Unfortunate event number one. I woke up with the single worst headache I’ve ever had in my entire life. Then I threw up twice. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was unfortunate, so I’m counting it.

  Orson was being very loud. I drank some Gatorade and ate some bread, but the guy wouldn’t give me a break. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

  “SO! WHAT WAS THE HAUL?” he shouted, then laughed.

  “I don’t wanna talk about it right now,” I replied, holding my head.

  “Come on, man! Tell me what you won! You had to have won, otherwise you wouldn’t have come home, right?”

  I closed my eyes, drank some water, and put my head down, just sorta groaning.

  Which leads me to unfortunate event number two.

  “He lost everything,” Greg said from the closet.

  “What?” I asked, lifting my head.

  “The hell?” Orson asked.

  “Yeah, while he crashed out, he mumbled something along the lines of, ‘Orson’s gonna be so mad at me.’ So, I asked him why, and he said, ‘Cuz I lost it all.’ Then he passed out.”

  Greg was just being so helpful. So helpful, in fact, I wanted to take his body and feed it to Billiam. Crap. I hope that isn’t racist against werewolves. Billiam was a good dude.

  “Are you serious?” Orson asked.

  I couldn’t stand to look at him, so I put my head back down, wrapped my arms around it, and said, “Mmm hmm.”

  “You’re a f**king moron, you know that?” he asked.

  “I know,” I answered.

  “I can’t look at you right now,” he said, then left.

  When I lifted my head, I was alone. Well, not really.

  “F**k you, Greg,” I said.

  “No probs. And it’s Grim,” he replied, followed by an evil laugh. It was a good one too—real supervillain stuff.

  Unfortunate event number three.

  My phone rang. I reached across the table and grabbed it—if only to stop the noise, but also to make some money.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi, is this the ghost hunters?” the dude on the other end asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Got a ghost problem?”

  “Thank God! I have two, maybe three of them. Can you come over and take a look?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered, coming up with a brilliant plan in the process. “It’s two hundred per ghost, provided I can get rid of them.”

  “Deal,” he said.

  “What’s the address? I’ll head out in ten,” I said, then hurried to find a pen and paper. After I wrote it down, I realized how terrible my handwriting was, so I just asked him to text it to me.

  Now, you’re probably thinking, what’s so unfortunate about getting a job? Then you’re probably like, I bet it’s too many ghosts and he’s too hungover. Quite the pickle indeed. But you’d be wrong.

  Mostly.

  I arrived at the house with my backpack full of premier ghost-hunting equipment. I could do this—I knew that. I had a headache, felt sick, and was sweating bullets, but I could handle some ghosts.

  The dude who answered looked like Rick Moranis, oddly enough. I would have laughed if I weren’t hungover.

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  He looked at me like I’d just egged his house and had the balls to come right up to his door and tell him.

  “Hi, here about your ghost problem,” I said.

  “Oh!” his eyes lit up. He led me in and gestured to the living room. “Right this way.”

  It was a smallish house. Not nice, but not bad. It looked like the most normal house I’d ever seen. Beige carpet. Some photos. A couch that had seen some things, but not crimes. You’ll know a crime couch when you see one.

  Then, the most unfortunate event of them all.

  Everything went black.

  There being no sign of ghosts was the last thing I remembered before waking up in a garage that appeared to have been heavily modified. I was tied up in a chair, and my clothes had been removed and replaced with a burlap sack. There was a strange smell, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I could feel something like bits of wood in the sack I was wearing. On top of that, the only cool air came from an old oscillating fan. I was sweating my butt off.

  “Where the hell?” I asked myself as I took it all in. I tried to wriggle free. No dice. The chair was bolted to the ground.

  “Look who’s finally awake,” I heard a voice say. It wasn’t Food City Rick Moranis, that much I could tell. This voice sounded unnatural. Supernatural, even. Like RFK Jr. with a chorus effect. Like bones crunching between the teeth of a monster talking to you with its mouth full.

  I think you get it.

  “What the hell?” I couldn’t think of what to say except variations on the hell. I was hungover and knocked out—what do you expect? I felt like I was in Hell. Or at least what I imagine it feels like.

  The thing finally strolled around in front of me. He had gray skin, sunken eyes, sharp claws, and antlers. I could have crapped myself.

  I didn’t, but I could have.

  I’d never encountered a wendigo. Then I realized just how few things I’d encountered outside of ghosts before starting my business. That’s right. It was a business, not a scam. I was a small business owner.

  “Some vocab you’ve got there,” he said with a chuckle. “Sorta weird you aren’t crying and begging for your life.”

  “Yeah, well,” I replied, “I killed a house-sized mimic a couple weeks ago, so this isn’t my first rodeo.”

  “Oh, we got some kind of Ghostbuster on our hands?” he asked, excitedly. “I love the Ghostbusters!”

  “That tracks. I was gonna say, you looked a lot like—”

  “Rick Moranis?”

  “Rick Moranis, yeah.”

  “Check this out,” he said before his bones started crunching and snapping into new positions. In less than a minute, he had transformed into one of those dog things from the movie. That alone was unsettling enough.

  Then he started talking.

  “I am the key master. Are you the gate keeper?” he growled.

  “Oh dang,” I said, trying to play it cool. “That’s neat, but he doesn’t talk in dog form.”

  “I know that,” he scoffed, then transformed back into knock-off Rick Moranis.

  “Oh, no. You nailed it,” I said, glad to have him back in human form. “Say, how long was I out for, and what’s with the sack?”

  “Oh, most of the day. It’s about my dinner time,” he said, but must have seen me make a face because he added, “but I’m not gonna eat you. Not yet anyway. That sack is full of mesquite chips. A couple days sweating in that, and you’re gonna taste amazing! Speaking of taste, I’ve got something for you.”

  A couple days. Cool. So I had a rough schedule now: Tuesday—sweat in a sack. Wednesday—sweat more. Thursday—get eaten.

  He walked back behind me, poured something, then came around front holding a glass of wine. He held it to my lips. I thought I was gonna throw up right into the glass. It was just too soon. What I needed was some bread. Some water. Maybe some bacon. I turned my head away and said, “Oh, no thanks.”

  “Still hungover?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “No worries. I’m sure you’ll be thirsty in the morning.”

  “Do you have anything other than wine?” I asked, like this was some sort of shitty resort restaurant.

  “I do, but not for you. You get wine for the next couple days. It’s for the flavor, you see.”

  “Got it,” I said. “But won’t I dry out without water?”

  He set down the glass and walked back behind me. “I know what I’m doing.”

  I heard the door open, then a pause.

  “And if you need anything, just shout. I mean, completely soundproof from the outside, but I’ll hear you from inside.”

  Good to know screaming was now strictly a customer service feature.

  Then the door shut.

  I was glad he was gone. His smell did terrible things for my nausea. If you’ve never smelled a wendigo, let me describe it so you’ll know what to look for. That way, you won’t fall for the same thing I did.

  It’s a chlorine-y smell. A little nutty. A bit musty. Like something that used to be wet… maybe sticky… but got left out too long and dried stiff. I can’t really place it. You’ll know it when you smell it.

  Sleeping was crap. The night was long and hot. I could taste vomit on my breath. My teeth felt itchy. It was probably the most terrifying situation I’d ever found myself in.

  I’d say I tossed and turned, but I was tied to a chair, so I couldn’t. Then I thought about how dumb it was for me to lose all that money, which led me down the old memory hole to retrace the series of unfortunate events that got me into this predicament.

  Then I remembered my last conversation—if you can call it that—with Calista. I felt like a giant a-hole. All night, tied to a chair, having a pity party in my head, and feeling like a boil-ridden, rot-bloated a-hole.

  I mean, I could have blamed the alcohol, but I still said what I said as loud as I said it. Did Mammon deserve it? I could argue he deserved worse. But I should have kept my voice down. I should have thought about Calista sitting outside.

  One could argue that I was a special kind of idiot, but really, I was just your everyday, run-of-the-mill, standard idiot.

  Being tied to a chair waiting to be eaten was bad. Knowing I deserved some of it was worse.

  Food City is a local grocery chain with low prices. Their generic products usually seem more generic than usual.