The Timeshare on Douglas Lake

There’s a cabin on Douglas Lake that I go to every year on Memorial Day weekend with two old college buddies, Benny and Alex. We were all Business majors at the University of Tennessee, but that didn’t stop us from making the fiscally-dense decision to go in together on a timeshare right before graduation. It’s been almost a decade since we finished school and moved on; these days we all live in other parts of the country. I live in Chicago now, Alex is in Washington D.C., and Benny’s all the way out in San Diego. But we all still pay nearly $1,000 a year for the Douglas Lake cabin, and that’s on top of the initial costs when we signed the agreement. Like I said, it was a dumb, impulsive move. However, it’s kept us in touch over the years. We haven’t missed one of our Memorial Day cabin trips yet.

Our place sits on the edge of a row of other cabins, and I dare say the other ones are nicer than ours. That especially goes for the place directly next to ours. It’s really more of a posh lake house than a cabin, with a second-story balcony and open-air back deck. Alex calls the behemoth “Catfish Palace”, referring to the most popular catch on Douglas Lake. It was built after we signed on our place, and it sits a little too close to our lot if you ask me. But I’m sure whoever owns that place would doubly prefer to not be so close to our rustic getaway.

As for the other “owners” of our cabin, we only have info for the people that stay there the week before us and the people that come the week after us. This is in case anybody wants to request a time switch. Since we’ve got the Memorial Day holiday during our week, we’ve had offers – generous offers – to trade in exchange for an adjacent week - plus cash. But money hasn’t been tight for any of us, and we really do look forward to that weekend every year. Since the agreement is for a whole week, we’ve let the family that follows us, the Downey family, know that the place is available on the Wednesday after Memorial Day if they want it. I’m sure getting access just after a big holdiay isn’t ideal, but they seem to appreciate the gesture.

This year was one of our best trips yet. I’d been dating a girl named Susanne back in Chicago, and things were starting to get serious between us. I told Benny and Alex that I was thinking about asking her to move in with me, which quickly became the target of a lot of domestic jokes and comments about “living in sin”, as though living together before marriage was a thing that raised eyebrows anymore.

“I hope Father McTuggagin doesn’t find out,” Benny said, referencing a crass, made-up character that we often played with our collectively bad Irish accents. “What’s thess now, young Daniel? Ya be livin’ in sen if she be willin’ to touch ya doon belowww!”

We all laughed and cracked open another round of beers as the sun went down. Old friends are the best friends, especially when you only see each other long enough to tell the same old jokes and recount the same old stories. Alex would talk about the time we scored tickets to see Pearl Jam in Memphis. And every time he did, I’d remind him of the magic mushrooms he secretly took without me and Benny knowing.

“It was incredible,” he’d say. “Just the hum of the lights in the parking lot was more majestic than ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ could ever be."

 

I’d look at him side-eyed. “I would trust your judgement more, Alex, if you’d ever actually made it inside the FedEx Forum.”

“Oh, right.” And then he’d laugh as if he were remembering this fact for the first time. Looking back, maybe he was.

Maybe we all were.

I said that this weekend was one of our best trips, but I guess they were all pretty much interchangeable. Each and every one of them offered a nice, long weekend away from the grind with a couple of good friends. If you could magically align them all, like a stack of photograph negatives over one another, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the same sentences and exchanges matched beat-for-beat. I’m sure there’s a psychology word for it: the more time away from a person, the more likely you’ll do and say the same things when you see them again. The three of us fell into old patterns and habits we had back at UT, those days that we were around each other nonstop.

“Hey, do you think you could hang back an extra day or two?”

It was Tuesday morning. Benny and I were doing our final sweep of the cabin, making sure we grabbed our personal items. The lodging association that ran the timeshare sent a small cleaning crew between each group, but we had learned the hard way that you pretty much have to clean the place top to bottom if you don’t want to leave behind a cellphone charger or favorite pair of sunglasses.

“What do you mean ‘hang back’?” I asked Benny. “You think the mosquitoes need a chance to finish us off?” I was trying to play along, but it was obvious that he wasn’t joking.

“Sorry, it’s just that there’s some stuff I need to tell you before I go back. Just between you and me, Dan. Without Alex.”

“Why wouldn’t we want-“

“You’ll see. Please.”

I considered this for a moment. It wasn’t like Benny to ask something big unless it was important. He wasn’t careless with other people’s time like Alex could be. And another day or two in Tennessee wasn’t such a big deal. I owned a small data analyst company that I could run from almost anywhere. Plus, I’d brought on Susanne when she was let go from her law firm the previous year, and she could easily handle daily operations for the week.

After a quick call to Susanne and cancelling my afternoon flight, I told Benny I was there for him. He asked that I not say anything to Alex, and I kept the plan a secret. We had all used separate Uber rides to get from McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville to the cabin, but had planned to return in the same car. Alex had the earliest departure time, so I made up a bullshit story about losing my cellphone at the last minute. Benny said he’d lend a second set of eyes for the search. After a few rounds of protests, Alex relented and left in a solo ride.

With Alex gone, I started to unpack. Benny stopped me.

“Hold off on that, man. I’ve got a surprise for you.” Benny gathered up his luggage and walked out the front door of the cabin. I followed suit, confused. He locked up. Dropped the key in the lockbox on the side of the building, then walked across the driveway toward the big lake house next door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve arranged for special accommodations.” Smiling, he removed a key from his shirt pocket and waved it in the air. “Plus, we can’t go back on our deal with the Downeys.” I’d forgotten about them. They would likely be showing up the next day.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, giddy with excitement. “We’re staying at freakin’ Catfish Palace?”

Benny laughed and ushered us inside. It was even more impressive than I could have imagined. The living room and kitchen were combined in an open floor plan with high ceilings. Fruit and other food items were on the counter. There was a hallway that I assumed led to a bedroom. The staircase dramatically curved up the side of the large room. The upstairs held two more bedrooms, but the coolest feature was the large open space in the middle that held a bar and led out to the second story balcony.

“Check the fridge,” Benny said.

I walked behind the bar and opened the small metallic fridge at my knees. It was fully stocked with Seaton tall boys, our beer of choice. None of us had been able to find the brand in town all weekend, assuming the brewery must have folded for good over the previous year.

“Did you do this?” I asked. Benny shrugged and I punched him on the shoulder. “We could have been drinking these all weekend?”

“No, I was saving them,” he said, opening two for us. “They weren’t easy to find.” He then plucked two cigars from behind the bar and opened the balcony door. Walking out, it occurred to me how orchestrated Benny’s seemingly spur-of-the-moment request had been.

“Wait, wait. You have to understand that I have a lot of questions.”

Benny shushed me, then gestured out.

The view from the balcony was astonishing. My mind fell to ease over the cool water of Douglas Lake. It was strange how different it all looked from just twenty feet up. The air smelled sweeter, felt softer somehow.

Benny handed me a cigar. “Dan, I own this place. Bought it last year.”

“You what? I mean, wow. Why didn’t you…I mean, wow!”

“Business has been good. Hell, it’s been so good that I up and sold the company.” The words looked comically natural coming out of a mouth that was also clenching a cigar.

“Yeah, but why tell me all this now, and not Alex?”

Benny paused for a moment and said, “You’ll see.” Off my look he lost the swagger some. “Look, I just wanted one more weekend in the cabin, a normal trip like the old days. Is that so strange?”

I couldn’t argue with that. If Catfish Palace was our future vacation spot, which I assumed would be the case, I was sure going to miss the old cabin.

“Well, congratulations,“ I said. “It looks like San Diego paid off big time. Oh, and you owe me the cost of my cancelled flight, you know.”

Benny laughed till he choked on the smoke from his cigar. Channeling Father McTuggagin, he said, “Danny, mah boy. Tha only thing ya need to ra’member is tha…ah, fook it. Le’s have us a drenk!”

This got me laughing. I was still confused as hell, but my incredulity was dulled after a few more Seaton tall boys. I was able to lighten up and eventually meet Benny’s enthusiasm, if not his wild exhilaration. After the sun had set, he revealed a small cache of fireworks on the back deck. He scurried to the edge of the lake with something that looked like a hand grenade on a stick. Lighting it, Benny cried out to the stars overhead. The whole scene seemed very dreamlike to me, but we had moved on to whiskey a bit before then. The display of lights shooting over Douglas Lake was fantastic.

Benny shook me awake the next day. It was after twelve o’clock in the afternoon. I probably hadn’t slept that late since college. Even our “wild” cabin trips had gotten pretty tame as we aged out of our early and mid-twenties. Sleeping so late was surprising, but the hangover was painful. I was barely able to focus my eyes or walk. Benny giggled as he helped me from my bed and back out onto the balcony. I wretched at the sight of the piled cigar butts and empty beer cans we’d strewn across the floor the night before. Benny navigated around the debris, leading me to a side of the balcony I hadn’t noticed the previous day. It was overlooking our old cabin. There were two chairs waiting for us. Benny sat me down in one of them, taking the other for himself.

“What’s this?” I asked. Benny shushed me and nodded to a car that was emptying in the cabin’s driveway. It was the Downey family. I had never seen them before, but they looked pretty much as I had imagined them, except there were two boys instead of a boy and a girl. Also, and I don’t know why I had assumed otherwise, but they were all a bit older than I thought they’d be. Mr. and Mrs. Downey – I think his name was Glen, I didn’t know her name – appeared to be in their fifties. The kids were either late teens or college-age.

Benny whispered to me. “Stay kinda still. I’ll narrate as best as I can, but the next few minutes are pretty crucial.”

This seemed like very odd behavior, but I chalked it up to my hangover. I began to speak up, but Benny leaned over and shook his head with dead serious eyes. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I hadn’t been outside for two minutes and I was already sweating profusely.

Benny looked out to the Downeys. “Okay, Dan. Let’s see what you notice.” Mr. Downey went to grab the key from the lockbox from the side of the cabin as the rest of the family unloaded luggage and groceries from the trunk of their sedan. Only, the lockbox wasn’t a lockbox anymore. It was a small panel that slid up with a hidey hole under it.

“What happened to the lockbox?” I said, trying my best to match Benny’s lowered volume even though my head was pounding.

“Oh, good. You got one right off the bat.” He was still whispering, but Benny’s excitement was causing his voice to crack.

“When did they do that?” I asked. Benny stared at me as I watched the Downey family carry their things inside the cabin. I looked back to Benny, but he shot a couple of glances toward the cabin to tell me to keep watching. I didn’t think there would be much to see, except I quickly saw that I was wrong.

The entire cabin was turned a bit. It was as though the building had been lifted and set back down so that, from our chairs on the balcony, Benny and I could now see the entire back half of the cabin. And I could see more than that. The back wall was almost entirely glass, a window where I could see the Downeys unloading their groceries into the refrigerator. The cabin only had one story, that hadn’t changed. But it looked different inside. There were paintings on the wall, and what seemed like hundreds of trinkets, small items like plastic toys or wooden carvings, were splayed around the room on small shelves that were affixed to the walls.

“That’s not our cabin,” I said.

“It is and it isn’t,” Benny said. “Let’s just enjoy the show for a while, huh?”

And he was right. It was a show, just not much of one at first. It started out like the world’s most boring reality show. One son, the Blonde one, would talk to Dad for a minute, then shout something at his brother, the Quiet-looking one. Mom opened up a box of crackers and made everybody snacks. It was very mundane stuff, yet I couldn’t look away. Then something strange happened. One by one, but not at the same time, each member of the Downey family dazedly stumbled over to a specific trinket on the wall, as though the item was pulling their destined soul toward it. The rest of them didn’t notice as this happened, they just went about their business, though the business seemed to grow increasing odd. I’m certain that I saw Mrs. Downey put her shoes in the freezer. And then, once they all stood before their trinkets of choice, they lifted the item into the air and stood there for several minutes.

“What’s happened to them?” I asked. “What the hell is going on, Benny?” I was still whispering.

“You don’t need to whisper anymore,” Benny said, full volume. “Do you want another beer?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he opened one for himself. I hadn’t seen him bring it with him.

“Did you do something last night? Did you…change things over in the cabin after I fell asleep?”

“The answer to your question is ‘no’. Last night, I got drunk with you and shot off some fireworks. The cabin is as it always has been.”

That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I squinted and saw that the paintings in the cabin were violent scenes: torture, animal sacrifice, things that I would have noticed and taken down.

The Downeys all walked outside, trinkets still in hand. They were looking right at us. I instinctively ducked down and Benny laughed.

“They can’t see you. They’re in the cabin.” He said that as though they hadn’t just walked outside.

Benny took a sip of his beer and threw the half-empty can at the family below. It hit Mrs. Downey in the face. The impact left a red welt on her face and spilled beer on her clothes, but she didn’t seem to notice any of it.

Benny did the Father McTuggagin voice again. “Shite. T’was aimin’ for dear old Da, I was.”

“What the fuck?” I shouted. This wasn’t the Benny that I knew. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you somehow behind this?”

“Behind this? I’m not behind this, Dan.” Benny laughed. “You might say that I was in the middle of it for a while, then I crawled my way to the front of it, but I didn’t build the cabin. The cabin just ‘is', okay? I pulled you out so that you could see it.”

Just then, a car slowly pulled into the cabin’s driveway. It was Alex’s Uber ride from the previous day. I squinted and saw that my friend was now driving the car.

“What’s Alex doing here, Benny?” Silence. “What’s he doing here?!”

Alex stopped the car and got out. His face was covered in dried blood. I didn’t see the car’s original driver, and I was afraid of what carnage might be hidden away in there. Alex walked over to join the Downey family, revealing his own trinket, a small wooden spiral thing, from his pocket. They were now all facing us. Their lips began moving, just slightly, but in harsh rhythm. It looked like they were chanting, or perhaps praying. Benny stood up and jumped off the edge of the balcony. He landed sturdily on his feet down below. I arose from my chair as he walked to his congregation standing on the border between the cabin and a place poor Alex had once called Catfish Palace.

As I peered over the edge of the balcony, I saw that Benny had changed. He was twenty or thirty years older. His clothes were the same, but his hair was now wispy and the top of his head was dotted with sunspots. Age hadn’t weakened Benny though. He calmly walked down the line of his dazed parishioners, touching each of them gingerly on their foreheads, one by one. Once Benny arrived at the end of the line, I saw that Alex was also an old man. The blood had dried into the deep wrinkles around his eyes.

I suddenly felt much older myself. I wanted to call Susanne, but I could only remember her name now. If she was ever an actual person who once loved me, I couldn’t imagine her face anymore. Once he finished blessing Alex, Benny turned and smiled up at me, his teeth gray and rotting. He gestured for me to join them. I didn’t want to. I looked away, down to my own trinket, a painted rock. It grew hot in my pale, fragile hands.

The world quickly dulled as I tumbled off the balcony. I never felt the ground below.

Go Ask Adam

Dreams generate false profundity. From the moment you wake up, the conscious mind kills the epiphanies wrapped within. It tells you how silly the whole endeavor was, reminding you that Oliver, the talking carrot with the eye patch, isn't real and need not affect your normal routine. Aromatics don't save people...not from volcanoes, at least. Your day brain reminds you that it was all just for fun, and that you merely enjoy carrots. And pirates.

I had a dream about a drug den last night. I've never stepped foot in a place like this, but I've seen them in movies like City of God or TV shows like The Wire. Those are the highbrow examples, but it's basically the place where drug dealers and drug-users exchange drugs for drug money or possibly for more drugs. In my dream, it was a messy, dimly-lit room with some tough guys sitting around a table with money and drugs scattered about. I was the main tough guy. (Like in real life. Graaw.)

I should say that the drug in my dream was completely undefined; it was just capitol-D "Drug". I could make up a cutesy name for it, like "Sassleberry", but the drug itself was not the focus of the story. This dream was about loyalty, hierarchy, and - most importantly - the dumbest, simplest math you can imagine. And this spurious lesson in underworld finance is what made the dream so profound.

Let me explain.

The packages came in four sizes which had four corresponding values. The cost was $10,000 for the smallest amount of drugs, and so on up to $40,000 for the largest package. That was the granddaddy of the operation, representing the highest level of trust to any lieutenant that was worthy of moving that much product. In this workflow, drug packages were basically a high interest loan, so the more narcotics you were allowed to peddle at one time, the higher up you were recognized in the organization. In $10,000 increments. And only up to $40,000.

That was pretty much it. There may have been more to the dream, stuff about protecting the room, maybe keeping the right people out front. There didn't seem to be any concern at all about the police finding us. And I, or my character as it were, certainly didn't feel that I was "breaking bad" or anything. This was all very natural and normal. The whole game as far as I was concerned was that people, like drugs, fell into categories of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000. As long as I followed that internal directive, everything else would be golden.

And then I woke up.

And I was like, "YES! That's how they're doing it!" It's at this point I'm like a cop that's been on this case for years trying to figure this shit out. As though this dream had suddenly provided a massive insight that filled in all these gaps that I could never piece together. "We fucking GOT THEM!" Now that I knew that drug dealers were working in $10,000 increments, this case was totally blown wide open. I needed to call the D.A., had to tell that dipshit to get warrants out on the street before those dirtbags found out what I knew. That's how it felt.

"IT'S FOUR LEVELS OF MONEY!!!"

Like I said at the top: false profundity. The feeling subsided. I should hope it goes without saying that, as weirdly excited I felt in that first moment after waking up, I don't believe any aspect of this dream, nor do I now find it particularly compelling.

Thank you for your time.

And here's the part, dear reader, where my words drift out into the world, beyond my eyes and yours, to someplace very different from the cozy surroundings where I type these words. It's there that my story about a dumb, inconsequential dream finds a grizzled, acerbic night owl scanning the internet for blood and dirt. Theirs is the hard, bitter face of a man or woman dirtied by the muck that lays underneath polite society. They reach my story's conclusion, lean back in a creaky chair to contemplate my unceremonious tale. Scowling, they look up to a photograph on the wall, perhaps a picture of a long-dead partner or something representing happier times, like a family fishing trip. The moment doesn't last. My words reemerge like bruises in the places that hurt the worst.

Our lone wolf, this harbinger of eternal remorse, ponders my drug den dream before their raspy voice cuts into the cold dark: "That Adam Fox has no idea how right he is..."

A siren wails in the distance, somewhere down below, deeper into the filthy city. Stumbling half-blind across the crosspatch room, the prudent curmudgeon grabs an ashy coat from the edge of a broken doorknob. Before marching out into the inky night, perhaps for the last time, they look again to the cracked, crooked monitor on their ancient desk.

"He's right. And he'd better be fucking careful."

The Island Birds

"Hello friend or Savior!”

Wallace was in no shape to be anyone's savior; he could barely stand upright on the mysterious beach which he had only arrived at an hour earlier. The words of the message appeared blurry from underneath a cracked pane of glass, presumably to guard the yellowed sheet of paper from rain. All of this was affixed to the side of a beached motorized yacht, now coastal wreckage-as-monument to the frail man standing before it. “The Golden Corona” was painted on the jutted remnants hunkering over the dark sand. Still, the badly-damaged vessel was in better condition than the battered raft that had barely carried Wallace to the island. He had struggled against an unforgiving current for hours before arriving at the Corona, and he was weaker and hungrier than he'd ever been in his life.

“Please help yourself to one of the bottles of freshwater I’ve left for you.”

Wallace was already on his third bottle, having thrown up a good bit of the water from the first. All of them, around thirty in number, had been placed in a neat row at the base of the yacht. Had Wallace been the sort of person that paid attention to world events, he would have recognized the boat and known its owner. In some circles, The Golden Corona was as famous as the Argo.

“There’s a building on the northwest corner of this island. It’s a real building made of concrete and steel. The biologists that used to live here have vacated this tropical prison, but I’m here now. My name is Rylan McCay. I have one warning for you: don’t eat any of the birds. They carry a very rare disease. I have plenty of information and research here that will explain everything. Get here as soon as you can.”

That was the end of the note. The words were as much of a premature admonishment as they were a promise. The caws and cackles from inside the forest of the island, which otherwise appeared bereft of fruit and other such nourishment, had given Wallace hope for a meal after days without. After the initial scout which led him to the Corona, he was going to set out for a hunt, hopefully build a fire close to a source of clean water - if there was any to be found.

The letter quelled his imagined feast, but this information was like rising up for oxygen. If Rylan had survived on the island more than a week or two, then perhaps there was a life to be had here. At the very least, there was someone with whom to await rescue.

Wallace judged the sun and headed northwest.

He couldn’t have known it, but Wallace’s trek mimicked, almost step-for-step, the exact course Rylan had taken the previous summer. The surrounding currents had put Rylan on the same basic path. Only in his case, the Corona was heavier than the life raft, and had found purchase on the beach quicker.

An explosion at sea had killed everyone but Rylan, transforming the Corona into a powerless scrap adrift on the Pacific Ocean. After two days, he had to ditch the remains of the crew to suppress temptation to feast upon their spoiled meat. But fate brought Rylan to the very island he’d been seeking, though its secrets were still a mystery to him then.

It took Wallace about an hour to reach the northwest corner. Wallace’s legs were still cramped from dehydration, and the sun grew brighter and more intense as it began to set. Once he was within range, he cut into the island through a thicket of trees. The bird noise was much louder once he was under the forest canopy. The discord was jarring after so many days of silence, but Wallace had a mission and a destination.

For his part, Rylan had reached his grim destination months earlier. Before he had even spotted the island, a seagull landed on the edge of the Corona, signaling that land would be nearby. Rylan devoured the diseased bird immediately, all but its beak and toes, and thus became an unwitting host to an angry mob of viral parasites.

A quarter mile into the island forest, Wallace met up with a trail which led him to a small, one-story building. It was grey and cylindrical, perhaps decades old. Moss and vines covered the lower part of one side, but it appeared that Rylan had cleared the growth away for visitors, revealing a large metallic door which he’d propped open a few inches. Wallace grabbed the edge and began to pull it toward him.

Wallace never got a good look at the thing that Rylan had become since he’d started down the path to decay. He'd barely had time to set the trap: water to keep his prey alive, a siren song disguised as a welcome letter. Rylan's face and body had been remarkably changed by the poison inside him, poison which both killed him and kept him alive.

Wallace had obeyed the letter’s instructions, he'd ignored the island birds. Rylan-as-creature would have sensed it if he had, and then it would have had nothing to eat. It grabbed Wallace’s hand from inside the building, ripped his whole arm off with a torturous snap. The malformed and insane birds cried out from above, alarmed by the screams that followed.

Just Like the Candy

There used to be a place in Putnam, West Virginia called Howdy's. It was kind of a bar, kind of a music hall, and definitely a club - at least for the locals that ended up there most every night. It was a perpetually dim, borderline dank, concrete-floor-covered-in-sawdust kind of place. Bluegrass music reigned supreme at Howdy's, but they also were known to host local rock bands from time to time, so long as the group knew how to play at least two Allman Brothers songs.

One listless Tuesday night, a man walked in the front entrance. The door was propped open as it usually was during the summer, inviting a Teays Valley breeze, if any were to be found. The man looked over the room a bit. He'd seen plenty of dark dives like Howdy's, but he never got tired of the musty smell of stale beer and old chewing tobacco.

The man spotted a young woman in a yellow sundress standing alone by the bar, tapping her brown boots in time with the jukebox. He walked straight up to the woman. Something about the way she was made up told him that she was waiting on somebody special. But the way she stood taller when she noticed him approaching her indicated that she wouldn't mind his company in the meantime.

He introduced himself.

"You mean like the candy?" she asked. There was a Jimmie Rodgers tune blaring out of the speaker above them, which was a disorienting factor in the man's game. He shook his head, not understanding what she meant by the candy remark. She then held up a finger like "hold on" and began digging through her purse. Finally, she pulled out a small piece of candy wrapped in gold cellophane with the words "Werther's Original" written across the front.

He smiled, and she smiled back. The woman seemed to believe he was smiling because of the odd coincidence, her having that exact brand of candy in her purse. He didn't mind that she thought that. But the truth was that he didn't know where he'd come up with the name. It wasn't meant to be cute or anything. He just thought that "David Werther" sounded boring enough to not sound made up.

She leaned in and told the man that her name was Amber, but he didn't care about that. They all had names.

Motivation

Most actors, even ones that you might recognize from TV shows or movies, aren't able to earn livable wages as actors. In fact, less than 10% of actors belonging to the Screen Actors Guild are able to meet the requirements to qualify for health insurance. It's a cutthroat industry, one with too many performers scrambling for too few roles. Because of this, nearly all actors are forced to supplement their income by stealing lunch money from children after their parents drop them off at school.

There are several approaches that actors take to rob these tiny targets of their lunch money. Some work in groups, locking a kid into a "shove circle" or corralling them into an inescapable trap. Others prefer to work alone, utilizing so-called "diva methods". Solo approaches range from forceful begging to outright brute force. However, many actors prefer to craft clever grifting schemes, ones where they con children out of money by way of some sob story, or promises of vast returns on shady investments. This approach, not only less aggressive, has the added benefit of sharpening theatrical skills.

The wide-scale theft of lunch money has gotten so problematic in Los Angeles that tax programs have been created specifically to fund meal vouchers for thousands of schoolchildren. The actors, as brazenly shameless as you'd imagine, show zero remorse in public. City plumbers and tax accountants alike have grown to distrust all entertainers in equal measure.

Greta Peeler was one such actor trying to make a name for herself in L.A. You may have seen her guest starring on your favorite murder mystery, or perhaps praising a certain brand of soft drink during a commercial break. She'd certainly paid her dues, logging many hours in acting workshops...and even more hours skulking behind brambles near elementary school playgrounds. However, thus far the only name she'd managed to make for herself was "Dragon Lady", a name designed to strike fear into the hearts and minds of children everywhere.

Greta longed to join the lucky-though-small group of performers that earned their entire salaries from acting gigs, those who could afford to brutalize children just for the fun of it. But as time passed and circumstances mounted, she began to give up on her dream. A twisted ankle caught from a botched mugging forced her out of the lunch money game. In order to pay her rent, she finally acquiesced to a receptionist job for one of the more famous plumbing firms.

As time passed, she even stopped taking the classes that had guided her for so many years, halting her study of Stanislavski's method of emotional recall, as well as her Brazilian jujitsu training.

Things settled into normalcy until one day Greta's boss, Angela Fulccilio, exited the elevator in front of Greta's reception area with a small child following behind her. The little girl was sniffling, obviously carrying the sort of virus that constantly plagued children her age. She locked eyes with Greta and immediately recognized her school playground's most infamous assailant.

"Good morning, Greta," Angela said. "This is my daughter, Kalissa. She's out sick from school for the day. I hope she won't be much of a distraction."

She said this last part more to Kalissa than to Greta.

The kid was still staring at Greta, eyebrows low. Kalissa was smart for her age and calculated the situation quickly, that the mean woman who was now apparently going by "Greta" had switched over to spending the daytime hours at her mom's office, rather than terrorizing Kalissa and her friends for lunch money. But what was this new game?

"Draaagon Lady," Kalissa called out to her former bully, taunting. She was smart, but she was also 7 years old.

Greta's eyes widened. Looking to the child, she said in a voice a bit too loud, "Oh, that's a funny name, sweetie!" Then to her boss, "I think your lovely daughter has me confused with somebody else."

"No, I don't." Kalissa stuck her tongue out at Greta.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't." Still 7.

"Yes, you--!" Greta slammed her hands on her desk and jumped up from her seat. Angela recoiled, throwing a protective arm across her child.

Sensing a bad scene, Greta smiled brightly. "I'm terribly sorry," she said. Her eyes darted around the office lobby for an exit path. "I have to check on something in...the. I have to ask somebody about...the-"

Greta scurried away from them, off toward the break room as Kalissa forcefully coughed in her direction. Angela gave her daughter a scolding look before ushering the sick child into an empty office that had a couch and a TV.

In the 2nd floor break room, Greta tried to compose herself over a cup of green tea and a few breathing exercises she'd learned from a vocal coach. One of the firm's hotshot plumbers walked in for coffee and made a couple of jokes about her looking "flushed". Ever the actress, Greta gamely smiled and laughed.

"You just never see these punchlines coming, do you?" the hotshot plumber asked.

"I never do!" Greta enthused, dying a little more on the inside.

After a while, she returned to her desk and tried her best to concentrate on calls and schedules. Kalissa found several opportunities throughout the day to peer out of quarantine to stick her tongue out at Greta. It was easy enough to ignore at first, but then the taunts turned into paper airplane assaults. Greta retaliated by miming throat slashes and quietly mouthing death threats at the girl.

At lunch time, Angela had Greta go out to fetch Kalissa a Happy Meal, which Greta had to convince herself to not sprinkle hot sauce over. She regretted her diplomacy when she returned to her desk and sat directly onto a wet stack of used coffee filters. Psychological needling had given way to biological warfare; death and destruction would certainly follow. Greta washed the grounds off her skirt in the ladies room, dried it as best she could, and wrapped the hoodie she kept around for too-cold A/C days around her waist.

Five o'clock eventually neared, though the tension in Greta's shoulders stayed rigid. Days at the office were always long, but this one had been a marathon on a burning tightrope.

And then on her way out, Angela marched the brat back up to Greta's station and announced that Kalissa would also be out of class the following day. The kid had somehow allowed herself to get sicker so as to push this little ballgame into extra innings.

"Cancel my 9am with the faucet people. I've got to take her to the doctor, but we'll be in by 11."

"Sure thing, Angela," Greta said. Nonchalantly, she turned her head to mask a twitching eye.

Kalissa stuck her tongue out again. As she and her mom walked to the elevators, she leaned her head back and cooed behind her, "Draaaagon Laaaaady."

Greta had trouble sleeping that night. She watched several old Law & Order episodes, noting each and every hapless bystander or junkie informant. Day player roles Greta was apparently all wrong for.

She dreaded the notion of returning to the office the next day, stepping back into Kalissa's line of torment. She considered calling in sick herself. A part of her hoped that Kalissa would simply feel better in the morning, at least enough to return to school. But a darker, more urgent place behind Greta's blank stare hoped that the child would take a dire turn for the worse, and spend a few days in the emergency room. Nothing too terribly serious. Maybe a burst appendix or something that would leave the brat with a permanent limp.

The next day started off quietly, though Greta could feel sour vibes in the air. She'd been bracing herself for more immature affliction. Her neck was sore again. But then Angela entered through the elevator carrying a sleeping Kalissa. She made a shushing face toward Greta, as though that was even necessary. Unconscious kid was the way to go.

After shutting Kalissa in the spare office again, Angela explained to Greta that her daughter's illness wasn't life-threatening, but the doctor recommended that she stay out of school for the rest of the week.

"She was up all last night, the poor thing," Angela said.

"Yeah. Awful, terrible thing." Off her boss's look, Greta quickly added, "Being sick, I mean. It's really terrible."

"Well, the worst part of this is that she's missing play practice all week. They might have to recast her."

"She's in a play?"

"Yeah, The Wizard of Oz."

"Oh?"

Greta envisioned Kalissa as the perfect embodiment of the Wicked Witch of the West. Cold, calculating, and willing to foster the worst fears of her victims to unrestricted panic. Or perhaps she would better serve the school's production as the evil witch's hapless sister that was introduced as a clump of viscera crushed underneath a fallen farm house, and had no lines.

Angela sighed. "I guess they can find another Scarecrow. Ah, well. It'll save me the trouble of sewing straw onto a blouse." With that, Angela walked off to her office. Greta figured that she would have gotten somebody else, Greta probably, to make that costume anyway.

Scarecrow...the heart of the play.

Greta sat back down at her desk and looked down the hall to Kalissa's quarters.

They must really be desperate.

She kept looking down the hall, thinking of the sick, little beast that would soon begin to feel better and resume her personal torture for what would feel like eternity. Maybe the kid would tire of the stupid pranks her limited imagination could conjure, and simply tell Angela about the trail of extortion in Greta's past. God knows there were plenty of witnesses she could call forth. If she got fired, Greta would be forced to pick on younger and weaker kids for lunch money. She wasn't in her twenties anymore.

Greta shook her head and tried to find something productive to do with her hands.

You know, besides wrapping them around a little girl's throat.

An angry, hoarse laugh escaped her. Shaking her head, she retrieved a stack of files from a drawer and whisked them off to the archives room.

Greta didn't realize it then, but Kalissa was driven by the same passion for acting that Greta had felt at that age. Her behavior was the direct product of immense creativity and an unflappable focus. The girl didn't just idly watch TV shows and movies; she studied the myriad of expressions and eye movements on the actors' faces. She continued this research in the real world, mimicking gestures and voices to her friends and teachers. Kalissa was a natural extrovert, and her mind found hope in appreciation.

Greta did find these things out about Kalissa eventually though, after she was coerced to coach the girl for the Scarecrow part. Kalissa couldn't help herself and exposed Greta's past to her mother - not as a criminal, but as an actress.

Begrudgingly, Greta volunteered line readings and explained motivation to Kalissa until the little devil was well enough to return to regular rehearsals. After the performance, everyone agreed that the Scarecrow was the standout of the show. Some of the other parents took notice of the improvements, and asked the former Dragon Lady to coach their kids too.

When did all of that happen? After Kalissa put a handful of bugs in Greta's egg salad, but not too long before Greta Peeler was energized to start auditioning again.

The lunch money muggings in Los Angeles eventually faded to nothing more than an occasional, brief warning to the kids during morning announcements. Then one day they just stopped altogether.

Some say it was because of all the streaming services that produced more original programming for actors to go after. Some say it was because of the billy clubs and jackknives the kids started carrying for protection. You can count both things as contributing factors, but it's clear that the current truce is likely only a temporary one. Any great actor will tell you, after all, you must maintain your craft.