondering why a genetic test was ordered in the first place. What was a well-experienced doctor's medically justified reason for doing so? Something fishy was going on.

Assuming that the old doctor had just made an understandable mistake and mistaken cigarette smoke for fire, he decided to call him on the cell phone number he had given him. He dialed the number and waited patiently. He knew for a fact that doctor Johansen had moved to Southern France. Luckily it was the Rikshospital who paid the phone bill. The phone rang and rang, the doctor tapping his fingers on the mahogany desk.

At long last somebody on the other end answered. Ryland winced however, when realizing that man did not sound like Johansen at all.

"Hello?" a voice said with a strong Italian accent.

"Hello, my name is Robert Ryland from the Rikshospital in Oslo, Norway," Ryland said. - "Is the retired doctor Johansen available?" He hoped the old doctor had not given him a wrong number by mistake.

A small pause sounded.

"I am sorry, doctor Johansen and his wife have tragically passed away," the voice said with somewhat exaggerated compassion, still having an emotional flatness over it.

"They have? Who are you? How did they die?"

"I am a police officer. They died in a car accident a couple of kilometers east of the border between France and Italy, on the Italian side. Doctor Johansen is dead."

"Oh my God... That is awful! Is there anything I can do?"

"His relatives will be informed, if we can find them. It appears as Johansen didn't have any close relatives. No children, no siblings."

"That is true." Ryland thought with sadness of how Johansen, a lone child, had dedicated his life to science and refrained from having children. - "Thank you for the news, officer."

"No problem. Ciao."

Ryland leaned back on his chair with a depressed look on his face. His gaze did however fall on a phone number written under Director's real name. He picked up the phone and decided to call that number. The phone rang and rang, the doctor tapping his fingers impatiently on the mahogany desk. At long last somebody picked up.

"Hello?" a mysteriously familar voice said with a strong Italian accent.

"You again?" Ryland blurted out.

"Pardon?" the voice said, this time sounding a bit different.

"I'm sorry. My name is doctor Johansen from the Rikshospital. Are you Director?"

A long pause sounded.

"I am sorry, doctor Ryland. I am a police officer. Director has committed suicide in a euthanasia clinic in Zürich, Switzerland."

"Oh my God!" Ryland exclaimed. The poor young man must have thought he had that incurable disease and decided to kill himself before the insomnia made him a conscious, demented zombie! The young doctor's voice shivered and his face shone of distress. - "That's... That's awful! That's horrible! When did it happen?"

"Two days ago, doctor."

"Dear Lord..." The young doctor sighed anxiously. - "Thank you for telling me."

"No problem. Ciao."

Ryland leaned over his desk with his face buried in his hands. Poor young man! He could not believe how a respectable doctor like Johansen could make such a blatant mistake, a mistake that even caused a healthy young man to leave this world thinking it was the right thing to do. Filled with immense sadness he decided to call the Clinic in Zürich, as it was in fact the only 'suicide clinic' known in Europe. When he was assistant doctor to a doctor in Malmö, Sweden, that doctor had referred patients to that clinic on several occasions. Those patients did however have comparably "mild" diseases like ALS, terminal cancer or late-stage emphysema.

He looked up the number in the medical database and dialed the number to the lead doctor of the clinic, a certain Giovanni Schuzzi. The phone rang and rang, the doctor tapping his fingers impatiently on the mahogany desk.

"Hello?" a voice in a rather unnatural register answered with a strong Italian accent. It sounded disturbingly similar to the two other men he had spoken with.

"Hello, is this doctor Schuzzi? My name is doctor Ryland from the Rikshospital in Oslo, Norway."

A long pause sounded.

"Doctor Schuzzi is currently... unavailable," the voice said.

"Why? Where is he?" Ryland asked adamantly.

An even longer pause sounded.

"Doctor Schuzzi is currently in the custody of the Swiss police following the legality of his countless acts of euthanasia. His clinic is for the moment shut down, awaiting a trial in the Swiss High Court."

"W-what?! B-but euthanasia is legal in Switzerland!"

"There have been incidents where it hasn't been sure if euthanasia really was the last way out." A long pause sounded. - "A few days ago a perfectly healthy young man came and wanted to kill himself, believing he had an incurable disease that would cause unimaginable agony. Schuzzi followed his wish without even making sure the man really was physically ill and not just enduring a severe depression. Giving assisted suicide to mentally ill patients with no other health issues is strictly illegal and is regarded as first-degree murder."

"Oh no... I... I'm sorry to hear that. Thanks for letting me know."

"No problem. Ciao."

Doctor Ryland was devastated. What on Earth had doctor Johansen done? Not only had he gravely misdiagnosed a patient, and not only had he caused that patient to commit suicide - he had even indirectly caused the arrest of a prominent head in the world of medicine, and taken away terminally ill patients' right to die with dignity. The young doctor buried his face in his hands, letting out a sob. He pressed the intercom button.

"Nurse," he said with a voice from the grave. - "Cancel all my appointments. I'm taking the rest of the day off."

An uncanny thought came to him. If the Clinic was shut down, who on Earth was he speaking with on the phone?

As the prime suspect of the Concrete Girl Murder, Director walked through the streets of Zürich, enjoying a cone of pistache ice-cream. He had slowly come to the conclusion what was the root of his sleep problems. For far too long and way too often he had enjoyed alcohol to the point of abusing it. Now that his mind was clear from a night of normal sleep, he realized that he had been had. Some enemy of his had taken a nasty revenge on him, and for extraordinarily good reasons. It did not take him long to realize who it was: A certain group of girls in Romania, of which one of them had been constantly referred to as a vampire by The One. His pathetically blunt description now seemed poignant: Like a vampire Veronica had been dangerously close in sucking the very life force out of him. If he had not happened to meet a sleep expert at the Clinic, he would for sure have been dead by now. He would have died in utter horror, sincerly believing that he had one of the world's rarest diseases.

Now he knew better, thanks to doctor Schuzzi. That clever Swiss-Italian sleep expert knew the moment he saw him that nothing was wrong. Nobody could fool Schuzzi. He was a useful ally in Director's pitch-black shadow world of latex and steel. As he walked along the snow-clad streets he wondered what other tricks Veronica had up her tight latex sleeves. What would be next? Kuru? Mad cow disease? The Plague? He burst out in laughter of the mere preposterousness of the situation, startling an elderly lady with a little child. He politely excused himself and crossed the street.

Suddenly he froze, his mouth opening up like a barn door in the wind. He dropped his ice cream cone on the ground, and he nearly lost bowel control as well.

There, standing by a telephone booth with an uncanny leer, was the man who saved him from Antropov.

"Y-you!" Director exclaimed, approaching the smiling man in shock. - "What are YOU doing here?"

"I'm asking you the same question, Direttore," the man said with a strong Italian accent. 'Direttore' was the Italian equivalent of 'Director'.

"Don't trick me with semantics," Director said, looking around anxiously. - "Why are you here? Are Veronica and her latex lackeys here? Have they found me? Have they sent another hitwoman for me?"

"Relax, Direttore," the man said with an amiable chuckle. - "You have nothing to fear. As far as the girls know, you've gone to Zürich to off yourself at the Clinic. They think you're dead. In fact, this moment Lion in Bremen will receive a note, informing of your Death."

"What?" Director's eyes became bulgy to the point of protruding. - "B-but he's my friend! One of the few I have left!"

The man got a scary look on his face, approaching Director with menacing gestures and a disturbing grin.

"Dead people don't have friends, Direttore..."

A dark shadow crossed Director's face. He was not stupid. The man clearly wanted to give the world the impression that Director, the nocturnally ejaculating business tycoon, had shuffled his mortal coil. The only way to make the girls believe it, was making the entire world believe it. He gulped when the awful truth slowly emerged.

"Wh--What about my money?" he asked, not really wanting to know the answer. - "If I no longer exist, what will happen to my money?" The man looked at him with a dead glare.

"I think it's time I introduce myself," he said. - "I'm an agent from a world-wide, top secret organization. In fact it's so secret that it doesn't even have a name. We've been monitoring you for years. Your wealth is known throughout the world. Even the richest people on the planet fear you." He led Director into a deserted alley. - "We know about your tax fraud and elaborate pyramid schemes as well." Director whimpered. - "You do realize that pyramid schemes don't last forever? In fact, yours is coming to an end. People aren't idiots. They know that something isn't right. Your wealth is in fact only phantom wealth. It's like in the cartoons, where a character stands in thin air by a cliff and doesn't fall down until he realizes that he is standing in thin air. Your phantom empire is falling apart, Direttore. You're losing your money as we speak. Your many accounts are closing one by one at the moment. They want back everything you've stolen. They're on to you."

"Oh, dear God..." Director felt light-headed, attacked by a bout of tinnitus. Dark spots were dancing before his eyes, and he had trouble breathing. He could here his financial empire crumble to dust, like being eaten by distant Langolians, the Eaters of Everything That Has Been. - "Is there nothing I can do? No more schemes? No more fraud?"

"There is nothing you can do. The IRS in three countries are after you. Plus, a lead investigator in Austria has correctly deduced that you're responsible for the Concrete Girl Murder.  You've made fools out of them and they don't know how you did it. They never will. But they want  your head on a stake. You've butt-raped them and they're angry. Very angry."

Director had to support himself to the wall.

"What can I do?" he cried, grabbing the agent's arms desperately. - "What can I do?!"

"You need to pretend you're dead," the agent said mercilessly. - "That's in fact why I'm here. Sadly, doctor Schuzzi know you're not dead. Thus, he needs to be eliminated." He gazed at his wrist watch. - "They're already there. You don't need to go back to the sleep laboratory tonight." Director stared in shock at him when realizing what they were doing to a kind man like Schuzzi. The agent then nodded at the bulge on Director's back pocket, where his thick, well-filled eel skin wallet was sitting.  - "Spend your money wisely. By tomorrow morning you'll have no other money than the money in your wallet."

Director was struck with dread. He had not only lost all of his wealth - he had literally lost himself. He was no longer Director the nocturnally ejaculating business tycoon. Now he was only a creepy sexual deviant one phone call from ending up on "NBC Dateline", shaking hands with Chris Hansen after having fallen victim to an elaborate sting operation.

"You need to come with me," the agent said. - "It's time to meet the new you."

***

The One opened a surprisingly blood-shot-less eye. He felt like a new human being. Despite the fact that his arse was still sore and rotten and passed out sour and rancid farts twice a minute, he felt better than he had in five days. He gazed at the red, glaring numbers on the clock radio. He let out a dumb-founded 'huh?'. It was one o'clock in the afternoon. He had slept for twelve hours! He did not even remember going to bed, as he must have been exhausted beyond exhaustion. He stretched like a cat, letting out a deep, satisfied groan and a mandatory sour and rancid fart. He got up, got dressed and held to his growling stomach. He was so hungry that he could start chewing off chunks of his own person.

He left Daniela's small, classy room and entered the hallway, letting out a sour and rancid fart for every step he made. When in the living room, he stopped and let out another dumb-founded 'huh?':

On the living room floor there were four cases of beer. Behind those cases Solitaire, Marty, Ayn and Zoe were standing, looking at him with offensive glares. Ayn did in addition hold the list The One had written and hung up on the fridge door. The giant scratched the back of his head, not understanding anything.

"What's this all about?" he asked, before letting out yet another sour and rancid fart. - "Is this some kind of reversed intervention?"

Solitaire walked over to him and took his hands, looking at him with serious eyes.

"Ony," she said with a sincere tone in her voice. - "Five days ago you declared that you were gonna stay sober for a week. Now it's your sixth day of sobriety, and, suffised to say, I don't think we can endure another day of your being sober."

"Huh?" the giant asked confused. - "You want me to START drinking again?"

"Yes, we do," Solitaire said. The rest of the gang nodded eagerly. - "During the last five days you've drunk all our coffee, eaten all our eggs and bacon, brought horrible fetor into the flat, and even crapped on Marty!" Marty gasped, not remembering that shitty incident. - "You've used Zoe's jacket to wipe your arse! You've poisoned Ayn's wine with your shit-smeared bottom! I don't even wanna say what you did to me..." Her eyes fiered. - "And then this list where you wrote every deranged little thing we did yesterday! That was the last drop. We can't take it anymore!" She took a bottle out of one of the cases, opened it with her bare hands (!!) and handed the bottle to him. - "You're an ass when you're drunk, but that's nowhere near the vile, insufferable mega-ass you are when you're sober. The drunk you is the lesser of two evils. Drink, for God's sake!"

The One looked curiously at the beer bottle. Was he dreaming? Solitaire's vehemence made him accept the bottle. Holding it in his hand, he felt euphoria tingle down his spine. If this was a dream, he did not want to wake up. He shrugged, led the bottle to his mouth and took a big man sip from it. To his great surprise Solitaire, Marty, Ayn and Zoe started clapping their hands, joy and relief shining on their faces.

"The fifth Beatle is back!" Zoe vociferously exclaimed, raising her clenched fist in the air.

The One had already drained his beer bottle. Solitaire immediately handed him another.

"Here," she said determined, her Chinese eyes shining beautifully in the sunlight. - "All the four cases are for you."

The One got a look of genuine joy and gratitude on his face, before hugging Solitaire with an amicable roar. She looked at him with a serious look.

"You still have to sleep in Daniela's room," she said. - "I won't forget what you did to me. I won't forgive you yet. I'm not sure if I ever can." She looked at him with sad eyes.

"That I can understand," The One said, before opening the beer bottle with his remorse (!!). - "But, as far as I can tell, you've already got a new bed mate." He nodded at Zoe, who blushed visibly. Then he chuckled amiably and drank from the bottle in big man sips.

"Oh you!" Solitaire exclaimed and scowled at Zoe. She walked over to her and pointed a finger at her. - "Why do you sleep in my bed all the time?! Huh?! What's wrong with your bed?" She groaned. - "Why are you doing this to me?! Well, answer me, woman!"

The One, Zoe, Ayn and Marty winced when noticing that Solitaire suddenly had an uncanny Dirty Harry-like frown on her face. She herself became aware of it the moment she uttered the W-word. She became horrified.

"Oh my God..." she muttered. She held to her head. - "I feel... I feel nauseous... I don't feel like me..."

Zoe grabbed her arm, stopping her from fainting. To everybody's surprise, Solitaire vomited all over herself.

"Jeezes, Solly!" Ayn cried, who was standing closest to her besides Zoe. - "One PM and you're already blowing chunks!"

"I... I haven't drunk anything yet!" Solitaire said. - "Maybe it's the hangover... Maybe it's that... But it doesn't feel like it. I never throw up when I'm hung-over. That's the one thing I never do. Weird."

"Maybe we should take a walk," Zoe said. - "Get some fresh air. I know I need it. Then we can buy more alcohol as well."

"Yes!" Marty said with great zeal. - "That we need! I'm coming with you!"

"Me too!" Ayn said with equal zeal.

Hence, the four left the flat only moments later, leaving behind a giant that was no longer sleep or beer-deprived. The vomit on the floor nobody thought more about. It was not the first time vomit had desecrated the floor in that unholy flat. The giant drained the beer bottle and tossed it mindlessly over his shoulder. Camping in the couch with one of the cases, he turned the television on. He took a bottle, opened it with the remote control (!!) and drank from it in big man sips. Enjoying a documentary about Josef Fritzl and his cellar of horror, he drank beer with great mirth.

***

The mother of all parties was one hour away from starting. At 1330, 60 minutes from Zero Hour, Marty, Ayn, Zoe and Solitaire entered the supermarket. Solitaire took out her well-filled wallet from her black, sexy leather purse. Marty took out a worn-out wallet that had to be at least twenty years old. Ayn took out a neat amount of Euro bills from his pocket, bills held together by a silver clip. Zoe took out her own wallet and let out a shriek of terror.

"Fuck, I'm out of cash!" she wailed with shocked eyes. She then put on her most irresistible puppy eyes and sent Solitaire a deep, soulful stare. - "Solly, dear Solly... Could you lend me some beautiful moneynesses?"

"Oh dear..." Solitaire said, twisting in awkwardness. - "I don't lend money to anyone."

"Pleeeeease!" Zoe wailed, going down on her knees. Ayn and Marty backed away from her with curved foreheads. If anyone asked, the two of them did not know her. Like the opportunistic cowards they were, they withdrew from the two women and headed straight for the beer, wine and booze sections of the supermarket.

"Get up!" Solitaire snarled, looking around agitated. - "You're embarrassing me."

"Pleeeeease, Solly!" Zoe wailed, her lament making every head in the supermarket turn at the two. - "Help meeee! I caaaan't go on without alcohol! I spent the remainder of what I had buying beer for YOUR fuck buddyyyy! Pleeeeease!"

"You don't have any money at all?"

"Not until I get my benefits in four days."

"Okay, then. I'll lend you 50 Euro. That will buy you the piss-cheapest wine there is until you get your benefits."

Zoe got up with relief and immense gratitude shining on her face. Then, to everyone's surprise, she kissed Solitaire on the mouth. The small, Chinese-Norwegian woman whimpered in surprise, trying to haul herself out of Zoe's grip of amour. It was not until Zoe's tongue protruded her throat like a snake that Solitaire was able to shuffle her way out of the unexpected kiss. She looked at Zoe with startled eyes, Zoe blushing all the way to the bone.

"What are you doing, Zoe?!" she cried. Zoe bit her lip, wincing.

"I... I kissed you," Zoe said. Solitaire crossed her arms. - "I thought you were going to like it." A tear formed in the corner of her eye.

"Oh Zoe..." Solitaire said. - "Zoe, Zoe, Zoe... You like me THAT way? I didn't think you a mound-pounder."

Right then Marty and Ayn came back with vast amounts of alcohol. The two looked with raised foreheads at the two women, and at how they had lipstick smeared all over their faces.

"Good Lord, are you still standing here?" Marty asked with big, bulgy eyes. He glanced at the two. - "Zoe, you look like you're in heat, and so do you, Solly. Is there something going on that we should know about?"

Zoe and Solitaire got awkward. Solitaire, however, decided to be the mistress of the situation.

"Mind your own business, old man," she said with an uncanny, Dirty Harry-like frown and hauled Zoe with her. Ayn and Marty stood back, Marty with a pouting face and a chin raised in indignation.

The mother of all parties was less than one hour away from starting.

Director awoke. He had absolutely no idea where he was. He found wires attached to his temples and found himself in complete darkness and total silence. It felt like he had just awaken from a long and horrible nightmare. Feeling both rested and sane, he fondled about looking for a light switch. At last he found a lever which illuminated the room in a yellow, comfortable light. With narrow morning eyes he inspected his whereabouts. It was not his hotel room in Oldenburg, and neither was it his room in Lion's mansion. Where was he?

"Director," a voice sounded through a speaker. He turned at a nearby window, behind which two people in white coats where sitting, a man and a woman. - "You're awake."

"Where... Where am I?" he answered with a raspy voice, before clearing his throat.

"You're in a sleep laboratory in Zürich," the woman answered. - "We have been monitoring your sleep as requested by doctor Schuzzi."

Still confused from having just waken up, Director detached the wires and bounced out of bed. He put on his clothes and went to the other side of the window. The man and the woman smiled friendly at him.

"My... My sleep?" Director asked. - "What did you find out?"

"You fell asleep as soon as you landed in bed," the woman said, before pointing at some graphs at a computer screen. - "You fell asleep, and you slept for nearly twelve hours. The polysomnogram shows you've had uninterrupted sleep all the time. You demonstrate perfectly normal sleep states, both REM sleep and the deeper sleep states. The deeper sleep states actually comprise nearly the entire session, probably because you've gone without proper sleep for so long. As far as we can tell, you're perfectly healthy."

"Really?" Director asked, all of a sudden finding himself totally indifferent to it all. - "I don't suffer from FFI?"

"You don't," the man said. - "FFI patients, even in the earliest stage of the disease, are unable to reach the deeper sleep states. You, on the other hand, show a perfect ability to sleep normally. There's nothing wrong with you." Director looked at him with very intense eyes.

The woman said:

"Although one night is far from making a conclusion, I think it's reasonable to say that you're a healthy young man. Your sleep problems stem from other things than a rare prion disease." She smiled for herself. - "According to what doctor Schuzzi has told us, it seems to us that you have a very incompetent doctor back in Oslo. His diagnosis of your suffering from FFI really sounds preposterous. Your family name isn't even on the list of families affected with that disease."

Director felt a heavy burden being lifted off his shoulders. On the other hand, still there remained questions unsolved.

"Why would he say to me that I suffered from it, then?" he asked with a hollow and hurt voice. - "I mean... The DNA test... It showed everything."

"They could have interpreted it wrong," the man said and shrugged. The woman did likewise. - "At least there's nothing wrong with your brain or sleep cycles. I suggest you get another doctor. Your doctor clearly doesn't know what he or she is talking about."

Director could not agree more. After a good night's sleep the entire situation sounded quite absurd. He had relied blindly on one man's words. Words that proved to be grossly misleading.

"Yeah..." he said, smacking his dry mouth. - "Another doctor..." He held to his growling stomach. - "Is there a chance of getting food some place?" Once again he smacked his dry mouth. - "And perhaps something to drink as well?"

"There is a cantina in the building," the woman said. - "If you can call what they serve there food..." She and the man chuckled.

Right then doctor Schuzzi himself came in, carrying with him two cups of coffee. He gave Director one of the cups, and he accepted it with a genuine smile on his face.

"So, do you still believe you can't sleep?" doctor Schuzzi said.

"I did sleep tonight, but I've had great trouble sleeping lately," Director said, sipping coffee. He winced. The coffee tasted like hot engine oil with lemon in it.

"To be frank, Director, I think it's all in your head," Schuzzi said. - "You tend to remember the nights you sleep bad, and forget the overwhelming majority of nights where you actually sleep good." He sipped from the coffee, apparently unaffected by the ghastly taste. - "I suggest you spend the day looking around Zürich. It's a beautiful city with many great attractions. Then, in the evening, you come back here and go to bed. I will personally monitor you."

"That sounds like a good idea," he said and clang to his near-full cup of pseudo-coffee. - "I'm in a good mood now. I actually feel like having a glass of fine wine at a restaurant."

Doctor Schuzzi then chuckled, before shaking his head and waving his finger:

"No, no. No alcohol. That can affect your sleep in a negative way."

"No wine?" Director sounded like a child that had been deprived of its Saturday night candy. - "B-but I love wine!"

"Do you drink often?" Schuzzi asked curiously.

"Pretty much every day."

"Aha! I think we've reached the root of your sleeping problems."

And a giant root it was. It was the Yggdrasil tree of roots, the mother of all giants.


***

Speaking of giants... A certain giant back in Bruck an der Leitha opened a blood-shot eye. Since he for obvious reasons had been banned from Solitaire's bedroom after the vile rape, he had spent the night sleeping in Daniela's room. Or, in his case, tossing and turning for hours, before finally experiencing a small proverbial mouthful of sleep. This time, however, he had managed the divine task of staying asleep for a whopping three hours - three times as long as the last two nights. It was an utter miracle.

The red, glaring numbers on the clock radio (an item which seemed to be in every bedroom in the Hightowerverse) showed 0755. Time for yet another dreary, undeviating day of complete sobriety. Sobriety was indeed ridiculously overrated. He could not understand how some people could go their entire life without drinking. To him it sounded as absurd as going through one's life without masturbating. Masturbation was apparently the only option left for him, since Solitaire had closed her shaven, dripping pussy for his cock samurai.

And speaking of pussies... In his very vivid dreams he had, amongst very many other things, dreamt of the Ghost Whisperer lady (he could not remember her name). She had been this immortal goddess who had managed to outlive the Universe itself. She had been forced to move from solar system to solar system, from planet to planet. There she had watched entire species go from single-cell organisms to form advanced societies rivalling those of mankind's. She had taken sexually advantage of them in a way that would have made Solitaire blush. In one scene she had even sat with her thighs spread out over a waterfall for milennia, experiencing one long orgasm. Sadly, nothing lasts forever, and neither does the universe. She awoke one day, only to find herself in an everlasting void of complete darkness, complete silence and horrible cold. One could see the horror in her beautiful eyes.

And speaking of horror... The One was yet again in a sour and rancid mood. Three nights of bad sleep had turned him into an angry, pissed-off monster which wanted nothing but to cause other people severe pain. He bounced out of bed, accompanied by a long, loud fart that made him gag. He hobbled out of the small room and into the hallway. Walking through the twilight flat he held to his belly. Something inside him wanted out, and it was not gas. He let out a moan and flung the toilet door open. His face got a look of utter rage.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" he groaned. Ayn was sitting on the toilet, dead asleep, a half-full bottle of Italian red wine standing next to him. A devilish leer formed on the giant's face. Gently lifting Ayn off the toilet, he placed the black demi-god in the bathtub. He sat down on the toilet and spray-painted it with his water manure.

He then took the wine bottle, put the tip of the bottle into his shit-smeared anus and rolled it. Putting the wine bottle back where he found it, he let out a fiendish chuckle. He grabbed for a toilet paper roll, but his hands just grabbed empty air. His face got a look of utter rage.

"Oh, goddammit!" he groaned. There still was no toilet paper. He had forgotten to buy it when he was in the supermarket. Did he live with little children? Why was it always he who had to buy everything? There lived two grown-up women in the house, and it was a fact that women needed toilet paper also when they were not wringing their intestines inside-out like he did. And, besides, all of them had assholes. All of them WERE assholes.

His tired gaze fell on the toilet brush. It was better than nothing. He used it to wipe his sore, rotten arse, before getting up. Without flushing and without washing his offensively smelly hands, he left the bathroom. It was time to make a gallon of coffee, cook a heart-clogging breakfast and watch some bleak documentary stuff. The usual time-passing stuff one did when one was out of one's mind of sleep deprivation.

***

Four hours later Solitaire opened a blood-shot eye. She found herself lying on the floor by her bed, covered in Zoe's brown jacket. When remembering what The One did to it, she flung it away with a groan of disgust. She gazed at the red, glaring numbers on the clock radio. It was noon. Getting up, she noticed Zoe lying asleep next to her. Again. What was it with the fat lady's own bed? Was it on fire? Were there monsters hiding underneath it? Had Marty taken a piss in it? The world was full of mysteries.

She put on a red shirt and a pair of black spandex pants and lit herself a cigarette. Casting a grim glare at the sleeping American in her bed, she shuddered. With smoke coming out of her mouth and nose, she exited the bedroom.

When entering the small hallway she was nearly knocked out cold. Needless to say, there was something in the air. Something sour and rancid. Holding her breath, she marched into the living room with a pissed look on her beautiful face. There, in the couch, she saw the source of the poisonous fart cloud. The giant was lying there dead asleep, snoring loudly with his drooling mouth agape. On the television there was a documentary about teenage suicides.

"Oh, Onyyy..." Solitaire sang, a sadistic smile forming on her face. She grabbed a knife and snuck over to the sleeping giant. He slept so deeply that not even a fire would wake him up. Or a castration. She led the knife down his face, her face contorted in a perverted smile of amusement. - "Hmmm... Which body part to cut off... Oh, the ordeals of choices!" She giggled like a Japanese schoolgirl.

The One let out a sour and rancid fart that blew straight in Solitaire's face. She closed her eyes in disgust, before unzipping his pants.

"Maybe that thin, sensible string under your glans," she sang with a playful voice. - "A small cut and it will be totally useless. Then you can't rape me again... Fuck, you can't even hand-rape yourself then..."

She led the blade of the knife slowly over the cock.

"Solly?" Marty's voice suddenly sounded. Solitaire got a startled look on her face, before hiding the knife on her person. She zipped The One's pants and turned at Marty. He was standing by the doorway of her bedroom. - "What are you doing?"

"Oh... Uh... I was about to give The One a mouth-gasm," she said.

"While he's asleep?" Marty asked bewildered.

"Yeah... While he's... asleep," she said confused, getting up. - "What are... What are you doing here? Were you in my bedroom tonight?"

"Indeed I was," Marty said and hobbled over to her. He watched with mild disconcert at the disturbing documentary. - "Or, more precisely, I was in your closet."

"In my closet? Again? What the Hell were you doing there?"

"You condemned me to spend an undisclosed amount of time in there. Again."

"Oh... I did?" She looked both confused and bewildered. - "What is it with me and closets?" She scratched her head. Then, all of a sudden the knife fell out from under her shirt and landed on the table. Marty stared at it with big eyes. - "Oh dear... This is not what it looks like!"

"Solly, I do NOT want to know!" Marty said, raising his hands, shaking his head. - "What ever you're up to, I do NOT want to get involved!" He got up from the couch. - "I'm heading back into the closet."

"Hell, no, you're not!" Solitaire cried, waving her knife about. - "Do NOT enter the closet!" Marty backed away with fear shining in his eyes. - "I don't want you anywhere near my closet?! Do you hear me?!" She let out a roar. - "Answer me, Marty!! Answer me, or I'll cut your fucking head off!!"

"Help!" Marty wailed in horror, running into his own bedroom. He slammed the door shut and locked it.

"Fucking coward!!" Solitaire roared, waving with the knife in the living room. Then she turned to the sleeping giant, all of a sudden calm and smiling again. - "So... Where was I..." She bent down and unzipped his pants.

At that moment he awoke with a confused grunt. He looked at his gigantic cock, at Solitaire's face which was conveniently near it, and at the knife she was holding in her hands (the knife being unconveniently near his cock).

"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked with a raspy voice. He looked around. - "What the fuck am I doing?" He let out a chuckle of disbelief, before pushing Solitaire away, getting up. - "I must have fallen asleep, despite drinking a can of strong coffee." He chuckled. - "Well, I'll be damned..." He stretched and let out a sour and rancid fart.

Solitaire got up in anger, her mouth quivering. She also had that nasty twitch in her left eye. The One just sent her an empty glare, unable to interpret her facial expression.

"Why are you just standing there, woman?" he said with an uncanny Dirty Harry-like sneer. - "Do something useful, like buying toilet paper." A devilish, psychopathic leer formed on his face. - "Or you can lick my arse..."

She let out a bawl of rage, before charging at him with the knife. The giant reacted quickly, grabbed her arm and simply squeezed the knife out of it. (He had already been attacked one time too much in his life, and did certainly not take kindly to this.) She let out a whimper of pain and went down on her knees. He sent her a cold glare, before sending her into the floor wailing.

"Don't ever do that again, woman," he said with a raspy voice. He put on his shoes and his worn-out leather jacket, before leaving the flat. - "I'm off to buy toilet paper. Nobody else wants to buy that bloody household item."

Just as the giant left the flat, a horrified and disgusted bawl came from the toilet. Ayn was up, and he had taken a sip from the bottle of wine The One had had his way with.

On the television a news broadcast had just started. When suddenly hearing inspector Albert Fehler's voice, Solitaire raised her head curiously. She remembered that the contractors from yesterday (or was it the day before?) found Irene's body. Now the inspector was being interviewed, while his semi-dwarf assistant Alberto was in the background trying in vain to get on camera.

"Inspector, can you tell us more about this body you've found?" the journalist asked.

"Since her family hasn't been informed yet, we can't reveal her identity at the moment," Fehler said with a stern, dead serious look on his face. His weary thousand-yard stare suggested a sleepless night filled with frantic, stressful work. - "But we can say so far that it is a woman in her late 20's that has been missing for quite some time. She's been well preserved, though, so determining her identity was easy."

"Is it true that the famous young billionaire known as Director is affiliated with the murder?" the journalist asked. Solitaire let out a gasp. Fehler's face got a hard, uncanny look not unlike that frown of Dirty Harry's.

"It is a fact that he was the former owner of the house outside which the body was found," Fehler said, choosing his words carefully.

"Where is the body now, inspector?"

"It's been transported to the morgue, awaiting an autopsy. There our forensic investigators will also look for DNA and other traces that could lead us to the identity of the killer."

"Is it true that Director disappeared from Austria in connection with the still ongoing human trafficking case?" Fehler just looked at the journalist with an undecipherable look on his face. - "Is it true what the rumors say? That Director is somehow involved in that human trafficking case?"

"No further comments," Fehler said and walked away from the camera.

"Wait, inspector Fehler!" the journalist cried. - "Are you confirming or denying that Director is the main suspect in both the murder and the human trafficking case?"

Fehler did not answer, but virtually shoved himself through the crowd of journalists and bypassers, disappering into his police car. Alberto barely managed to throw himself into the car before it drove away with screeching tires and revving engine. Back stood the journalist. He turned at the camera:

"Inspector Albert Fehler, the lead investigator of both the Concrete Girl Murder and the still ongoing human trafficking case, is neither confirming nor denying Director's role in it. Back to the studio."

The murder case of Irene had no got its unofficial media name: The Concrete Girl Murder. Solitaire shook her head in disbelief.

"Director, Director..." she muttered, holding to her aching head. - "You've sure got entangled in some nasty roots..."

And it was for sure not just any root; it was the Yggdrasil tree of roots, the mother of all herbal giants.

***

[I hereby interrupt this story by bringing a list written in all modesty by The One himself. This is an accurate account of how much Solitaire, Marty, Ayn and Zoe had to drink one typical evening, ranging from three o'clock in the afternoon until midnight. The list also describes noteworthy drunken antics by the four individuals, plus other miscellanea.


A Description of a Typical Drinking Session in a Leitherstrasse Flat
Observed and written by Einar Uno Einstad a.k.a The One

Start of drinking session: 1500 CET, but most of them had started earlier.
Number of participants: 4.
End of drinking session: midnight (de facto).
Chosen album on CD player: "Queen II" (1974) by Queen.
Foodstuff: 3 bags of chilinuts, 2 bags of cashew nuts, 4 big bags of crisp. All the food was consumed by Zoe in less than one hour.
Non-alcoholic beverages: vanilla coke. I [The One] was however the only one consuming it.

SOLITAIRE:
- 7 bottles of red wine
- 3 bottles of white wine
- 4 cans of beer
- 1 bottle of pear cider
Noteworthy antics: three instances of unprovoked violence against Marty, one bout of crying. Passed out while listening to the final track of "Queen II", an album which played on repeat during the entire drinking session. Time of losing consciousness was 2318 approximately.

MARTY:
- 46 cans of lowest common denominator beer
- 13 cans of fairly decent beer
- 1 bottle of pear cider
Noteworthy antics: hiding in and refusing to come out of Solitaire's closet, following an attack by Zoe. Ayn and Solitaire had to drag him out of there. Time of losing consciousness was unknown, but he withdrew to his room at 2233, citing "profound tiredness".

AYN:
- 28 bottles of premium Austrian beer
- 2 bottles of Solitaire's white wine (after Solitaire fell asleep)
- 1 bottle of pear cider
- 1 bottle of Smirnoff vodka nobody remember having bought
Noteworthy antics: None. Passed out while sitting in the bath tub, mistaking it for the toilet. Going to be one smelly morning! Time of losing consciousness was 2348.

ZOE:
- 2 cans of lowest common denominator beer (the two Marty did not manage to goffle from his own two cases)
- 1 bottle of Baileys Hazelnut Flavor Irish Cream (drunk straight from the bottle)
- 6 bottles of white wine
- 1 bottle of Campari (despite her scolding Ayn for buying the bottle, and despite her having a lengthy and grossly offensive harangue about Italians and Italy less than one hour before consumption of beverage)
- 1 bottle of pear cider
Noteworthy antics: Her already mentioned hate speech about Italy. Vomited in the kitchen sink 2028, blamed it on Marty. Started a fight with Marty 2114, blaming him for shitting on her jacket. Ayn and Solitaire had to haul her away from him. Time of losing consciousness was 2337, oddly in Solitaire's bed.

The interruption is now over. And so is the chapter.]

The reception area of the Clinic was, despite the activities going on there, a pleasant room. The colors were fresh and lively, with lots of red and yellow. The pictures on the wall, however, told the real story: They did not sugar-coat it. All the pictures showed highly symbolical means of topping oneself; one image simply showed a rope hanging from the ceiling, tied in a noose. One image showed a gun lying on a dark oaken table. Another one showed a tall building in the middle of a suburban area, and somebody standing on the edge looking down. The pictures were not very uplifting.

The young exhausted man approached the counter, where a woman in her late 30's was sitting. She had red hair cut in a short bob, and a black suit. She cast a cool, gray look at Director.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked.

"I want to kill myself," Director said with a sombre voice, his entire persona shining of despair.

"Why do you want to kill yourself?" the woman asked, her emotionless face shining from the artificial electric illumination.

"I suffer from fatal familial insomnia," Director said.

"What is that?" the woman asked.

"It's a rare hereditary prion disease."

"What is a prion disease?"

"A disease that attacks the brain and destroys it."

The woman got silent, before she picked up the phone. She spoke in Italian, a language which Director, despite being of Italian heritage, did not understand. Her cool, gray eyes then met his and held it in an iron grip:

"I'm sending you to speak with doctor Schuzzi. Maybe he knows about your disease."

"Fine," Director said with a nod. In his feverish, delusional mind the woman appeared to split into two women.

At that precise moment a little, lean doctor came out of an office. He walked over to Director and shook hands with him:

"My name is Giovanni Schuzzi." His voice was deep, authoritative and comfortable. - "Why don't you come into my office and have a talk with me."

Director followed doctor Schuzzi into a well-lit, tidy office. Three of the four walls were covered with shelves crammed with books. The doctor sat down behind his dark oaken desk and offered Director a seat. The doctor leaned back, looking Director into the eyes. His brown eyes were curious and alert.

"So, Director," he said. - "Why do you want to kill yourself?"

"I suffer from the incurable disease called fatal familial insomnia," Director said. The doctor got filled with deep worry, and got this uncanny look of pity and horror on his face.

"You do?" he asked. Director nodded. The doctor got a pensive look on his face. He had definitely heard about the disease. - "I've been a doctor for more than twenty years, but this is the first time I actually meet someone with that disease." He looked at Director with sad, brown eyes. - "Are you sure you suffer from the disease? Has it been running in your family for generations?"

"My mother recently died from it."

"Are you sure?"

That question took Director by surprise. He had not witnessed his mother's illness and Death first-hand. That thought got stuck in his brain and lingered there. The doctor bent over the desk:

"FFI is an extremely rare genetic disease. There have only been about one hundred documented cases world-wide. Are you absolutely sure that your mother died from it?"

"I... I... I can't say I am," Director said, all of a sudden feeling confused. He gazed into the room, way beyond the stare of the baffled doctor. - "B-but doctor Johansen took a genetic test on me and confirmed I carried the gene!"

"Who's that?" doctor Schuzzi asked.

"A doctor by the Rikshospital in Oslo."

"Is he a sleep expert?"

"I... I don't think so. He's an expert in degenerative diseases."

"But he's not a sleep expert." The doctor leaned back on the chair. - "And a prion disease can only be confirmed through autopsy. Symptoms alone aren't enough to confirm it."

"My mother was autopsied! They found out FFI killed her!"

"Have you seen the autopsy report?"

"I... I haven't."

The doctor leaned over the desk again. This time he did not have that uncanny look of pity and horror over his face:

"Director, I'm not really sure what that doctor has told you. I'm not even sure what's really going on. However, I would like to admit you for observation for a few days. I happen to know a sleep expert by the University of Zürich. He's had experience with FFI patients and the nature of that horrible disease." A smile formed on his face. - "A horrible disease indeed, which I don't think you have."

"W-what?" Director asked, his mouth feeling dry like sand. - "B-but I can't sleep!"

The doctor then laughed amiably:

"I do believe you can. You just did."

"What?" Director looked at him as if he had just fallen out of a tree.

"During our brief conversation you've had at least three incidents of micro-sleep." Director stared at him in wild disbelief. - "You don't notice it yourself, but I do. Micro-sleep happens when you've gone for some time with little or no sleep. Your brain automatically shuts down for a brief period of time, from a couple of seconds to several minutes." The doctor got up and walked over to Director. - "Micro-sleep doesn't occur in FFI patients since the sleep center of their brains has been destroyed. But micro-sleep does occur in everyone else."

"I-impossible!" Director wailed. - "This is trickery! You're mocking me!"

"I assure you that I don't," the doctor said amiably. He put a hand on Director's back. - "Listen, Director. You haven't slept properly for quite some time, that I can tell. I'm going to give you a mild sedative that will help you sleep. I'll arrange for accommodation for you here at the clinic. In fact, I'll have my assistants supervise you while you sleep."

Director then burst into tears. The calm voice of the doctor sounded like honey in his ears after all the mental torture he had endured. Did he not have a fatal disease after all? It all sounded way too good to be true. Like a blind he was led out of the office and into an elevator. He was so tired that Schuzzi did not need to give him any sedative after all. He was led into a dark, cool room, got all kinds of wires attached to his head and was put to bed. The young exhausted man was asleep before his head hit the pillow. He disappeared into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

The One suddenly woke up with a loud 'huh?' going through his head. He had by God's many miracles fallen asleep at last! Sadly, that happened less than one hour ago, after tossing and turning restlessly for yet another night. In contrast to last night, he did not dream horrid nightmares about Donald Duck being tortured; in fact his dreams were pleasant. He had dreamt about distant mountain tops, a clear, blue sky and the warming sun. He had walked along a beach in his home village and observed how a group of men landed ashore in a Viking ship. He had even dreamt of a little girl and a pony. His dreams were pleasant, although that did not make up for the shittiness he felt, having just slept one solitary hour.

He gazed at the red, glaring clock radio at the night table. It was five minutes shy of seven in the morning. About time he got up. Sitting on the bedside he looked at his sleeping "masturbation aid". She was so sexy. Even her snoring was sexy. Judging by the serene look on her face, she was dreaming pleasant dreams as well - if she was dreaming at all. He could sit there and admire her all day.

Letting out a sour and rancid fart, the giant left the bedroom and headed for the kitchen. Out of mere habit he was about to open the fridge and have himself a morning beer. The sad and dreary fact hit him like a sack of flour: He could not drink. That sad, depressing and upsetting truth hit his balloon of happiness like a dart arrow.

"Damn..." he muttered, scratching his head. What was he to do? Letting out a deep, heart-felt groan, he decided to make himself some coffee. He opened drawer after drawer, searching for coffee. There was none. - "Goddammit!" He smashed his big man hand in the counter, before kicking the wall. Angry and pissed off, he decided to make himself an offensively unhealthy breakfast instead.

He opened the fridge door. Letting out a sour and rancid fart, he took out a carton of eggs, a pack of butter, some bacon and a can of tomato beans. Soon butter was sizzling in the frying pan. He tried to at least pretend he was in a good mood, despite his feelings of dread and impending doom. How on Earth was he going to survive seven days of total beerlessness? Letting out yet another sour and rancid fart, he plodded into the living room and turned the CD player on. By coincidence the "Queen II" album was in the player. Soon the well-cherished tunes of the group's best album streamed into the room and created a near-divine ambiance. The One let out a yawn while putting bacon into the pan. He scorched the bacon beyond recognition, not out of distraction, but out of habit. Bacon was best served crisp; in The One's world that meant close to coal. 

Letting out a sour and rancid fart, he took out a small kettle from the cupboard. With great struggle he opened the can of beans with a can opener, pouring the contents into the kettle. Casting a grim glare at the coffee machine, he let out yet another sour and rancid fart - his pants whirled like a sail from the breaking of wind. He let out a burp that gave him a ghastly taste in his mouth. With a face contorted in disgust he cracked five eggs into the frying pan. Listening to Freddie Mercury's beautiful, melodic voice he took a carton of milk out of the fridge and drank from it with great eagerness; in fact he drank the entire carton in one continuous sip. He held to his tummy, let out a moan and a sour and rancid fart.

With the song "Some Day One Day" playing in the background (a song known for being sung by Brian May), the grumpy giant cut four slices of white bread and put it in a toaster. He let out seven sour and rancid farts while waiting for the bread to toast, the beans to cook and the eggs to fry. To the tones of the Roger Taylor song "The Loser in the End", the giant devoured the food with voracious appetite - and emitted a retinue of sour and rancid farts. He was nearly lifted off the chair at one occasion; had the chair not been solid wood, his sour and rancid anal expulsions would have burnt a hole clean through it.

The giant let out a moan. He had eaten way too much. His belly was very full and he had trouble breathing. Beams of sweat dripped down his Neanderthal-like face. He lifted his buttocks to give way for yet another sour and rancid fart. This time even he reacted with disgust to the ghastly smell. It smelled like old beer and rotting food. The smell reminded him of an episode of the TV show Mythbusters, the time Jamie and Adam let two pig carcasses lie and rot in a car for several months. They attempted to test the myth if a dead body could make a car unsellable. For the record, they got the car sold as a spare part car, not as a driving car. Who on Earth would drive a car with such a foul smell?

The giant let out yet another moan. Something inside him wanted out, and it was not gas. Bending over from the pain, he hobbled through the flat and into the bathroom. He flung his hairy man arse down on the toilet. Half a second later a gushing torrent of liquefied feces hit the basin of the toilet with deafening impact. The water from the toilet flew up behind him and hit the ceiling. His act of defecation was as noisy as a blender, and as smelly as a pig carcass in a car. Three roses in a nearby vase simply dwindled away from the awful stench.

Four minutes of odious bottom puking later The One wiped the sweat off his primitive face, before trying in vain to wipe his ass. He gave up after spending the remainder of the half-full roll. Without washing his fetorous hands, he decided to go for a walk. Maybe he would even visit a coffee shop, for the first time since dawn of man.

Putting on his black, worn-out leather jacket, he left the flat, slamming the door shut behind him. One last sour and rancid fart came out of him before he left the building.

***

Solitaire opened a blood-shot eye. The first thing she noticed was that Zoe was lying in bed next to her. Letting out a confused 'huh?' she bounced out of bed on unsteady feet. With curious Chinese eyes she stared at the sleeping American in her bed; what on Earth had happened last night? Where was The One? Why was Zoe in her bed? Out of stress she lit herself a cigarette and put on her sexy, tight-fitted leather pants. The red, glaring numbers on the clock radio showed 12:25. Rather anxious she exited the bedroom, closing the door silently behind her.

The moment she entered the small hallway she was met by this dense wall, this near-impenetrable olfactory contraption, this cage of fetor. Her eyes started watering, her nostrils vibrated, and she held to her neck. Gasping for air, she hobbled through the flat, flinging a window open. Groaning in disgust she leaned so far out of the window that she nearly fell out of it. Her Chinese eyes were all runny, and a few strands of hair even fell out of her nose.

"Oh my fucking God!" she groaned into the cold winter day. It was the most ghastly stench she had ever smelled. Feeling all dizzy, she was close to losing consciousness. She experienced double vision and a bout of tinnitus, getting all shaky and light-headed. - "Oh dear..." Trying desperately to inhale the fresh air from outside, she fell into the Chesterfield couch with her heart pounding and black spots dancing before her eyes.

The bout of malaise passed away as the living room was vented out. Soon she got back up on her feet, nervous and with cold sweat dripping from her pale face. As she was standing there, she heard somebody walk up the stairs - and the sounds were definitely those of a certain, hard-farting oaf. With a pissed look on her beautiful face she stood in the middle of the living room, waiting for the door to open.

In came The One, carrying with him a plastic bag with food, milk and coffee.

"Well, well, if it ain't good, old Stinky!" Solitaire snarled, crossing her arms. The One sent her an empty stare, not understanding anything. - "What the fuck have you been eating lately?!" Her yelling voice sang in the room. - "The stench was horrible! I nearly choked on it!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," the oaf said, before letting out a sour and rancid fart that lasted nearly five seconds. He got a semi-orgasmic expression on his face. - "Anyways, I bought coffee, since there was an inexplicable lack of it here."

Solitaire sniffed the air with disgust.

"That's fucking ripe!" she exclaimed. - "How can such a stench come from a living human being?! You're rotten to the core!"

"A man's gotta fart," The One said and shrugged, before bending down to take off his shoes. When doing that, a sour and rancid fart exploded out of his pants, nearly tearing them into shreds. Solitaire flinched from the pistol-like snap, and slowly backed away from the proverbial green cloud of gas streaming out of his arse.

"That's not farting, that's murder!" she yelled. - "If you fart one more time, I'm gonna put a cork up there!"

Right then The One's face got that uncanny Dirty Harry-like sneer. He approached Solitaire, his shadow falling over her.

"What did you say, woman?" he asked with a creepy voice. Solitaire got slightly nervous, her heart pounding visibly under the thin fabric of her shirt.

"Stop that vile farting," she said with a tense voice. The One chuckled, before pushing her into the Chesterfield couch. She let out a scream. - "Are you fucking out of your mind?!"

"Shut up, woman," he sneered, before throwing himself over her. He grabbed her small arms and tossed her on her back, separating her quivering thighs.

"What are you doing?!" she screamed.

"It's fucking obvious what I'm doing!" he sneered and ripped open her leather pants. Hauling out his gigantic sex pistol, he penetrated her with massive force. She wailed in pain.

"Stop!" she screamed. - "Stop it!" The One just laughed, before hitting her in the face. She was stunned into silence and got a look of horror on her face. Soon he rode her with brutality of another world - and letting out a sour and rancid fart for nearly every pelvic movement he did. The scene was tragic and very, very smelly.

A series of farts later he completed the rape by hauling out his cock and cover her face and upper body in semen, before jumping out of the couch. Back lay Solitaire with an apathetic expression and a dead stare. She winced when seeing that she was bleeding from her sheath, and wailed in pain when trying to lift her right hand - the wrist had been broken.

The giant, however, just whistled merrily, zipped his pants and carried the groceries into the kitchen. He nodded in satisfaction when putting the bags of coffee into the drawers. At least there was coffee in the house again. Just as he was standing there, he was attacked by this horrible pain in his stomach. He held around his belly and let out a moan. Something inside him wanted to get out, and it was not gas. Not even looking at Solitaire, he hobbled through the flat and into the bathroom. He stopped up and let out a dumb-founded 'huh?'. Marty was sitting on the toilet, dead asleep.

"Damn..." The One muttered, scratching the back of his head. His urge to shit was however so great that he had no choice. He revealed his hairy man arse and put it between Marty's legs, hoping at least some of the shit would hit the toilet.

One tenth of a second later a gushing torrent of manure with the color and consistency of roof tar spewed out of his ass. He wailed in pain, feeling his entire rectum being cleft in twain. The boiling hot shit tormented his anus, and spray-painted the poor old, sleeping Manx behind him. The scene was even ghastlier and more graphic than the rape that happened not two minutes ago.

At last the defecation slash exorcism was over. The One then noticed to his chagrin that there was not any toilet paper left.

"Damn..." he muttered, scratching the back of his head. What was he to do? He turned at the sleeping Manx, who was now completely covered in shit. He then looked at his own asshole, which was dripping of diarrhea. A sadistic leer then formed on his face. - "Hey, Solly?" He had a singing tone in his voice, making him sound like a perfect psychopath. - "Oh, Sollyyyy..."

He walked into the living room, shit dripping from the lower half of his body. Solitaire was crying, hiding her face in her arms. The image before her did not make her any merrier.

"What do you want now, asshole?" she asked with a frail voice.

"I want you to lick my ass clean," The One said. Solitaire gave him the finger. He chuckled amiably. - "Aww, come on, Solly! We're out of toilet paper and Marty's already functioned as a toilet!" Solitaire sent him a look of cold hate. - "Aww, don't say that you're still angry for the unexpected shag! I'm just a man following my natural instincts! Besides, according to yourself, you've been raped more times than you have hair on your head! This should be all ordinary to you!"

"Ony, you raped me!" she cried with a very hurt look on her face. - "You assaulted me! I think you even broke my hand! And now you want me to lick your hairy, rotten arse?!" She picked up an empty wine glass and threw it in The One's direction. It hit the wall behind him. - "You're fucking out of your mind!! You're crazy!! You're a bigger ass when you're sober than when you're drunk!!"

"Yeah, whatever," The One said indifferently, shrugging it all off. - "But my arse is still smeared in manure..." He got a pensive look on his face. Then his eyes rested on Zoe's brown jacket, which hung by the kitchen door. He snapped his fingers. - "That's the solution!"

"Oh, God, please don't do it..." Solitaire moaned, but in vain. The giant had already grabbed the jacket and taken anally advantage of it. The worst part was not that he used Zoe's jacket to wipe his butt. The worst part was that the shit was not visible on the jacket. He tossed the jacket mindlessly over his shoulder, before sitting down in the couch next to Solitaire. She backed away from him and bounced out of the couch.

The giant turned the television on and started watching a documentary about pedophiles in prison. While he was sitting there laughing and having fun, Solitaire limped into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. Her face had a dark shadow over it.

The One had suffered through one long agony of a night. He had been tossing and turning, sweating his sheets wet clean through. At midnight he went to bed, not feeling tired at all, but out of mere habit. Solitaire was dead asleep out of drunkenness: In fact he had observed her with a gaping mouth when realizing how much she drank that night. She had to have drunk at least nine bottles of strong red wine and an entire bottle of whisky. When she told him that her alcohol consumption paled in comparison to his, The One shook his head in disbelief. He did not believe her.

Like previously mentioned, it had been one long and terrible night. When he at last did fall asleep at five AM, he awoke in utter horror only an hour later after having dreamt the most ghastly nightmare he could ever remember. It had all started out quite pleasantly as a biking trip in an area north of the city of Bergen. It had been a pleasant day with a clear blue sky and whirling trees in summer leaves. The One had participated on the trip with a wizard-like figure reminiscent of Gandalf and, oddly, Donald Duck. They had come to a lake where they for some reason were going to participate in a competition the three of them.

It was at that moment that the dream took a nasty and horrid course.

Donald swam out in the lake towards a balloon, for some reason with the objective of eliminating the target which was holding the balloon. The target, however, proved to be his other self, his Alter Duck Ego. As he attacked himself, the two hovered from the ground, being pulled mercilessly by the huge balloon. The first Donald was entangled in the lake, while the second was entangled in the balloon. The balloon, however, hauled with such intensity that the two ducks' bodies were horribly deformed, contorted and stretched out. They were trapped in unimaginable pain for an undisclosed amount of time.

All of a sudden The One found himself in the cockpit of a commercial airliner, sitting together with the two pilots. There, all of a sudden, as they broke through the layer of skies, they saw those two mystical creatures in the distance - impossibly huge and impossibly deformed creatures. They stretched over several kilometers, being pulled and stretched brutally by the balloon as a means of horrid torture. Their limbs stretched beyond the laws of physics, their beaks deformed into sharp, scary, scissor-like objects stretching several hundred meters. They were on the verge of life and death from sheer pain, hunger, thirst and exhaustion.

"Help meeee...!" one of them groaned with a deep, over-earthly voice, sounding like a centuries-old Tithonus being mutilated by Father Time.

"Waaaater...!" the second one whispered, trying desperately to eat the being hanging over it.

The One woke up in dread, terror and extreme distress. His hearts were pounding, his sheets were soaking wet - and he had this uncanny, disgusting taste in his mouth. Not even the time he ate Solitaire's girl poo straight from her asshole left him with such a dreadful aftertaste. One hour of sleep did him no good - in fact it nearly gave him a heart(s) attack.

Completely unable to sleep or even rest, he decided to get up. At six in the morning his friends would not be awake for another six or seven hours. Those lucky bastards fell asleep like babies as soon as their heads hit anything resembling a pillow. The fact that he too fell asleep like that when drunk, did not even occur to him. He was now on the horrid wagon of abstinence, preparing for the ghastliest horror show of his life. The only thing a heavy drinker slash alcoholic like him feared, was getting sober - and for very good reasons; the insomnia and the nightmares were two of the mildest side effects. 

Letting out a groan he held to his suddenly aching stomach. He felt downright rotten. Although his hangover had passed, he still felt very miserable. A hangover was actually pleasant in comparison. The beer and sleep-deprived giant hobbled through the twilight flat, flung open the toilet door and flung his big man body down on the toilet. Less than half a second later shit with the color and consistency of scouse poured out of him, the boiling hot shit making his anus burn. He groaned in pain, cold sweat forming on his face. If giving birth was in the neighborhood of this, he could understand why women were so whiny about it.

After this anal-intestinal exorcism he decided he needed coffee. Lots of it. After a feeble attempt at wiping his hairy, manly arse (he gave up after having spent half a toilet roll), he left the toilet without washing his stinking hands. Entering the kitchen, he turned on the light. His red, sore eyes rested at Marty and Ayn, both of them lying snoring by the kitchen table. Every inch of the table was covered in empty bottles. The One shook his head over his alcoholic loser friends. Opening the fridge door, his eyes rested at the eerie beer vacancy. His drunken flat mates had rudely devoured all of his beer. His face hardened into a Dirty Harry-like frown. When this ordeal was over, Marty, Ayn, Zoe and Solitaire better had to buy him two cases of beer. Each.

He took out a carton of eggs, a pack of bacon and some butter. Soon butter was sizzling in the frying pan, while coffee with the consistency of tar was brewing. Letting out a jaw-cracking yawn, The One lifted Marty up, carried him through the flat and into Soltaire's bedroom. Marty had more use of the bed than he had. Carefully he put the old man into the bed and covered him with the sweat-wet sheets. With a mixture of philanthropy and sadism on his face he left the bedroom. Questions were doomed to be asked, and as the sole sober member of the household, The One would be the oracle. Only his fantasy limited what preposterous tall tale he could concoct.

Soon indecent amounts of scrambled eggs and bacon were voraciously consumed with great groaning. While he stuffed his face with food, he sipped coffee frantically, feeling that the strong drink at least served as a crutch to his night of next to no sleep. He poured the coffee into a can and took it with him into the living room. He turned the television on and started watching a documentary about the ordeals of World War I soldiers in the trenches of Europe. Not once did he laugh (!!!).

***

Pale, sick and miserable, and with dark rings under his red, sore eyes, Director hobbled through the dark, bleak corridor of the Rikshospital. With a hand that did not appear like his own, he knocked the door of doctor Johansen's office. Entering the office, he saw the doctor sitting there with a look of dread on his bearded face.

"Have a seat, Director," the doctor said. His voice echoed in Director's exhausted mind. He had not slept a wink that night. With weary feet he half-fell down on the chair, feeling his mouth running completely dry. His eyes were totally devoid of tears, it felt like they had been rubbed in sand.

"What's the verdict, doctor?" he asked with a deep, sore voice from the grave. The doctor handed him a piece of paper.

"The DNA test shows you carry the gene," the doctor said. Director was not shocked, only filled with great sadness, melancholy and self-pity. The doctor walked over to him and put his arm around him. - "You are already showing symptoms of stage one of the four stages of the disease. You have increasing insomnia, which in time will lead to panic attacks and paranoia. Sooner or later you'll start to hallucinate, along with increased panic attacks. Eventually you'll completely lose the ability to sleep, before you become severely demented and mute. You will then die."

"No..." Director wailed, bursting into tears. - "I can't bear it! It's horrible! I'll do anything to stop this!" He looked at the doctor with desperate eyes. - "I'll do anything! Anything!"

"The best you can do is to admit yourself to a mental institution where you'll be monitored and taken care of," the doctor said. Director bounced up from his chair with a falsetto cry.

"I don't wanna rot away in an institution!" he cried, holding to his pounding heart. He had a sudden shortness in breath, sweat dripping from his face. - "I... I... I think I'm gonna have a heart attack!"

"Panic attack is more likely," the doctor said, barely able to keep a straight face. - "Do you feel paranoid?"

"Lord help my poor soul..." Director wailed, collapsing on the floor. He was hyper-ventilating, black spots dancing before his eyes. - "I can't take it... I wanna die..."

The doctor then turned at the hidden camera in the book shelf and winked. He took a pen and wrote down something on a piece of paper. He walked over to Director and helped him on his feet.

"Breathe, Director," he said calming. - "Breathe... Listen, I'm not officially allowed to inform you of this, but there is a clinic in Zürich that offers assisted suicide to patients with incurable diseases." Zürich was a city in Switzerland, a country known for its neutrality and for housing the infamous CERN reactor. Director looked at him, a glimmer of hope appearing in his pitch black eyes. - "I've sent quite a few patients there over the course of the last decade. People with Alzheimer's. People with ALS, the disease that put Stephen Hawking in a wheelchair. People with terminal cancer."

"Y-y-you mean euthanasia?" Director asked, tears running down his face.

"Yes. You don't have to suffer the last months or years of your life in unbearable mental torment. In your case, I highly recommend euthanasia." He gave Director the piece of paper. - "The clinic is in the outskirts of Zürich. Due to obvious legal reasons I can't write you a referral, but I'll make a phone call first thing in the morning." Of course the phone call would never be taken.

"Thank you, d-d-d-doctor," Director said and got up, protecting the note as he would protect his own person (a person which, for the moment, had so coldly betrayed him).

"Goodbye, Director," the doctor said, looking as if he was suppressing a bout of crying (while in real life it was a bout of laughter). - "I hope the Lord will judge you fairly."

Director left the office, reduced to a quivering wreck in which Death was the only thought. As soon as the door to the office closed, the doctor burst into a loud, squealing laughter. Olga, Justine and Veronica came into the office, Veronica carrying a bottle of champagne. The cork shot out of the bottle, sending cascades of the noble, sparkling liquid into glasses. Even though it was only ten in the morning, the four merrily enjoyed that rich man's wine. The doctor amiably finished his glass of champagne, before taking a large bag from under his desk.

"Southern France, here I come!" he declared in euphoria.

All of a sudden somebody knocked on the door. The four got quiet and rather nervous. The doctor ushered the three girls into the neighbor room, before approaching the door. He opened it. There, in the doorway, stood a young man in his late 20's with a lean body and stern look on his face.

"Good morning," the man said with a smile. - "Pleased to meet you, doctor Johansen." The two shook hands, the elder doctor with a slightly perplexed look on his face. - "My name is Robert Ryland. I'm the doctor who's going to take over your practice, now that you as of today are retired."

"Ah, that's right!" doctor Johansen exclaimed. - "Do come in! Do come in!"

Ryland's nostrils vibrated, before his ice-blue, curious eyes fell on the bottle of champagne. Johansen chuckled:

"A little bit of celebration with good colleagues of mine. Do sit down and let me guide you through my latest patients."

Ryland sat down and let the wise, old man browse him through the journals of the patients who were going to be transferred to him.

***

Solitaire opened a blood-shot eye. The first thing she did was carefully removing the lollipop from her left nipple, uttering a moan of pain as her nipple was stretched painfully from the sticky substance. She tumbled out of bed, her blond hair a mess, her mouth bone dry, her head aching. Holding to her tummy, she let out a fart that for any other woman would have been suicidally embarrassing. Thankfully for her, she had spent most of her life doing suicidally embarrassing things.

As she exited the now foul-smelling bedroom she heard noises from the living room. She gazed at the clock radio back at the bedroom. It was noon. She lit herself a cigarette and entered the living room. There The One sat all jittery and anxious, his hands even shaking. He let out a startled cry when seeing Solitaire, the first living being he had seen since the dawn of time - and the dawn of the day. Solitaire let out an equal cry, bouncing away from him.

"Jeezes, Ony, you scared me half to death!" she cried with fiery Chinese eyes. She looked at the cup of coffee The One held in his trembling hand. He had spilled most of the content over the table and his lap.

"And how scared do you think I am?!" The One cried, cold sweat dripping from his pale forehead. He took a frantic sip from the coffee. - "You're the first living being I've seen for a century! I thought you were a demon! An utter monster! Director with a pussy!" He burst out in hysterical, howling laughter, laughter that came from a face oddly deprived of amusement.

"How much coffee have YOU drunk today?" Solitaire asked skeptically, looking at the shaking wreck in the couch.

"I don't fucking know!" The One said with a whiny voice. - "I lost count after the tenth cup." He held to his chest, letting out a sour burp, a nasty concoction of bile and coffee.

"TEN cups?! Fucking Hell, Ony! Are you trying to give yourself a heart attack?!"

"I've barely slept tonight, Solly!! I need it!!"

He tried to take another sip from his cup, but he was shivering so badly that he was unable to lead the cup to his mouth. Instead he dropped it out of his trembling hands, making it fall on the carpet.

"You don't look like you need more coffee," Solitaire said. - "And one sleepless night's not gonna kill you. When I quit heroin five years ago, I couldn't sleep for a week! Stop whining and pull yourself together!" She cast a look at her whining cock musketeer. - "Judging by your look, I'd say you're in withdrawal, and you have a caffeine overdose. Go for a walk, and when you come home, I'm gonna make you a decent dinner."

She helped him out of the couch and gave him a kiss on his sweat upper lip. With an odd gait he took his jacket, put on his shoes and left the flat. Back stood Solitaire, shaking her head.

"Whiny little sissy..." she muttered, before deciding to have herself a cup of coffee. She lifted the big can. It was empty. She entered the kitchen and opened the coffee grain tin can. It was empty. Scratching the back of her head, she browsed through the cupboard in search for more coffee. - "Goddammit... Where the Hell's all the coffee?" She opened the trash bin and cast her perplexed eyes at four big, empty coffee bags. - "Jeezes, how much coffee did that bloody idiot drink?!"

Letting out a groan she decided to go to a cafe instead. She went back in her and One's bedroom, put on an overly sexy pair of leather tights, a glaring red shirt and a black, slim leather jacket. Taking her purse with her, she left the flat. She lit herself a cigarette and walked in a very sexy and evocative manner through the village streets. Everywhere the men ogled her and the women envied her. She felt high on her own persona, feeling both aroused and satisfied.

She entered a cozy little cellar pub, actually the same in which she and Charlotte had discussed Charlotte's future as a rape survivor. Solitaire grinned in perverted Schadenfreude when thinking of the red-haired train wreck, wondering where that girl was at now. In an elegant manner she walked over to the bar counter and greeted the big-bellied, red-faced bartender.

"A coffee with Baileys, please," Solitaire said with a sexy trill in her voice. - "And a big glass of real, fuckin' good beer!"

"Natürlich," the bartender said with his deep, rich, melodious voice.

Soon Solitaire sat by the bartender with her beverages. She took the big beer glass and drank good and long from it; the very image of a sexy girl drinking beer like a man was the ultimate male fantasy (next to, of course, a sexy girl bringing free beer to a man). She lit herself a cigarette and leaned over the counter, sending the bartender a complacent smile, before letting out an accidental beer burp that made her blush slightly with an apologetic smile. She fondled her necklace, the pendant that had followed her through more than a decade. All of a sudden it snapped, falling off her neck and down on the floor.

"What the..." she muttered. The bartender looked at her.

"I think you dropped your necklace," he said.

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out," she said and hopped off the stool. She bent over to pick up the floor, her sexy, tight ass protruding in the air right before the eyes of the bartender. She picked up the worn-out necklace and looked at it. - "Looks like the chain is broken." She tried to open the clasp. It could not be opened. - "There's something wrong with the clasp as well." She scratched the back of her head. - "Very odd indeed."

"Maybe you can take it to a jeweler," the bartender suggested. Solitaire looked confused at the necklace, barely paying notice to his words.

"Yeah..." she said with a dreamy expression on her face. - "That's a good idea..." She downed her Baileys and coffee in one gulp, before leaving behind a half-full liter glass of premium Austrian beer. The bartender stood back, silently mourning the fact that someone actually had the heart to abandon excellent beer just like that. The world was full of strange people.

Out on the street Solitaire was nearly blinded by the light of the low sun. Not wearing the necklace was very unusual for her, she felt naked without it. It was like she had woken up one day and suddenly found out she had no nose. This comparison reminded her of one of The One's incoherent stories about the time he saw Irene's nose talking to him, presenting itself as a high-ranking officer in the army. Thinking about Irene filled her with great pity, and thinking of what happened to that poor, mentally ill girl made her think of Director.

And speaking of Director... How ghastly was he? Pretty darn ghastly she would say. Was there a more creepy man in the world? Could his actions ever be punished fairly? Did there exist a means of punishment sadistic enough for someone like him?

She had heard all kinds of stories about him. He had never did her anything wrong, but Irene, Christine and Justine, on the other hand... Even before she got to know him, he was a name most women spoke with their faces twisted in fear and hate. The name Director and the noun 'anathema' were pretty much synonyms. He was not only dangerous, he was rich and dangerous, a near-fatal combination. Nobody could touch him, as he could buy himself out of anything. And, according to the stories she had picked up from various sources, he had literally bought himself out of countless charges of non-consensual intercourse, i.e. rape. Despite his perceivably benevolent behavior he was nothing but a psychopathic rapist and murderer. A pathetic creature which led a vampiric existence.

She thought about the mystery that a simple-minded, beer-chugging lumberjack like The One could ever become friends with an economical mastermind socialite. How on Earth could Director possibly benefit from that oddball friendship? The other way around it all made perfect sense: She understood that The One found it quite strategical befriending a guy like Director, taken that The One had acquired a virtually endless supply of money thanks to clever investments in Director's elaborate pyramid schemes.

She then inevitably thought about where Director was now. Neither she nor The One had heard a word from him since he and his British fuck buddy fled Austria more than half a year ago. Where on Earth could they be? And what really happened to Justine and Ursula, the two sex slaves who had been held imprisoned in the Josef Fritzl-like cellar of their former residence?

At that precise moment she happened to walk by that very house. She noticed to her big surprise that a group of contractors and big machines had leveled the house to the ground. In fact, some guys with jackhammers were drilling the very concrete spot were Irene was buried. Stunned with surprise, she walked over to one of the contractors, the leader.

"Excuse me?" she asked in offensively rusty German. The middle-aged man turned around. He had a gray mustache that almost covered the lower half of his face. He looked like a walrus. - "What's going on here?"

"It's a part of the village renewal project of Zukunft Bruck 2010-2015," the man answered with a deep, rich, melodious voice (The name meant 'Bruck [an der Leitha] of the Future'). - "We're tearing down abandoned houses in order to build cheap accommodation for students and low-income workers. There's a sister project going on in the Bratislava region on the other side of the Slovak border as well."

"How interesting," Solitaire said while looking at the guys with the jackhammers.

Suddenly one of them met a mysterious cavity in the concrete. He nearly dropped his jackhammer and let out a cry of surprise. The man to whom Solitaire had spoken walked in hurry towards the place, leaving Solitaire behind the movable metal grid fences. She observed with growing distress how the contractors flocked around the hole in the concrete, and how the walrus man promptly picked up his cell phone.

They had discovered Irene.

Since Solitaire was an acquaintance of the Bruck an der Leitha police, she decided to make herself scarce to avoid unpleasant questions being asked. For all she know they could accuse her of being an accomplice to Director since she knew about the body but never told anyone. The moment she heard sirens in the distance she literally fled the area, heading for a conveniently narrow side street. Having totally forgotten about visiting a jewelry store, she decided to go to a store and buy enough wine and booze to get herself good and drunk - and way beyond that.

***

All of a sudden Director found himself on a plane that was about to land. He had no recollection of how he got there, and no idea what had happened since he went on the plane. The captain informed the passengers about the temperature and weather of the city of Zürich; it was cold, gray and snowy, just like back in the horrid city of Oslo. Of course, in Director's pitch black nightmare of a world everything was horrid. As the plane approached the runway he sincerely hoped it would crash and kill him - but only him. The plane did however perform a perfect landing and soon taxed towards the terminal. He gazed at the passenger next to him, a man in his 50's. He looked back at Director and smiled.

"Did you have pleasant dreams?" the man all of a sudden asked with a rich, melodious voice and thick, Swiss-German accent.

"W-what?" Director asked, his eyes suddenly narrow with rage. Was that perfect stranger mocking him?

"Well, you fell asleep like a baby as soon as you sat down," the man said with a puzzled look on his face, surprised over the young, gorgeous Mediterranean man's reaction. - "Even the turbulence across the North Sea didn't wake you up!"

"What the fuck is this?!" Director snarled, looking at the man with a hurt and horrified look on his face, raising his clenched fist as if to hit the man. - "Do you make fun of me?!"

"Easy there, friend!" the man said with big eyes, hovering his hands. - "What's the matter with you?"

At that moment one of the flight attendants, a male, came to the seats.

"Is there a problem?" he asked in English with a Norwegian accent.

"No problem," Director said with a deep sigh, getting out of the seat. - "Except that I suffer from fatal insomnia that will render me insane before it kills me." On the verge of crying he passed the baffled flight attendant and passenger, following the stream of passengers out of the plane.

"Doesn't look like he has trouble sleeping to me..." the Swiss passenger muttered and shook his head. The flight attendant did not quite know what to say.

The terminal was cast in an eerie and menacing twilight. People's faces were distorted in demonic features. The voices had an eerie echo. Director felt like he was trapped in somebody else's body, like he was placed in a proverbial tin can and forced to watch himself wither away in a downward spiral towards inevitable doom. Feeling his brain slowly turning into a sponge he went to the taxi line outside the airport.

Speaking of sponges, he had spent the entire night at his Oslo hotel room reading about the dreaded prion disease he had inherited from his incestuous pervert mother. In short words the prion proteins turned his entire brain into Swiss cheese, especially the thalamus region. The resulting neuron death was what was causing the untreatable horror movie symptoms. Stephen King himself could not have come up with a more horrifying plot. Every article he had read (the few articles that existed of that extremely rare disease) suggested the same: He was screwed and there was nothing he could do.

Except suicide. Killing himself was the only way out of that nightmare. Right up until two days ago he had regarded suicide the coward's way out, and a certain ticket to one of the deepest levels of Hell. Suicide was also a certain ticket to his family spending the rest of their lives in despair, screaming 'why' again and again in their minds.

For a man of his depraved and deranged nature those arguments no longer applied. He had no family anymore, what with his mother's demise. His father died even before he was born. He knew nothing of his maternal grandparents, except that they were Italian. The country where the disease originated. For the first time in his life he hated being of Italian descent.

He thought about an article he had read about the legendary Patient Zero of late 18th century Venice, and how baffled doctors had observed how the patient suffered through an entire year, paralyzed with exhaustion, before uttering one single, horrifying shriek that resulted in his Death. He had read about the following generations of Patient Zero, and how members of that family was stricken - seemingly at random - by the disease, before being transported to the island of San Servolo - the psychiatric hospital in the Venetian Lagoon. A random genetic mutation had over the course of the generations turned into an evil curse that plagued a small handful of families worldwide.

He had read about two sisters in the US, of which one had taken a genetic test which proved that she luckily did not carry the mutated gene. The other sister, however, refused to take a genetic test, horribly afraid that she might carry the gene. According to the article she did not want to know her possible future, finding the entire issue mortifying. He had read about how another American had managed to fight off the symptoms of the disease through a wide array of remedies ranging from herbs, drugs and even a sensory deprivation tank. Although his remedies helped him almost to the day he died, the disease itself, the total insomnia and eventually Death was ultimately inevitable. Director cried and shook with terror when reading the very few stories that existed about fatal familial insomnia. The devil himself could not have come up with a worse disease.

When he thought back on his childhood, he remembered that his mother always became vague when he started talking about his Italian grandparents. Beate had just got this sad, ominous expression on her face, before she had changed the subject. Sadly, the change of subject always led to a subject Director found very unpleasant back then at his ripe age: Sex.

When he thought even harder, his mother had on one occasion demanded that he refrained from having children. Now he understood why.

"Hey, mein Herr!" a voice suddenly sounded. - "This is the address!" A hand rocked his frail body, making him let out a gasp.

Director suddenly found himself in the back seat of a taxi, not even remembering getting in there in the first place. He looked with confused eyes at the taxi driver, a fat man in his early 60's. The man had a rather impatient look on his face, standing in the snow tripping his short, chubby feet about.

"The... address?" Director asked confused, feeling his entire body ache, cold sweat dripping from his pale, anxious face. - "Where are we?"

"We're at the... Clinic," the taxi driver said with an odd look on his face, an odd mixture of fear and respect. Director got out of the taxi, nearly tumbling over in the snow from the unsteadiness of his feet. He took out his wallet and gave the taxi driver money enough to buy him half a taxi. - "M-mein Herr! This is way too much!"

"Take it," Director said. - "I don't need money where I'm going..." He left the taxi and walked up the small hill to the entrance of the anonymous building.

The taxi driver stood back, baffled. The young man sure looked tired. And sure slept deeply. It had taken the taxi driver five minutes to wake him up.

The corridor was dark and bleak as Director entered it. Even though it was only three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun had already set, bathing the city of Oslo in wintertime darkness. The extreme cold-wave that had stricken Europe the last weeks had rendered any outdoor venture a quest similar to the South Pole battle of Scott and Amundsen. The month that passed had been the coldest November in Norway in 121 years. To everybody's perverted delight - especially the more or less corrupt politicians - a number of homeless people, drug addicts and elderly citizens had perished in the cold.

The young man met a nurse in the hallway, the nurse casting him a servile, exhausted, sleep-deprived glare. Director sent her an ominously similar one, asking for the whereabouts of a doctor Johansen, an expert in neuro-degenerative diseases. When being informed of the whereabouts of his office, Director semi-hobbled over there, his gait having felt not quite right since he got off the plane at Oslo Airport Gardermoen.

He felt the toll of a night of bad sleep rest upon his body, his eyes feeling dry and sore. He had attempted taking a nap at the plane, but for some reason it was impossible for him to fall asleep. The thoughts of how he had been charged a hundred Euro for the missing sheets and the odd stains on the chair stuck with him like a tattoo of shame.

With a hand that felt both cold and achy he knocked at doctor Johansen's door. A familiar voice told him to come in. Director entered an office that was bathed in the same sad, ominous light as in the corridor. The doctor, a man in his early 50's with thick, gray beard and a lean body, got up from behind his black desk and greeted him.

"Director, I'm happy you could make it here," he said with a smile Director found eerily nervous. - "Please sit down. I have some upsetting news."

"Okay...?" Director asked and sat down, not liking the tone in the doctor's voice. The doctor did in fact look like he was worried to tell him what was going on. - "You said something on the phone about my mother. Is she dead?"

"Yes, she is," the doctor said, his face becoming filled both with horror and uncanny empathy. To Director the doctor looked utter freaked out. - "She passed away last week after being severely ill for about six months." The doctor's face became filled with dread. Director did not take that as a good sign.

"Ill? What was the matter with her?"

The doctor's hands started shaking, and his voice got an odd shiver:

"Your mother started showing signs of the disease shortly after being admitted to a mental hospital in the Oslo area. At first we just assumed it was intermittent, but it proved impossible to cure or even treat." The doctor's nostrils vibrated and he nearly choked on his own nervousness. - "Eventually she became severely delusional and then completely unresponsive, before eventually dying. We had experts come all the way from the US and Italy, but the final diagnosis was only confirmed when we performed an autopsy of her brain." The doctor looked like he was going to either pass out, vomit or start crying. He swallowed, clearing his throat. - "I... I've been a doctor for more than thirty years, but this is the first time something like this has been seen in Northern Europe."

"What disease?" Director felt a lump barging his way through his throat, and this odd, uncanny, frightening coldness grip around his body. - "What killed my mother?!" His voice broke in a falsetto shriek.

"When performing the autopsy my colleagues and I found severe degeneration of the brain, especially around the thalamus region, the region that regulates sleep and consciousness," the doctor said, before taking a deep breath to ease his nerves. - "This is the first confirmed case of an inherited prion disease in a Northern European hospital." He leaned over the desk, looking Director right in the eye. The light from the desk lamp made the doctor look like a creepy wizard. - "Your mother died from Fatal Familial Insomnia."

Director felt this odd coldness nearly choke him, before injecting dread into his veins.

"W-what?" he asked. He could barely utter a sound from being stunned by the doctor's words. - "She died from WHAT?!"

The doctor felt mysteriously calmed, now that he had lifted what had to be an enormous burden off his chest. He got up and handed Director a brochure in English from an Italian university.

"Fatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI, is a very rare neuro-degenerative prion disease," the doctor said. - "In fact, it's so rare that it officially didn't exist until the 1980's when Italian doctors described case studies from an Italian family stricken with this horrible disease. It's found in 40 to 50 families worldwide, and has so far been documented in about 100 individuals from those families. It's believed to have been inherited through the generations from one single patient, a Venetian man in the 18th century. The disease is related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and kuru, both prion diseases. FFI causes the patient to completely lose the ability to sleep. Over the course of everything from a few months to three years the patient becomes severely delusional and demented, and will eventually slip into a coma and die. In the case of your mother, however, she succumbed to the disease in only six months. There is no cure. There's nothing we can do."

Director just sat there, shaking with horror and dread.

"Oh dear God..." he yelped. The doctor went over to him and put his hand on Director's lean, aching shoulder.

"The disease is unlike most other prion diseases in that it can only be inherited, not acquired," he said. - "It's also an autosomal disease, which means that only one of the parents has to carry the gene to pass it on." He sighed. - "Director, there's a 50 % chance that you have the FFI gene. I would strongly advice you to have a DNA test."

"W-w-what if I do have the gene?" he asked, his mouth having run completely dry.

"Director, I have to be brutally honest to you," the doctor said. - "If you have the gene, it's only a matter of time before you start showing symptoms of the disease. Patients carrying the gene have a 100 % chance of developing FFI sooner or later." He then went down on his knees, looking up at Director with a face ready to burst into tears. - "Age of onset is usually from 35 and upwards, but earlier onset has also been reported." Then he asked the most shocking question Director had heard in his life. - "Have you had trouble sleeping lately?"

Director wailed in fear. In the distance he could hear Lady Karma laugh and clap her hands in approval. He slowly nodded, making the doctor get up with dread over his face, his eyes watering.

"Poor soul..." the doctor muttered and started scribbling notes on a piece of paper. His shaking hands made his handwriting look all messed-up. - "Do you have vivid and disturbing dreams and trouble walking properly?" Director nodded, his face contorted in horror. The doctor looked like he was going to have a heart attack. - "I'm sending you to a nurse to get a blood sample. The b-b-blood sample will be sent to genetic testing, testing you specifically for genetic mutations that will lead to a prion disease. I will personally call you as soon as the results are back. In the meantime, I suggest you stay in Oslo."

"I... I... I think I'm going to check into a hotel," Director said, getting up on shaky unsteady feet.

"Nurse, come in here right away," the doctor said over the intercom. - "I need you to take a blood sample of a patient immediately!"

Soon a blonde in a nurse's uniform came into the office. Director sat down. He dared not even look at her and the way she was handling the needle. He felt like he was at the gallows, except, in his case, the execution would last from everything to several months to several years. Right then he would gladly embrace any other death than death by insomnia. He would run into the arms of any medieval torturer, any rabid Islamist with a bomb belt, any drunk Viking king, any rabid animal. The horrifying torture his mother had endured over half a year made any other disease sound downright pleasant in comparison. He could imagine no other way to die that was even comparable to that of slowly losing one's mind, trapped in a twilight world of no sleep, delusions and the horrifying notion that only Death could save one. In his case, Death was the only cure - but, then again, Death is the absolute cure for everything.

He felt a sting in his arm and an unpleasant sensation as blood was being drawn from his veins. The nurse then quickly left the room together with the doctor. Back sat Director like a shivering wreck, looking like he was on the verge of life and Death.

A torturous amount of time later the doctor came back. Director bounced up on his feet with the swiftness of somebody being anally impaled.

"The blood sample is now sent for genetic testing," the doctor said. - "I've declared it a case of highest priority. That means the results will be back in 24 hours." He put a hand on Director's back, his face shining of pure pity. - "I want to see you tomorrow at ten o'clock. Then I will inform you of the results."

Director made a quick, spastic nod and virtually fled the office, the door slamming shut behind him.

The doctor leaned back on his chair, a broad smile forming on his bearded face. He started chuckling, before turning at the other door of the room.

"You can come out now, girls," he said, now speaking in English.

Out of the neighbor room Veronica, Justine and Olga came, their faces contorted in perverted amusement and Schadenfreude. From the neighbor room they had seen the entire scene on a TV screen connected to a hidden camera in the doctor's large book shelf. Veronica giggled and clapped her hands. Justine, using a cane to walk, laughed so hard she had trouble breathing. Olga, on the other hand, had a very serene and satisfied look on her face. The doctor got up and was instantly hugged by both Veronica and Olga. Justine, having bad legs, watching the group hug from a relative distance.

"This was priceless!" Veronica exclaimed ecstatically. - "Pure, fucking ingenious! Brilliant! Oh, and the look on that poor bastard's face!" She laughed out loud.

"His face was as pale as milk!" Justine exclaimed. Except for a slight slur in her speech, she had during the course of many hard months finally learned to talk next to properly again. The ordeal she had suffered through in learning to walk and use her arms again, however, made the speech re-training look like a Sunday picnic. - "He seriously looked like he was gonna leap out of his own hide!"

Again Veronica and Olga hugged the doctor. In their horrid world of nightmares and bleak days he had acquired the status of a god of spiritual and moral enlightenment.

"This plan of yours, girls, is the ultimate revenge on such a horrible monster as Director," the doctor said. - "I have to admit I had great trouble keeping a straight face when telling Director he had one of the rarest diseases of the world!"

"Oh, your acting was amazing!" Olga exclaimed. - "You should have been in movies! And such ingenious guessing as well! How did you know he had trouble sleeping and walking?"

The doctor smiled cleverly:

"Remember that I've been a doctor for thirty years. A doctor that will now be wealthy enough to retire..." He smiled even more cleverly. - "I could smell alcohol on his breath the moment he entered the room. Alcohol abuse can cause sleep problems, sleep disturbances and trouble walking. Besides, who doesn't sleep poorly from time to time? I just made a set of qualified guesses based on intuition and, frankly, dumb luck."

"But what about his mother?" Olga asked. - "Did she really die?"

"Of course," the doctor said. - "It was however just an aneurysm that suddenly and without warning snuffed her. She was dead before she hit the ground. A quick and pleasant Death." He chuckled amiably.

"What would you have done if Director demanded to see the body or the autopsy report?" Olga asked.

The Doctor chuckled:

"I foresaw that problem, but that wasn't really the issue. You see, when he admitted his mother, he refrained from being her medical proxy or next of kin. He wanted nothing more to do with her. Since he's not her medical proxy or legal next of kin, he has no right to see anything. Even the funeral isn't up to him any more, but a task delegated to the city of Oslo. He basically signed away his being her son. Go figure. The only reason he came here in the first place, is that I as a doctor am required by law to inform the biological siblings if there's a genetic disease that there's a high likelihood of acquiring."

Olga shrugged. All of her questions had apparently been answered: Director was a cold, cruel rapist who deserved to live the rest of his days in the worst imaginable agony and horror. No further questioning was necessary, not even what they would have done if Director had called the bluff or simply not shown up.

Veronica took out a bag and put it on the desk. The doctor opened it and nodded in satisfaction and mirth. It was filled with money; it had to contain at least NOK twenty million, enough to live the rest of one's life in wealth, enough to not have to work another day.

"This money will come in handy in treating my wife's cancer," the doctor said and shed a tear. - "Now we can finally move away from this dreadful country for good. A house in Southern France... That will be good for both of us, especially my poor wife."

Veronica looked impressively at the doctor.

"That disease you were talking about," she said. - "Does it really exist?"

"Tragically, yes," the doctor said. - "Everything I told Director is true. Except, of course, that he doesn't have the disease." All four of them smiled sadistically. - "Tomorrow when he arrives back to the office, no doubt after a sleepless night, I will present him the forged results of his DNA tests. The test results will be of a patient with confirmed FFI, and will serve as a coup de grâce to your revenge. Then I will tell Director about the possibility of euthanasia and send him to a clinic in Switzerland, a country where euthanasia is legal. He will end his days in the worst agony and distress imaginable. And in the most cowardly way through assisted suicide."

"Cool..." Veronica said and giggled like a school girl. - "But what about the real blood sample?"

"I never declared it a high priority case," the doctor said. - "The REAL results from his blood sample will come back to my office in a week, give or take. As Director will be dead by then, there will be no further use of it."

"I think I'm gonna put his blood in a little flask and use it as a pendant," Veronica said. - "In fact, I think all three of us will have his blood in a pendant. It will remind us of how we finally managed to off that creepy rapist."

Justine and Olga giggled. The doctor then cast a look at the clock on the wall. It was nearly four in the afternoon.

"Well, my shift is over," he said and got up. - "Anyone interested in going out for dinner? I'm buying!"

The three girls nodded, Veronica clapping her hands in child-like mirth.

With a look of utter dread on his young, beautiful face, Director emptied gasoline over the sheets and tossed a lit match at the pile. Soon the night's indecencies about enemies in latex lit up like a Christmas tree. In fact, Director was nearly engulfed in the flames and had to back away before he singed his eye brows. With a look of relief he watched the physical manifestations of his depravity being consumed by the voracious fire. Gazing at his wrist watch he realized it was not even six in the morning yet. This was going to be one long agony of a day that only horrifying amounts of alcohol could alleviate. Sleep had not been friends with him lately. It was like he had fallen victim to a most terrifying curse that slowly ate away his sanity and the ability to sleep.

It was still dark as he headed back to the hotel, the sun had not risen yet. There was not a soul in the area - and thank Heavens for that, because what he would do if anyone actually saw him performing this cathartic burning, he did not know. Approaching the closed, deserted restaurants along the canal he suddenly started crying. He remembered how euphoric he had been the other day, and how wonderful that feeling was. Now he was suicidally depressed and exhausted, balancing on the quivering edge of sheer lunacy and did not know whether he was going to fall into that Satan's pit or not. In addition he had this uncanny, throbbing headache. His eyes felt dry and sandy, his throat sore and dry. He had this disgusting taste in his mouth, a sickening taste that would not leave. It was the taste of slowly losing one's marbles. Total marble loss.

Back in the hotel room he sat down in the chair next to the bed and turned the television on. The red, glaring light at the clock radio showed 0623. Only the beginning of another bleak day of horror and angst.

Slowly his eyes slid shut. He was dead asleep. His mind, however, barely noticed him passing out.

All of a sudden he found himself by the train station of Oldenburg. He had missed the train to Bremen and had in addition had his tickets stolen by some mysterious, unknown entity. He held a glass of cold Jever in his right hand, and a note in his left. Taking a sip of the cold, sweet brew he put the glass down on the serving tablet of a waiter that oddly conveniently passed by. He unfolded the note. It said:

'Welcome to your punishment. You deserve it.'

With rising terror he recognized the hand-writing. It was unmistakably Veronica's. Now having a pleasant train station turned into a horror show, he slowly approached the ticket counter in the far end of the station, right next to a bakery. He winced when seeing the boiled cow heads lying on the shelves instead of bread and pastry. Not daring to take another look at those atrocities he approached the ticket counter, where a woman was sitting with her back to him.

"Einschuldigung?" he said with a slight tremor in his voice. The woman turned around. It was Veronica! Director backed away with a falsetto yelp. - "Y-you!" He pointed at her with a trembling finger. - "What are YOU doing here? You don't speak a word of German!"

"What makes you think you're in Germany?" Veronica asked with a leer. Director looked around the now scary and dark station. Through the big windows in the ceiling he could see the sky. It was pitch black with occasional specks of red, lava lamp-like rivers.

"I-if I'm not in Germany, where am I?" Director asked, not really sure he wanted to know the answer.

Veronica then bent slowly over the counter and said with a deep voice, her eyes dark and fiery and with a nearly sickening glare of triumph:

"You're in Hell."

Director wailed in angst, looking around. He was the only one in there now besides Veronica. Soon, however, clicking sounds could be heard from the underpass. Veronica snickered while printing out a ticket which she handed to Director. He accepted it and read its contents:

'Destination: Hell. Return: No fucking chance. Duration: Forever.'

The cow heads in the bakery then sprung to life, the heads looking at him with blood lust. Slowly they slid down off the shelves, sliding across the polished floor. Director turned at Veronica, who was now sitting there looking at him behind the safety of the counter. As the cow heads approached him, the source of the clicking noises was known. It was Justine and Olga, both of them dressed in black, shiny latex outfits that in all other contexts would have been very sexy and evocative. Now, however, they were scary and menacing. Justine was wearing her golden ball gag and a machine gun, while Olga was holding a pair of huge scissors in her hand.

Just as one of the cow heads jumped up and bit Director's meat and two veg, Justine shot him right through his spine. However, he was not consumed by the shot and bite - the pain was still the most horrible he had ever endured. And it was going to last. Forever.

Director woke up screaming, finding himself sitting in the chair with drool all over his face. His groin, however, was wet. He had peed his pants. He let out a groan of embarrassment. In some way the chair had to vanish. Another trip to the industrial area by the canal was imminent. He looked at the red, glaring numbers on the clock radio. It was 0915.

Just as he was about to carry the chair out of the hotel room, his cell phone rang. It was the first time since he arrived in Oldenburg that it rang. His first thought was Lion, who probably rang to check up on him. However, he knew for a fact that Lion was on a business trip to Baltimore, and that it was the middle of the night over there now. With great curiosity he grabbed the phone and answered it.

"Hello?" he said, his voice sounding hollow and dead.

"This is doctor Jan Johansen at Rikshospitalet in Oslo," a voice said. Rikshospitalet (literally 'the Kingdom Hospital') was the main hospital of the Oslo area and, shockingly, the only hospital in Norway which was qualified to perform advanced surgery like brain surgery or reattachment of severed limbs. - "Is it Director to whom I am speaking?"

"Yes," Director answered.

"I'm afraid I have sad news regarding your mother Beate."

A dark shadow crossed Director's already dark-shadowed face. He had not forgotten that his mother wound up in a mental institution after the abortion of their ghastly fetus several months ago.

"What is it?" Director asked.

"Your mother has passed away," the doctor said.

"H-how did she die?" Director asked as the first wave of shock left his body.

There was a long pause of silence from the other end.

"I think we need to talk about it face to face," the doctor eventually said.

"I will take the first plane to Oslo!" Director said with great determination, finally having an excuse to leave this dreaded place.

With even greater determination he packed his things, turned the television off and embarked upon the highly humiliating task of paying for his stay. And to try and come up with a reasonable explanation for the many missing sheets.

***

To call the party of The One, Solitaire, Marty, Ayn and Zoe a booze-up of biblical proportions was euphemistic to the point of being offensive. Any hard-drinking, hard-partying rock artist would have backed away with their mouths agape. Oliver Reed and Charles Bukowski would have fled the premises, vomit spewing out of every orifice. Keith Richards and Slash would have passed out before six in the evening. If what happened that night was filmed, the film would have received the highest rating or maybe even been banned in most civilized Western countries. Any documentary made based upon that evening would, if used as anti-alcohol propaganda, certainly have made most jurisdictions ban alcohol promptly. Any potential readers of a story based on that party would have been mentally forced to merely skim through the paragraphs, if not skip the entire account completely. It was a party so druggy that it was ridiculous. Most doctors would stare in disbelief at how much alcohol so few people were physically able to hold. It had to be a world record.

The party was so heinous that even The One felt sick (!!!).

He found himself lying under the kitchen table, an empty bottle of Gammel Opland Norwegian aquavit lying next to him. Opening eyes that would from here until infinity serve as the epitome of blood-shot-ness, he smacked his mouth: The disgusting taste of hangover and utter Death. If some rabid, bearded Muslim came screaming towards him with a bomb belt, he would embrace the impending Death with open arms and a euphoric smile. This was the worst hangover he had ever experienced. And, for someone who experienced roughly three hundred hangovers per annum, that meant that it was REALLY bad.

"Holy fuck...!" he groaned, the mere sound of his voice shattering his skull like a loose window hitting the ground. - "Somebody please put me out of my misery... Gooooood..."

"You brought this upon yourself," Solitaire's sombre voice sounded from inside the living room. She was lying flat out in the Chesterfield couch, smoke coming out of her mouth and nose. Next to her Zoe lay in an unconscious, albeit amorous, embrace. - "We all brought this upon yourselves." She let out a groan of agony. - "God, we're such idiots... Little children know better than we do!"

The One let out a sour and rancid fart, before tumbling out from under the kitchen table. He rolled straight into a pond of someone else's old, cold vomit. Out of mere disgust he vomited himself, chunks projecting out of him with the speed of bullets. One of the chunks even hit the ceiling, only to fall straight down on his pale, miserable face.

"Solly, I'm so tired of these mornings..." he groaned, wiping the awful mush off his face. He groaned once again. - "Fuck, I think I got it in my ear!" He let out a frail grunt and crawled on all four into the living room, nearly falling over Marty, who lay passed out on the floor, snoring loudly with his tongue out of his mouth. Solidified saliva had stained his white beard, and he had wet himself.

"Well, if you're so tired of hangovers, why don't you quit drinking?" Solitaire asked. The One looked at her with baffled eyes and a comical expression on his face. He just stood there on his knees, his arms crossed, his face tilted backwards as if he was staring at an alien. Solitaire sighed. - "Forget that I even asked..."

"Who are you and what have you done to Sollypussy?" The One asked. Solitaire got up with a crossed, pissed look on her face. - "Well? Answer me, masturbation aid!"

"What did you just call me?" Solitaire asked with narrow eyes. The One chuckled. - "God, you're such an asshole when you're hung over! You know that?!" She revealed her wine-stained teeth in an inimical sneer. - "Hell, it's your health that I'm worried about! You, and we all, drink way too much! It can't possibly be good for us! I mean... I want to see the age of 30!"

"Looks like Marty did just fine in reaching his ripe age," The One said and nodded at the sleeping Manx. He then nodded in the direction of the bathroom, where Ayn's snoring could clearly be heard. - "And the bloke in our crapper room is even a demi-god who's walked the Earth for millennia! And Zoe... Well, she's my age, but still you catch my drift." Solitaire just glared at him. He groaned. - "Aww, doesn't anyone catch my drift?" He then let a thundering fart that immediately made Solitaire's nostrils vibrate. - "Well, looks like you caught THAT drift!"

He tried to get up on his feet, supporting himself to one of the Chesterfield chairs. The chair, on the other hand, slid on the slippery floor, making the giant fall roaring to the ground. The impact stirred both Marty and Zoe, both of them looking like the Devil himself had stirred them. Marty looked around with wild, panicking eyes, as did Zoe. The One moaned in pain, writhing in agony on the floor.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?!" Zoe squealed hysterically, holding to her pounding heart. She then looked somewhat confused at Solitaire. - "Oh, hi, Solly. Why are you lying next to me in the couch?" Solitaire sent her a crossed glare.

"Zoe, you're on the outside of the couch!" she snarled. - "That makes YOU the one who's lying next to me in the couch! In fact, you were embracing me with gay eagerness when I woke up!"

"Oh..." Zoe bounced out of the couch and sat down in the other Chesterfield chair. She cast a look at the moaning giant on the floor, shaking her head tuttering. - "Hey, are you okay down there? You sound like you're giving birth." She poured herself a glass of wine from the half-empty bottle on the table.

"Shut your mouth, woman!" The One roared. - "Can't you see I'm in pain?!"

"You brought this upon yourself," Solitaire delivered stoically, lighting herself another cigarette.

"Shut up!!" The One roared. - "Gooood, I think I broke a rib bone!"

"Suits you right, you abuser of elderly citizens," Marty said pouting, getting up from the floor. He took a can of lukewarm beer, opened it and drank from it with the eagerness of a man of far younger an age.

"Oh, don't give me the elderly citizen crap," The One sneered, getting up. He had huge problems getting up in a standing position. He grabbed the edge of the Chesterfield chair Zoe was sitting in, nearly tipping it over. Her deafening scream made his face contort in pain. - "Easy with those pipes, fat lady!" He held to his ear. He then turned at Marty. - "Remember that I gave you a lion's share of my beer last night just to be nice!"

"I think a handful of bottles hardly counts as a lion's share," Marty said. The One groaned.

"Fine, just be an ingrate."

"An ingrate?!" Marty sent the rude ogre a glare of doom. - "One, you treated me very badly yesterday! You called me names, you mocked me, you mentally tormented me!" The One chuckled. - "This isn't funny, One! You hurt my feelings! You made me feel old, useless and worthless!"

"I did not!" he snarled, pointing at him. - "You're full of lies! You're making ME look like the bad guy in this household! Like I am the big, bad wolf! I, a harmless bohemian who never hurts a fly!"

Right then Solitaire and Zoe burst out in a goat-like laughter that rang in the walls. The One turned at them enraged. Even Marty started laughing. Eventually he got serious again, his arms crossed, his chin high:

"You might not hurt flies, One. But you hurt everything else."

Those prophetic words made The One turn from rage to shock, and then to sadness. The three others were visibly impressed when they realized that the giant could actually show other feelings than the most primal ones. He got a reflective look on his lowbrow, big-jawed face.

"Do I hurt you?" he asked with a vulnerable look on his face.

There was a long pause of silence. Eventually Solitaire got up, walked over to him and took his hands. She looked at him with sincere eyes.

"Yes, you do," she said seriously. - "I don't think I have the heart to tell you what you did to poor Marty yesterday. I'm not even sure you remember it."

"What... what did I say?" The One asked, his eyes suddenly sad and anxious. - "I mean, I say the most horrid things all the time... But, this has to be really bad, since you even remembered it under the fog of drunkenness."

Solitaire then whispered word by word what The One had said to Marty. The giant got a look of sheer, utter horror on his face. His eyes watered, his lower lip started quivering. He looked with sincere remorse at Marty, whose insulted look now cut The One's heart(s) like a hot knife through butter.

"M-marty," The One said with tears in his eyes. - "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it! I was wasted!"

"The problem is..." Solitaire said. - "...that you're ALWAYS wasted! You've long since become a nuisance to us all."

The One sat down in the other Chesterfield chair. He buried his face in his hands.

"Damn..." he muttered. - "I drink to feel good, not to become a nuisance." He looked up, his thousand-yard stare virtually casting the living room in a gray, ominous twilight. - "I've been a nuisance. I've hurt my dearest friends in unimaginable (and totally unrememberable) ways. I need to pay for my sins." He got up from the chair and hovered a clenched fist in the air. - "I'm gonna stay sober for a week!"

Marty, Solitaire and Zoe stood around him with bulging eyes and gaping mouths. Seconds later a confused grunt sounded from the bathroom. Ayn came stumbling out of there, scratching his afro. He looked with red, hazy eyes at the four.

"I just woke from this totally outlandish dream!" he said with a dumb-founded look on his chocolate-brown face. - "It's probably the weirdest dream I've dreamt to this date, and I am thousands of years old!" He pointed at The One, bursting out in howling laughter. - "I dreamt..." He laughed to the point of shaking. - "I dreamt that The One told the three of you that he was gonna stay sober for a week!" He had to bend over from laughing. - "What a preposterous thing to dream about! It must be the Chartreuse! A good drink, but horrendously strong! It really fucks you up, guys!"

"Ayn," Zoe said discretely. - "It really happened." Ayn stopped laughing, looking at Zoe with tennis ball-sized eyes and a gaping mouth. He even started drooling. - "It's true! He said it not two minutes ago!"

Ayn looked at The One, before approaching him with the curiosity of an archaeologist approaching a live caveman just resurrected from a glacier.

"Who the fuck are you?" Ayn asked. - "What have you done to The One?!"

"I'm real, you nut job," The One sneered. - "I'm real and, accept it or not, for the next seven days I'm gonna be as sober as Gene Simmons!"

To everybody's surprise Ayn let out a short, crazy laugh, before fainting. Marty, Solitaire and Zoe, however, welcomed The One to his punishment. The horrid oaf was now on the wagon.

The One opened a blood-shot eye, finding himself lying in bed next to a sleeping Solitaire. He smacked his dry lips, before casting a look at the sleeping beauty next to him. For the first time in quite some time he was not freaked out when looking at her, as she was no longer a freak of nature nor an impossible being. Now she was the same girl he fell in love with, shagged several times a day and, disturbingly, mocked the time she was on Death's door in August of 2009. He shuddered over that last fact, but then thought nothing more of it. He held to his aching head and gazed at the clock radio next to him on the night table. It was 1330. He had slept for thirteen hours - or, in his case, been unconscious and on the verge of life and Death for thirteen hours. Thank Heavens he had not choked on his own vomit while sleeping!

Where the vomit was, however, he found out when he stepped out of  bed. In fact, he got both his feet planted in the cold, ghastly liquid on the floor.

"Oh, crrrrap, not again!!" the giant roared with great thunder, stirring Solitaire.

"Huuuh?" she muttered half asleep, so confused from waking up that she could not locate her own elbow. She peeked at him with narrow morning eyes. - "What's up, Ony?"

"I just stepped in my own sick," The One said with disgust.

"Oh," Solitaire said and shrugged. She gazed at the clock radio. - "What the... Is it half past one already?! Talk about settling sleep debt! We must have slept for twelve hours!"

"I do believe thirteen is a more accurate guess," a voice suddenly sounded. The One and Solitaire flinched, before looking around with startled eyes. There, out of Solitaire's mahogany closet, tumbled none the merrier than Marty the Manx, holding half a six-pack of beer in his hands. Solitaire bounced on her feet, not even bothering to cover her butt-naked person. The One slipped into his worn-out, stained jeans, not even bothering putting a pair of underwear on.

"Marty, what the fuck?!" Solitaire yelled. - "What are you doing in my closet?! How long have you been there listening to me and Ony's snoring, moans and farts?!"

Marty opened a can of beer and drank from it, before burping and clearing his throat. Solitaire and The One stood there, eagerly anticipating an answer.

"Well?" Solitaire asked briskly, tilting her head.

"It was you who forced me into the closet," Marty said with the stoicism of a fatally insulted elderly man. Solitaire muttered a confused 'huh?'. - "Yes, you had your baboon there toss me into the closet like a bag of old clothes! You threatened me to remain in there until you woke up, as a means of punishing me for what I did before you went to bed!"

"And what could possibly have compelled me into punishing you?" Solitaire said with a giggle of disbelief, rolling her Chinese eyes.

"Oh, I don't even know where to begin," Marty said. - "It was a pretty wild party last night, like the mother of all parties to celebrate the return of the prodigal prostitute into the world of the mortals."

"Really?" The One said in awe. - "There was a wild party last night? I remember shit of it!" He then nodded at the now two-packed pack of beer. - "Toss me a 'repairer' and do tell me what happened!" Marty tossed him a can which The One grabbed with the acuity and swiftness of a ninja on speed. He opened it with the well-cherished 'pssscht' sound of a beer can being opened, before drinking from the can in big man sips. He drained it on the first sip.

"Well, first I vomited on the floor by your bed," Marty said, making The One groan in contempt, the only kind of contempt that could rival that of standing in one's own bodily fluids: Standing in somebody else's bodily fluids. - "Then Solitaire accidentally mistook me for One, and started having her way with me." Solitaire let out a groan of contempt, even covering her naked person with the duvet from the bed. Marty laughed amiably. - "Don't worry, Solly. I'm as impotent as a dead eunuch, so you wouldn't have got anywhere with me!" That did not exactly calm her down.

"I... had my way with you..." Solitaire said, rather pale-faced. - "What happened next?" The One sent her a grim glare, not flattered over the fact that someone would mistake him for a frail, old man.

Marty took a good, long sip from his can, draining it. Again Solitaire and The One stood there with their heads tilted, eagerly anticipating an answer. The old man opened the last can of beer from the sixpack, before continuing:

"You were very, very drunk, Solly. Blottoed out of your mind! Remember that you had been up for 36 hours straight, as you told us yesterday. You were a train wreck! How else could you succumb to the delusion that I was The One? Anyways, The One did not take kindly to your almost choking French kisses and almost painful fondling of my useless naughty bits. Hence, he hauled you away from me by the hair, making you scream and start crying. In fact, you looked like you were about to lose your mind! The One even tried strangling you, but luckily he was so drunk that he instead strangled your arm. You acted with amazing brilliance by punching 'im in the face. Then he just fell into bed and passed out."

From having an air of aristocratic nonchalance like a regular 19th century author, he once again regained the childish, pouting expression for which he was so famous, raising his chin in indignation:

"And then YOU, Solly--" he pointed a finger accusingly at her. - "--then YOU commanded me into the closet, condemning me to spend an undisclosed amount of time in complete darkness!"

Solitaire and The One sent each other long glances, before looking at Marty for a long time. The old man had to be insane! The One siphoned the last drop of beer from the can and tossed it mindlessly over his shoulder.

"There's something off with this tall tale of yours," he said and browsed the room for more un-drained cans of beer. - "If we were dead asleep, why didn't you just sneak out of the closet? We were in no position to be stirred! Hell, we were utter unstirrable! We didn't wake up until one thirty in the afternoon!"

"It was so comfortable in there that I simply fell asleep," Marty said. - "Then, when I woke up four hours ago, I found four sixpacks of stowed-away, forgotten-about beer, and there was my Heaven of beer and complete darkness!"

The One and Solitaire looked at him with big eyes. The One scratched the back of his head. Then he looked at Marty with fiery eyes and a reddening face.

"Goddammit, Marty!" he roared in anger. - "You were confined in a closet with 24 cans of beer, and all you save for me is ONE bloody can?!" Marty winced. - "You egotistical, good-for-nothing tippler!" He clenched his trembling fist at Marty. - "God help me, you're gonna pay for this!" He revealed his teeth in an intimidating and menacing gesture. - "As soon as I've had a decent piss slash shit and a decent breakfast slash lunch, the two of us are gonna go to the supermarket." He pointed a trembling finger at him in a threatening way. - "And you're gonna buy me TWO cases of beer!"

"B-but I only drank 23 cans of your beer!" Marty cried.

"The rest is interest, a fair punishment for your squalid act of beer theft," The One said with a glare of doom. - "You WILL buy me 48 bottles of GOOD beer, and you ain't getting NOTHING of it!" He nodded with his head. - "Be glad that I'm in a fairly good mood from having just slept for 'alf a day, or else I'd throw you back into the dark closet again to sober up!"

Marty let out a whimper in terror, backing away from the beer-deprived giant. The One walked out of the bedroom, pushing the old man away, landing him in a chair by the closet. Moments later the sound of groaning, urination and defecation could clearly be heard - the giant had left the bathroom door wide-open for anyone to see, hear and not to mention SMELL what he was doing.

***

Director opened a far from blood-shot eye, finding himself lying in a hotel bed. He gazed at the clock radio in the far end of the room. It was 0925. He stretched like a cat and let out a long, strident shriek from the awfully good yawn. Getting out of bed he felt very refreshed and in pristine condition, ready for another day. As basically every morning he had a throbbing erection. He looked with nervous glee at his cherished, presumably retired companion, trying to ignore its demonic voice. For a few seconds of sheer horror he sincerely believed that it was talking to him.

'Confused now, Director? You shouldn't be. You know what you want. The pills are only a drug dealer away. The girls are at every corner of the street. I haven't forgotten what you are and what you've done. You're a monster. An utter monster.'

"Silence!" Director thundered, bouncing out of bed, looking enraged at his warm mushroom-shaped probe of corporeal mirth. - "I'm not listening to you! You're not in charge of me! I'm in charge of you!"

'Oh, I beg to differ. Had any wet dreams lately?'

It snickered, making Director wail in desperation. He thought with great humiliation of how he had defiled his own bed sheets not two nights ago, and how difficult it had been smuggling the sheets out of the hotel and put them on fire in the abandoned industrial area by the canal. It was even harder explaining to the maid what happened to his sheets - he actually had to embark on a long-winded tall tale involving supernatural and rather preposterous themes. Definitely not his best story, but the maid, albeit with raised eye brows, bought the story.

"Be quiet!" Director snarled, before deciding to punish himself with an ice-cold shower. He let out a shivering moan as he was tortured by the horrendously cold water. - "Not so talkative now, are we?" He burst out in evil laughter, laughter that was interrupted by near-unbearable bouts of shivering. Nearly biting off his tongue from the convulsions he decided that his worst enemy had been silenced for now.

Feeling almost ridiculously merry he stepped out of the shower, dried himself and put on vast amounts of perfume and aftershave, before getting dressed. Leaving his hotel room he was wearing a dark-red silk shirt, a pair of chalk-white pants and a pair of caramel-brown leather shoes. It was time for breakfast.

Entering the breakfast room in the cellar, he spotted a well-shaped, stunning brunette with chocolate-brown, curly hair. She was dressed in a blue shirt that perfectly augmented her big, bouncy boobs. Her black, shiny spandex pants even more perfectly augmented her thighs and bum. She was one of the workers of the hotel, now standing with her back to him in a small room making scrambled eggs. Director felt his mouth running dry, and cold sweat forming on his forehead.

'That's a good one. Imagine humping her while she's halfway into a drug-induced coma.'

"No!" Director cried in horror, making everyone in the room, including the brunette, turn at him with big eyes.

'Talking to yourself, eh? Not a good sign.'

"You want another shower, you mean, little dick?!" Director snarled, scolding his own crotch before the eyes of twenty perplexed Germans. He became aware of what he was doing and looked at the other guests. He blushed all the way to the bone. - "Excuse me." He then left the room without having eaten an ounce.

Outside the weather was sunny and clear. Still there was a dark shadow across his face. Was this the way Lady Karma was going to punish him? Through a talking penis? Only the mere thought was absurd and he laughed out loud while hasting through the streets. People turned their heads everywhere, because his laughter was really loud and hysterical. Soon, however, his laughter slid into horror and profound sadness. He started wailing, tears running down his face. People turned their heads everywhere, because his crying was really loud and hysterical.

Suddenly he found himself in a place he had never been. He had totally lost his bearings and had no idea were he was. Since he for some reason did not bring his cell phone, he had no idea what time it was either. It was like everything had changed, like he had passed into an alternate universe. Everything looked bleak and gray - and utter dangerous. Even the asphalt had a menacing air. With feelings of dread and impending doom he walked through the nightmarish streets as if in a haze. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

He burst out laughing once again. Loud and strident laughter echoed in the completely empty streets. Why on Earth were they so empty? Where were all the people? Had he missed the Rapture? Had everyone but him been abducted by sinister aliens? Had time frozen and left him the sole unfrozen one? He laughed so hard that he had to lean over, supporting himself to a building were a painting of the American flag filled the entire wall. Just like in his room at the Towers.

Like previously, the laughter slid into violent crying and sobbing. He leaned over on the sidewalk, wailing in terror. What the Hell was the matter with him?

'Look who's come to meet you, Director,' his well-known little friend said with a cold chuckle.

"Huh?" Director said and looked up.

There, on the other side of the street, was Veronica. He gasped in horror. She was standing there with a triumphant smile on her face, dressed in a most bizarre costume: A tight-fitted pair of black latex pants, a black leather choker, a black latex shirt and, oddly, a long cape of leather. On her feet she wore tall leather boots reaching all the way up to her knees, and on her arms she wore latex gloves reaching up to her elbows.

"Oh dear..." Director said, suddenly feeling mysteriously calm. Veronica slowly approached him, the clicks of her shoes echoing in the deserted street. - "Okay, so you've found me, V. Now what?"

"I don't know 'bout you," Veronica said, oddly with the voice of The One. - "But I could kill for a beer right now." Director stared at her with a perplexed, wide-eyed smile. - "A Jever, right? That's the local beer of Oldenburg, isn't it? That's at least the beer you drank yesterday when you cried like a baby at the toilet of that restaurant."

Then The One himself stood in front of him. In that strange latex and leather costume. It did NOT look good on him.

"Ony?" Director asked confused. - "What are YOU doing here? How did you find me?"

The One, now holding a glass of Jever beer in his big man hand, shrugged, before chuckling.

"I'm on holiday," he said and drank from the beer in big man sips. - "Ahhh! That's some damn good beer! No wonder it made you cry, my friend!"

Director scratched the back of his head. This was getting more and more bizarre. It became even weirder when he noticed he had an erection. This throbbing tower of flesh and muscle, this vile and rancid growth of blatant masculinity. He was standing in the middle of the street in broad daylight, completely naked.

"You'd better get some clothes on," The One said, now wearing ordinary clothes. By his side, however, stood Veronica, Justine and Olga, all of them wearing the same kind of latex costumes as Veronica and The One had worn. Despite the fact that she was a free woman, Justine wore her trademark golden ball gag - and a machine gun.

It was in that moment that Director woke up with a gasp, finding himself in his hotel bed. The red, glaring numbers on the clock radio showed 0455. He had defiled the bed sheets. Again.

***

Despite the fact that Marty was well into his sixties, and the fact that he had a frail body and an even frailer pelvis from the nasty cork episode, The One still coerced him into carrying the two cases of premium beer all the way from the supermarket and into the flat. Marty's lament was next to deafening to The One's ears, but he found it more annoying than heart-breaking. Marty put the two cases down in the Chesterfield couch, before sinking together next to it, wailing from the significant pain this ordeal had inflicted upon him. The One sent him a cold, indifferent glare, before taking a bottle of beer from the upper case. He opened it with the old man's back pain (!!) and drank from it in big man sips. He then burped and cleared his throat, before casting a look of irritation at him.

"Oh, shut the fuck up with your whining, you big cry-baby," he said with a sneer, before taking another decent swig from the bottle. Marty looked at him with eyes red of tears. - "Oh, 'waaaah, waaaaah', how my heart bleeds for thee!" He mocked the old man in a most cold and heartless manner. - "Suck it up, sissy girl. That's the way life is. You should be grateful that in your case Death is only a stone's throw away."

"You're a mean, horrid man," Marty said with sad, sombre eyes. His face then got hard. - "When you're as old as I am, you'll have a completely different look on life. I promise you." The One let out a cold, totally un-empathic snicker. Marty crossed his arms, leaning back in the couch, his chin raised in indignation. - "Treating old people like this... It's outrageous!"

"Blah-di-blah, grandpa," The One said, lifting the two cases with offensively youthful easiness, carrying them into the kitchen. He then started putting the beer bottles into the already beer-crammed fridge. He barely got half the first case into it before it was full. - "Awww! I have this highly unlikely luxury problem! I have too much beer!" His mood changed like the weather on the North Sea. - "Hey, Marty, if you want beer, you can have it!" Marty let out an insulted huff from the living room. The One chuckled amiably. - "Aw, come on, my dear friend! I was only joking! I was only kidding when I said... whatever the Hell I said... Anyways, if you want beer, come and get it!"

Marty got up, holding to his aching back. He entered the kitchen, cast The One a crossed look and took a bottle of beer from out of the fridge. He opened it with The One's change in mood (!!) and drank from it in big (old) man sips. The One sent Marty a look of respect and admiration, nearly (but only nearly) feeling sorry for that he had treated the old man like shit the entire day. Now, at four o'clock in the afternoon, things like these mattered little.

The One padded Marty amiably on his shoulder, even helping him into the couch. When the freshly-showered (and most likely mound-shaven) Solitaire came out of the bathroom she could do nothing but admire the serenity of the situation: The One and Marty were drinking together while listening to the "Queen II" album, The One even keeping the old man with freshly (supernaturally) opened beer bottles when run dry. She sent The One a look of genuine admiration, before heading to the kitchen to cook herself a decent serving of scrambled eggs.

Soon Zoe and Ayn also rose from their ridiculously long-winded bout of sleeping. They entered the living room and were surprised by The One's highly amicable act of offering them free beer without serious repercussions (!!!!). The two just shrugged, accepted a serving of Solitaire's scrambled eggs and The One's free beers, before sitting down in the very comfortable Chesterfield couch.

The world was indeed a happy place when a certain horrid oaf was happy.