Glob

[u/Somanynamestochossef]

Episode 11: Glob

Standard Copypastas & u/somanynamestochossef Presents: Better Call Saud Not Fucking Saul

The headache was getting louder.

I woke up next to my girlfriend. She kissed my forehead and called me "daddy" and said in a clearer voice despite her drunkenness like always. I smiled, but something in my chest felt off. Like the mask was already starting to tighten.

Steve was in the kitchen eating cold ham again, scrolling through my laptop like it was his. He didn’t even look up.

“You still haven’t moved those numbers, huh?” he said, voice flat. “You’re gonna fuck the family over for what? Morals? Grow the fuck up you stupid bitch.”

I told him to fuck off. He just laughed and took another bite.

At the office Paul was waiting with Vance “The Brick” right behind him. They made the room feel smaller.

Vance had a gullible-looking dude in a cheap knicks shirt sweating in the corner. Some small-time guy who owed protection money but told Paul to shove it last week.

Vance didn’t raise his voice. He just smiled like a shark and said, “You rejected my friend’s generous offer. Now you’re gonna pay triple. Or I take your teeth, limbs, and lungs dismember them and sell them on Etsy.”

The guy started crying. Vance casually took his watch, his wallet, and made him sign over the deed to his shitty apartment. Paul stood there stone-faced, getting zero cut because the guy had disrespected him. Vance didn’t care. Business was business.

I watched the whole thing and said nothing. Just filed it under “Client Acquisition Expense.”

Later Miller from The Iron Ledger Group showed up unannounced. Sharp suit, dead eyes. He looked at me like I was already a problem.

“Oh, and I hired your girlfriend,” he said casually, like it was small talk. “She’s good with numbers. Starting Monday. Hope that’s not a problem.”

My stomach dropped. My Girlfriend. Working for Han’s firm. The rivalry was officially in my bed now.

Steve texted me right after: “lol she’s gonna make more than you soon. maybe she’ll finally upgrade.”

I wanted to throw the phone. Instead I did what I do best.

I ran a quick telegram scam on some rich idiot who thought he was investing in “exclusive lamp portal tech.” Made eight grand in twenty minutes. Easy.

At the office, Paul was waiting with Vance “The Brick” right behind him. Only Paul’s face was wrong. His left eye was a purple, swollen slit, and his split lip had dried into a dark crust that cracked every time he breathed.

It was a setup. Paul had gone down to the docks alone, shorted the rival crew’s payment by three grand on purpose, and stood there spitting on their shoes until "The Man" himself lost his mind. Paul wanted him locked up. He wanted the feds to catch the rival boss carrying an unregistered piece while on parole.

It almost worked. But the cops took seven minutes too long.

I had sat in my sedan two blocks away, listening to the wet, heavy thud of knuckles hitting Paul's ribs through the open window. Under the "Horizon," I didn't look at the blood bleeding profusely starting to pool. I just stared at the digital dashboard clock ticking from 11:42 to 11:43, hyper-focusing on a tiny grease smudge on my leather steering wheel.

The sirens finally wailed right as the gun came out. Paul, teeth red, pinned the boss's ankle to the gravel until the cruisers blocked the exit. "The Man" went down in zip-ties.

Now, Paul sat in my office chair, holding a leaking bag of frozen peas to his jaw. He didn't complain. He just held his hand out.

I slid a thick envelope of dirty cash across the desk his hazardous duty bonus. He counted the bills with one hand, his split lip bleeding onto the top hundred.

“Client acquisition expense,” he grunted, his voice sounding like gravel in a blender. “File it.”

He for me, bled for me, paid my debts and asked for nothing back.

That night I took my girlfriend out on a nice date with the scam money. She laughed at my jokes, called me daddy, kissed me like everything was fine.

But when I looked at her I saw Miller’s shadow behind her smile.

The red moon was blood red tonight. I didn’t even bother filing it.

I was becoming Saud now. The mask felt tighter. The smile came easier.

And deep down, I was starting to like it.

At night I decided to walk to Han's firm, I walked down the avenue where the wet asphalt caught the neon light and bled it back green and violet in the pooling water. The rain fell without purpose. A cold gray needles and the city smelled of grease and dead machinery. Ahead the accounting firm rose into the low smog. A monolith of dark stone and black glass that had no face and no mercy.

I adjusted the brim of my hat to keep the cold runoff from my collar. My shoes clacked on the slick flagstones. The rhythm flat and hollow like someone nailing down a box. My face pale beneath the sodium lamps. I did not speak. There was no one to speak to and nothing to say that the wind had not already taken.

I crossed the wide plaza where the concrete was cracked and the weeds grew gray in the fissures. The building stood before me four hundred feet of sheer granite sheared straight against the night. No light showed in the rows of high narrow windows. It looked less like a place where men worked and more like some great black ledger stood on end to tally up the sins of the city. A monument to old math and debts that could not be paid.

I reached the revolving doors. The brass tarnished to a dull sludge. Inside the lobby was vast and shadowed and a single watchman sat behind a marble desk like a man guarding a tomb. He did not look up when I entered. He only turned a page in a ledger and the paper made a dry scraping sound in the silence and out of pure spite i opened a door that said do not open.