A few days passed, and no signs of chaos were to be had. That was good news for Filthy Rich; that meant he could focus on business without any extra hassle. He had just finished sorting out things with another prospective supplier in his office, smoothing out all the kinks that needed ironing, and shaking hooves with that pony—all with a respectable smile on his face. "Well, Trading Bonds, I think that settles it," he grinned.
Trading Bonds, an earth pony with a slicked-back mane and a three-piece suit, smiled as he reached into his saddlebags to produce a single paper, all dolled up in the legalese of a contract. "And all we have to do is sign, Mr. Rich. Once done, we can start supplying you with more overstocked items," he replied, smiling as much as his business partner.
Filthy Rich smiled, and reached into his desk to produce a quill, some ink, a special horseshoe whose frog was emblazoned with his cutie mark, and an ink stamp cushion. He signed his name on the parchment, put the horseshoe on, stamped said horseshoe in the cushion, and put it firmly on the paper to fully authenticate the parchment, when he heard a knocking on the door of his office. "Come in!" he called, and the door swung open to reveal two confused-looking cashiers accompanied by an equally confused customer.
"Um, Mr. Rich, I'm hearing reports about meowing cats in the quilts and blankets section…" one of the cashiers said, turning to the customer to wordlessly order him to elaborate.
"I was browsing the blankets section, seeing what I could find for my son, and he heard it… I told him and my wife to stay by the blankets and wait for me, in case the cat's hurt," the customer said, rubbing his right hoof against his left foreleg awkwardly as his ears pinned back. "I don't know what you guys do in cases where hurt animals find their way into stores, and…"
Filthy put the horseshoe down, and watched as Trading Bonds stowed the authenticated parchment away in his saddlebags. "Say no more," he said, standing up. He trotted around the desk and Trading Bonds, making a beeline for the customer so he could lead him to the hopefully okay cat. All ponies except for Trading Bonds and the other cashier left the office, with Filthy pausing to make sure the door was closed once everypony was out, solely to keep an eye on his new business partner while he was out investigating the most recent shenanigans.
The customer and cashier lead him to the bedding section, and after avoiding a few rows to go down a specific one, turned down the one where the incessant meowing was coming from. The customer was right; a cat had somehow found its way into the store, and Filthy wanted nothing more than to remove the furball from the premises as gently as he could. In the aisle, a mare and a small foal were waiting in the middle, looking at a thrashing stack of tangled blankets in concern. "Honey? I know you told us to not touch the cat, but…" the mare trailed off.
"Momma, wan pet kitty!" the foal said, though he was held back by his mother. "Why no pet kitty?"
"The kitty could be hurt… we have to be careful to not hurt it any more than it might already have been," the mare replied.
"So no hurt kitty?" the foal asked, and his mother nodded.
"Step aside; I'll take a look," Filthy said, stepping towards the rustling blankets. He knelt down, slowly raising his hoof to the blankets in case the kitty was of a fearsome temperament. The meowing raised in pitch and frequency, and the rustling increased its movements, as though the poor thing were only entangling itself the more it struggled. Slowly, carefully, he pulled aside the blankets, starting with the one at the top of the pile.
One blanket down, and it looked about five more to go. Fortunately, it was easy to tell them apart from one another; the blankets had different patterns, and they weren't too hopelessly tangled amongst one another to be pulled apart with much difficulty. It took some moments, but eventually, the blankets were pulled apart… only to reveal that there was no cat writhing within the sheets as it were.
Yet still, the mewing persisted, and another bundle of quilts began to writhe not too far down the aisle. Had there been more than one cat in the store? Or was this a new teleporting breed that could only change locations under the cover of darkness? Whatever the case, he trotted over to the next bundle of sheets, pulling them apart to discover there was no cat present. He turned to the cashier. "While I'm taking apart sheets, could you rearrange them, please?" he asked, to which the cashier nodded and set to work folding the sheets that were taken apart.
"Can I have blankey, momma?" the colt asked.
"Soon, Radiant, soon," his mother replied.
Meanwhile, another bundle of sheets began rustling, this time on a shelf a little higher than most ponies comfortably stood on four legs. Filthy rose to his hind hooves to start pulling apart blankets, brow furrowing as he realized he might be plucking feathers off of a goat. Still, he had to look into this, if only to ensure both customer and feline safety. Once again, no cat, but the meowing started to grate on his nerves a little. He knew of the Abyssinians, no thanks to Princess Twilight's ventures and how she relayed them to Equestria after the fact, but this… this was a bit much, and far too below any typical Abyssinian morals to have come from them. Besides, the sapient felines didn't come to peruse his shelves, and that probably wouldn't change anytime soon, unless he found some way to branch out into other nations.
Tearing up and down the aisle afterwards revealed no cat, and left a bundle of blankets that his poor cashier was still struggling to clean up. As soon as the discovery had been made, the meowing had ceased completely, at least. Filthy frowned despite the silence, though, wondering what could have provoked this. What manner of tomfoolery, by Celestia's sunscorched cheeks, was this?
He huffed and made his way back toward his office. He still had to see to it that the goods he was to receive from Mr. Bonds would be arriving on schedule. He’d agreed to sell them, after all, and he couldn’t do that if they weren’t here.
“Hey, Bossman?” called one of the stockers from the heavier goods section. “We have a situation back here.”
“What kind of situation?” asked Filthy, turning and waiting for the employee to catch up. “Don’t tell me we lost another hooftruck.”
“No, Bossman, we still have all hooftrucks. This is about an animal.”
Filthy’s eyes shot open with hope. “You found the cat?”
“Uh… No?” He turned and pointed to the back. “We think there’s a dog wedged between some bookshelves. We have no idea how it ended up back there, but we don’t know what to do. This wasn’t covered in employee training.”
Filthy sighed. It wasn’t in the training program because this was not supposed to happen. Pets weren’t allowed in, with the exception of service animals, so why were there so many in here today? “Come on,” he waved, starting toward the section at a brisk trot. “Let’s go see if it’s okay. If it is, we show it the door before it bites somepony.”
When they arrived in the furniture section, two bulky earth ponies were already moving furniture to gain access to another piece. None of the bookshelves were together right now, so Filthy didn’t know where they were going. “Where’s this dog you found?” he asked.
“It moved, Mr. Rich, sir,” said the mare. “We think it’s in the wardrobe over there, now.”
Filthy was about to ask which one, but then he heard the barking and saw the doors move. He knew where the dog was. It was in the one he had recently sent out to be refinished. The sealing layer was still fresh, meaning there were no scratches, but now there was a dog inside it, with its claws and teeth marring up the insides. He dreaded having to have it refinished again this soon.
Before long, all that stood between the few of them and the barking wardrobe was a large, plush sofa. It was great for lounging on, but very, very heavy. It took Filthy and the two earth ponies working together to slide it out of the way while the employee that had called his attention rushed to the wardrobe and opened the doors. “Uh… Bossman?”
“What’s the matter?” asked Filthy. “Is it hurt? Is it bleeding on our stock?”
“It’s not in here, Bossman.”
Filthy rushed over to the wardrobe and pulled open the other door. He was expecting to see a hole through which the dog had escaped, and a big mess of scratches on the inside completely destroying the varnish, but no. There was no chipping, no scratches, not even a stray hair. It was immaculate.
Then they heard more barking.
“It’s over there, Mr. Rich, sir,” pointed the mare. “Behind that bookcase.”
The dog had moved into a bookcase with glass doors. They’d be able to see it now, if they could turn the thing around. Unfortunately, that meant moving the sofa again, along with a dining set, a grandfather clock, and an apothecary’s cabinet. By the time they worked their way over, the barking had stopped completely, and once more, there was no dog, and no signs of it even having been there in the first place.
Filthy was stewing in his cauldron now. He was not remotely pleased about how today was turning out. Here he was chasing after a dog, wondering where a cat had disappeared to, and all the while, he’d left his supplier in his office for an extended period of time with the idea that he would have dealt with the situation by now.
“Maybe it’s a ghost dog,” posited the stocker. “My aunt, she had this little chihuahua, and after it ran off, she could still hear his barks from inside the walls for days. It was haunting her for sure.”
“Or maybe it was just trying to come back into the house,” replied the mare. “Seriously, I’d sooner believe that there’s a real dog making a fool of us in here than some kind of spirit.”
“Look, just keep your voices down,” huffed Filthy. “I have to return to my office. I can’t leave my guest waiting any longer, and I don’t want you scaring off the customers with tales of ghosts and ghouls. If you find the dog, either show it the door or take it to a vet. Stay alert and be careful, though. I don’t want to hear that a customer or employee was bitten. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal pony clear, Bossman,” saluted the stocker.
“Good. See to it that this is dealt with, and clean up when you’re done.”
Shaking his head to clear his exhaustion, Filthy returned to his office. Trading Bonds was still there, playing with a little desk toy while he waited for Filthy to return. “You find that little kitty?” he asked, placing the toy back on the desk.
“No, I think it might have run off,” grunted Filthy, glad to finally be back in his chair. He waved off the cashier he had left in the room. “Sorry I took so long; I was alerted that there was also a dog that found its way into the furniture. That cashier you saw in here a few minutes ago will let me know if it shows up again. We’ll find them, if they’re still in the store.”
“You’re not going to hurt them, are you?”
Filthy placed his right hoof up against his chest. “Oh, heavens, no. I just don’t want them in my store. Cats have a tendency to knock things off of shelves, and I have some fragile merchandise here. If we find it, we’ll take it down to a local shelter, or a vet if necessary. Same goes for the dog and biting somepony. I don’t want them tripping up the customers, either. A nasty fall could hurt somepony, and we don’t want that.”
“Right, okay. Well, I saw your sign on the door that says no pets allowed, and I thought that, well…”
“We’re not pet friendly, but that’s solely because of our merchandise. That, and our customer’s safety. We run a safe, family-friendly store.”
Trading Bonds nodded. “That’s good to hear.”
"Now then, would that conclude business, or is there something more you'd like to do?" Filthy asked. "I know we barely touched on the fine print before the cat and dog situations cropped up, but I assure you, such things do not happen in this store with this worrying amount of frequency."
"Actually, there is one more thing I would like to include…" Trading Bonds said, putting the desk toy down and folding his hooves across the desk, "and that is the shipments of the overstocked items themselves. Apparently, we've been receiving reports of some of the suppliers… not being as careful as they should have been."
That was to be expected, at this rate. Filthy would've been surprised if he hadn't been informed of this, after today's mayhem. "And I presume that some items break during shipping?" he asked.
Trading Bonds nodded. "Yes, so we've had to move those ponies to other duties, to see if their rather harsh handling of the products is to blame for the items breaking mid-ship," he answered uncomfortably. "I feel as if I should warn you regardless: do contact me if the shipments are damaged in any way."
Filthy nodded. "You can count on me to keep track of any damages on my end," he said. Once more, the pair shook hooves, and Trading Bonds moved to stand from the desk with a smile on his face.
"I do believe that concludes our business today, Mr. Rich," Trading Bonds said, turning to trot out the door. “Take care.”
"Take care, Mr. Bonds," Filthy replied, smiling just the same. As Trading Bonds walked out the door, and closed it behind him, he sagged in his seat. "Well, that's another loose end tidied up…" He embraced the silence relatively quickly, and indeed, whatever shenanigans lay in wait seemed to wait for Mr. Bonds to fully leave the premises before deciding to strike once more, this time in the form of another cashier opening the door.
"Uh, Bossman?" the cashier said, frowning. "I'm hearing about crows cawing in the lavatory…"
"Crows?" Filthy rose from his seat, sighing. How did crows make it into the store? They weren't even all that common in Equestria, for crying out loud! The most he had heard about them was that they flocked in places like the Everfree, and that forest kept to itself most of the time. He trotted out of the door with the cashier, brow furrowing once again as he made his way to the lavatory. As they neared the doors marked for stallions and mares, he heard an incessant cawing coming from within. Honestly, it sounded like a whole murder of crows decided to grace the store with their presence, and what they were singing about, he could only guess.
He turned to the cashier. "Is anypony in either lavatory?" he asked.
The cashier shook his head. "No, Bossman, I checked," he answered. Filthy sighed and trotted to the stallions' lavatory, knocking on the door to see if that would stop the incessant cawing.
Nope. It rose in volume instead, as if to taunt him. He turned to the cashier. "Check the other lavatory; I'll investigate this one," he said. The cashier nodded, and together they opened the doors to try to solve the issue. He peered inside the bathroom he had chosen; sink row, a row of five bathroom stalls, and a paper towels dispenser on top of soap dispensers and mirrors.
He went to the first stall, and opened it up. There were no crows to be had, yet the cawing persisted. Strange. Filthy's brow furrowed as he closed the stall and went to the next one over, opening it to yield… a perfectly good, healthy latrine. No talon-marks blemished it, no tiny dents were present that would have indicated pecking, nothing out of the ordinary.
The next three stalls yielded the same result, so he turned to the sinks once he was done checking out the latrines. He frowned upon beholding the mirrors, noticing that he could see crows adorning the tops of the stalls, all cawing and looking at him as they snickered into their wings. He turned to the stalls, but no crows were to be had. Back to the mirrors, and the little feathery nuisances were still there, giggling into their wings like nopony's business. A few more came to perch on the sinks, the soap dispensers, and the paper towel dispensers, all looking at him and laughing as though they understood a joke that flew over his head.
So how was he going to tackle this, exactly? Filthy put a hoof to his chin and pondered. The crows were in the reflections, where he could not so easily reach without some kind of sudden superpower born of power fantasies to hoofwave strangling the crows. Alas, he had no such powers, nor was he in a power fantasy, let alone in the dream world, so this would require a bit more lateral thinking than he was accustomed to.
Maybe stomping his hoof would work. He lifted his already-raised hoof up high and brought it down onto the tile, with only enough force to cause the strike to echo in the lavatory. The crows did not disperse, but instead looked at him with their lower mandibles falling slack for one moment, only to clutch their stomachs with their wings the next moment as they almost toppled over from their perches in laughter.
Okay, now Filthy felt like he was the butt of whatever joke the crows had in mind for him. He stomped again, but the crows just laughed even harder, some pointing their wingtips at him as they cackled. That was when Filthy noticed a particular crow only smirking at him, dressed in an immaculate suit that would have been tailor-made for its size. Next to that crow sat a spider in similar garments, and somehow, the spider was also smirking. Somehow, the pair reminded him of butlers, waiting on hock and hoof… or claw and leg, in this case.
He turned to the stalls again, and the dressed spider and crow had, in fact, materialized atop the stall directly behind him, and indeed, their smirks remained in place. One blink, though, and the pair were gone, and the cawing had ceased, though the birds' laughter still echoed in his head as the silence settled.
Filthy took a deep breath and moved back over to the mirror. The crows and the spider had all disappeared, and there was no damage to the stalls. Telling himself he was just seeing things, he turned on the tap and splashed some cold water on his face, giving it a gentle scrub to steady his mind. “You’ve been working too hard, Filthy,” he said aloud, knowing that nopony else was here, “and you’re worried about how all of this is going to turn out.”
He turned off the tap, grabbed a paper towel to dry his face, and looked at himself in the mirror. “You’ll push through this,” he promised himself. “You’ve worked hard for what you have, and you’re going to make sure you keep it. Business face.” His eyelids relaxed, he pulled on a smile, and he slicked back his mane. He would buy anything from that stallion in the mirror.
As he pushed the door open and made his way into the store proper, he heard a loud caw behind him that caused him to jump. The well-dressed crow was sitting on the sign alerting customers to the lavatories. As he calmed down, he reached up to try grabbing its foot, intending to bring it outside. It took off, disappearing behind an aisle.
“You find it, Bossman?” asked the cashier, poking his head out of the mares’ room.
“Yeah, it just flew behind that shelf,” confirmed Filthy. “You go right, I’ll go left, and we’ll corner it.”
“Just the first aisle, Bossman?”
“That’s where it went. Come on.”
As they lined themselves up at either end of the shelves, they noticed something odd. The crow wasn’t there anymore. It had been, but a gap had opened in the middle of the shelves, creating a tiny path to the next row, and littered on the floor was a train of feathers leading in there.
Filthy and the cashier followed the trail of feathers into the next row, winding around a few shelves and in and out of aisles, until they finally came face to face with a crow. It wasn’t the one they’d been chasing after, as this one was a ceramic sculpture that was for sale. Filthy sighed and shook his head. What would find its way in next?
The answer was, a customer with a collection of feathers in his hoof. “I saw these on the floor while I was looking at glassware,” he said, walking up to them. “I think there might be a bird that flew in.”
“Yeah,” nodded Filthy. "We were looking for it. You didn’t happen to see it, did you?”
“No, but I didn’t see this, either,” smiled the customer, reaching up and slowly twisting the sculpture around. “Is this for sale?”
Filthy nodded. “Twenty-five bits. I’ll take those loose feathers and dispose of them properly, if you wish. My associate here would be happy to ring you up at the front.”
The customer gave Filthy the feathers and picked up the statuette. As the two disappeared to the front of the store, Filthy grabbed a broom and dustpan, sweeping up the trail of feathers. There wasn’t a lot of dirt covering them. If he cleaned them up a bit, he could probably bag them up and sell them as crafting plumes, or even donate them to the castle fletcher.
He bagged them up and started back toward his office, but at the end of the aisle, he found himself sporting a facefull of spider silk. As most ponies would, he flailed his front hooves to remove it from his face, but he spotted more along the walkway between the aisles. It was spun up in webs around the corners of shelves, and strangely, they had little arrows in them, pointing the same direction.
Filthy decided that it would be little use taking them all down now. After all, if there was a spider spinning these, possibly the same one that he’d seen in the lavatory, he’d be better off dealing with it before cleaning up its mess.
He started by looking in the opposite direction. If he had been a spider trying not to be caught, he’d point the arrows away from himself. Well, actually, he’d probably find a secluded, out-of-the-way spot and not spin nearly this much webbing. Unfortunately, all he found turning away was a large web spanning the walkway, similar to a large banner. Woven in were sections of web resembling letters.
“Other way.”
Okay, he definitely hadn’t been expecting that. Turning around, he followed the arrows. What was odd was that the winding path the arrows were leading him down was crossing the path he’d taken to clean up the feathers, and he hadn’t run into these webs then. This spider worked fast.
Before long, he ran out of arrows, and just four remained, all pointing at a puzzle box he’d been given to sell. He hadn’t been given the answer on how to open it, for which he was glad. If the customer asked him, he could honestly say he didn’t know how, and that finding out the solution yourself was what made it fun.
As he was looking around to see if the spider was nearby, a customer found his way down the aisle. “What’s this thing?”
“Careful, there,” warned Filthy. “I saw a spider earlier, and I think it might be nearby. I don’t want it to bite you.”
The customer twisted his hip to show a scorpion cutie mark. “I’m an arachnologist. If there is a spider here, I have antivenoms in my workshop down the road. Very realistic web decorations, by the way. Very authentic.”
“Oh, uh… Thanks,” Filthy bluffed. “I’m glad you think so. We’re… trying some new decor, for Nightmare Night. Low hoof traffic right now, you know. The perfect time to figure out the layout so we know what we’re doing when the time comes.” He put on a big smile and hoped that the story he’d made up was believable.
“Not a bad idea, but I would have done so after the customers all left, and the doors were locked for the night. Not to question your business practices, of course.”
“Of course. Now, is there something I can help you with?”
“Well, what with my team out gathering samples for the next week, I needed something to keep my hooves busy and my mind sharp. I was just looking to see if you had any jigsaw puzzles, you know? I figure since all you have to do to make one is glue a picture to a board and then cut it up into little pieces, it’s only natural that there would be some interesting hoof-made jigsaw puzzles around here, but I haven’t seen any.”
“Well, I don’t know about jigsaw puzzles, but I do have a collection of puzzle rings,” smiled Filthy, reaching to the shelf over the box and producing a small bag of rings. “There’s also this puzzle box. You could spend hours trying to figure out how to open it, and I’m told you can store stuff inside.”
The arachnologist’s eyes lit up. “Sold!” He grabbed the box, along with the bag of puzzle rings on top, and made his way toward the front.
Well, that was one situation sorted out, but that just left the most obvious course of action: find out where that blasted crow and his spider companion had wandered off to. After all, not everypony would be able to buy the explanation of a few loose Nightmare Night decorations coming early, especially if they had spontaneously appeared within store premises.
Besides, he had always been of the mind of putting up said decor up in the weeks before they were due, as opposed to whole months in advance. That particular trend began circulating Equestria as of late, which given how stringently the nation adhered to a weather schedule, didn't make an ounce of sense unless one operated a clothing store or the like. And even then, it only barely managed to convey the tiniest margin of rationale behind it.
He glanced around, and found that, one by one, the spider webs were vanishing like the crows in the mirrors had. Instead of doing so instantaneously, or in a way that made rational sense, they fizzed up like silly string, strummed like guitar chords, and then melted into audible sound that tickled his ears like the kiss of wind after a calming summer storm. He looked about, wondering if anypony else was seeing this, but customers didn't pay heed to this at all, if they were even passing through or by the aisle he was in at all.
Which ended up putting him back on square one, a fact that began to irk him just slightly. He looked around again, solely to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. The store shelves were normal, nopony was asking him to solve animal-related issues, and no loose feathers or spider silk was to be seen anywhere.
Maybe it was time to go back to his office. But first, he had to double-check that everything was going smoothly. After all, one didn't run a store and expect everything to be smooth sailing; there were nails in that road after all, and they weren't going to sweep themselves away from vulnerable hooves belonging to inattentive ponies. Thus, he began his careful sweep of the premises, starting with the registers and the merchandise shelves directly attached to them. He trotted past them, glancing briefly in each row, and so far, so good, nothing was wrong.
Then he began another sweep of the lavatory, though he only checked the stallion's one to ensure he wouldn't receive any complaints later. A quick check of the mirrors yielded blissful normalcy, so he simply took a moment to splash some more water on his face and towel himself off before resuming his sweep. He went up and down the aisles, seeing if anypony else had any complaints to lodge to him while store hours were still going strong.
Nope, blissful serenity greeted him instead. In fact, it was nothing else, during the rest of his meticulous sweep. Interestingly, the crow feathers he had swept up also seemed to have vanished entirely, which might have been excusable if an employee had swept them up while he was investigating the spider silk, though he was careful to not hedge any bets just yet. And if the feathers had disappeared in an unorthodox way, then more power to them—it ultimately wasn't his business anymore, so he shelved the ruminations about them for another time.
The trip back to the office was uneventful, and not marked by ponies lodging complaints. He opened the door, strode inside and closed the door behind him—that was when he noticed the pair of wayward, meticulous and sharply-dressed animals lounging on the back of his chair, regarding him with twin smirks, snickering into a claw and a pedipalp in sounds that managed to transcend whatever limited range of vocals a spider and a corvid could have. The laughter… it sounded equine—and all the more wrong because of it. A wing and a front leg were waved in wide arcs, going above the crow's head and spider's thorax, then sweeping in front of their chest and fangs, waving as they gave a low, simultaneous bow.
Filthy stared at the pair, incredulous and too shocked to even be outraged. 'Scandalized' fit his mood right now, though it wasn't readily apparent on his dumbfounded expression. Now, these two partners in crime definitely reminded him of butlers with the gesture, unexpected as it came from a corvid and a spider of all things. With twin smirks and a flash of light that exploded into confetti, feathers and silk, the pair vanished as they rose to look Filthy in his eyes one last time, and silently dared him to do something about it without saying a word to him.
Before he could even ask where the clearly sentient animals had come from or where they had gone, much less take a few seconds to metaphorically scrape his lower jaw off of the floor, he heard a guffaw, and felt a tiny talon rest on his shoulder. He looked towards the noise and feeling, and found a caricatured, miniature puppet of Discord regarding him with mirth in his little beady, button eyes. "Oh my, that was quite adorable, wasn't it?" the puppet asked, smiling widely and showing tiny teeth seemingly made of soap garnished garishly with glitter.
"Wh-wha—how—why—" was all Filthy could stammer out, confusion flowing in his eyes and painting his face to form an expression that would have, for Discord at least, made an epic portrait to hang in whatever house that wished for that type of decor. Scandalized, outraged, perplexed, and yet somehow caught unawares all the same—the puppet smirked, finding the expression to be absolutely priceless.
The puppet procured a camera and took a photo of Filthy's expression, taking the parchment in its tiny claw before Filthy could think to shred the evidence of his boundless confusion. The puppet waved the photo in the air to stabilize the colors, and somehow, it came out in a blurred array of colored polka dots that nonetheless immortalized his expression. "Well, we both have places to be at the end of the day, and Fluttershy does want me to check on her cottage while she's away, so I'll be heading that way now~" the puppet said, still grinning. "Tata now~" In another burst of confetti, silk, and feathers, the puppet had vanished, taking the camera and photograph with it.
Filthy sighed, grabbed a dustpan and a broom, and made to tidy up his office. He'd rather have had it spotless, than to be questioned on where the extraneous debris had come from. Besides, the day had worn him down somewhat, and it was best to sort out his confusion the only way he knew how: by taking the trash out, and keeping sales up while he was at it. Little did he know, that I would not deem fit to release him from my grip yet~