They sat in the dark circle around the dingy table under the flickering lightbulb, sharing a single cigarette. Or they would have been but Clyde had taken it from Larry and refused to give it back; sucking it down like a kid with his last Halloween candy.
“Alright, enough stalling,” said Larry, from somewhere underneath the crushing weight of his unibrow. “Who goes first?”
There was a brief silence as they stalled some more.
“Fine. I switched strategies.”
“Bold,” said Clyde. It was sarcastic.
“Huh?” said Jeb. It was sincere. Always was.
“I changed from ASMR of me opening bills and reading them to me throwing out unsolicited flyers without reading them. Figured the catharsis would get more viewers, but it turns out people don’t even like to see those things when someone else gets them. Lost my entire fanbase.”
“Piss on a stick,” said Clyde. “Well, more bad news: I got my tumblr purged, so my followers are scurrying and uncoordinated. Knew I should’ve started up a discord community or a twitter or something.”
Larry dope-slapped him.
“Hey! Ow! What?”
“I’ve TOLD you not to share your opinions with strangers.”
“It wasn’t that!” snapped Clyde. “I mean, not this time. Someone flagged it as porn. I fought it, but turns out my videos qualify.”
“’Someone competent doing their job quickly and punctually while enjoying it’ is porn now?”
“Apparently. Got demonetized on youtube too.”
Larry sighed. Clyde sighed.
They turned to Jeb, who was knuckle-deep and going farther.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“You’re up,” said Clyde.
“No I’m right here.”
“What did you do this month?” asked Larry.
“Oh! I had a good idea two days ago. Was going to try and go viral on Vine.”
“You’re kidding me,” said Clyde.
“What?” said Jeb. “I thought it was still a thing. Nobody told me it shut down years ago.”
“NONE of us can make the rent this month?”
“Soo…..prostitution and murder?” asked Larry.
“Dibs on prostitution,” said Clyde.
“You ALWAYS get dibs on prostitution,” said Jeb. “I hate bloodstains.”
“Git gud and stab better then, jackass,” said Clyde. “Besides, I’m the only one of us that has a face fit for a ring gag. God I hate the end of the month.”
***
They were sobs the like of which nobody had ever seen. Great, lung-guttering, soul-quivering, heart-aching shudders welling up from something deeper inside than the most secretive and solitary of his organs.
“My friend,” the bartender told him as he gently patted his cheeks dry with a little cocktail napkin, “you must not carry on so. Life will go on. You will rebuild. Material things are temporary. You are worthy of love. I’m sure wherever they are, they’re happy now. Do you want more? I can keep going.”
“Nothing can ease my pain,” wailed the man. “What I once considered most important in all my life has been taken from me. I’ve been banned from all social media, effective immediately. What will I do with my time, with my brain, with my anything? It was all I had in this world because I’m an empty and loathsome shell of a worm of a fragment of a functional human being.”
“Look,” said the bartender, “I wouldn’t normally go this far for a stranger, but you seem emotionally vulnerable and easily led. Why don’t you go follow my favourite influencer on twitter, @xXxWITEPOWAxXx? He can lead you down a road of manipulation, grift, racial hatred, and deniable incitement to terrorism. It’ll give empty purpose to your freshly hollowed life.”
“But bartender,” wept the man, “I AM @xXxWITEPOWAxXx.”
***
I slid out from underneath the machine with a somber expression. “Bad news,” I said. “You’ve got no drive left.”
“Wuh-oh!”
I ignored the sounds with practiced power and grace. “And that’s not even the worst of it: you can see here where it’s overheated and partially melted… I’m afraid your rig is shot.”
“Oh god no,” mourned the customer. He was fat-bellied and thin-haired, in that aimless stretch of extended middle age that can hold some men from age thirty to sixty. His hands and chin were the only parts of him that moved, working and twisting constantly as he writhed and gasped in the pickle he’d put himself into. “Oh jeez. Oh man. Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned sure. For the price it’d cost to fix this you could just get an entirely new machine. You burnt out all the most expensive parts.”
“Oh god oh god oh gosh. I just took it out for one afternoon.”
I stopped wiping off my hands and looked up in alarm. “Wait. This isn’t even your unit?”
“No. No. No, this is my WIFE’S bitcoin rig.”
“Sir,” I said, doing an amazing job at keeping my voice level, “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for your own good. Please come with me to the police station.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Precisely.”
“I’m not doing oh god is that a gun please don’t shoot me I’ll do whatever you say do you want money do you oh lordy lou oh god”
“Don’t make me use this. It’d be a cleaner death than you’d deserve for slagging someone else’s next-gen video card, and a LOT cleaner than what the street mob out there’d give you for it. Now we’re going to walk very calmly down to the station and you’re not going to try and run because I’ll fucking shoot you and you’re not going to try and fight because I’ll yell what you did in the middle of the lunch crowds and you’ll WISH I’d shot you. Are we clear?”
“Oh god oh jeez oh”
“ARE WE CLEAR?”
“Yes oh my goodness yes oh”
I pistol-whipped him. It was just and magnificent.