. On the trading floor, a young guy shouted, ‘Clayton at the figure! Fill or kill! Clayton at the figure, Fill or Kill!’ The head of a heavy Indian trader with a double chin popped up above the warren of monitors. ‘Whose buying man’, he shouted. ‘Paper’, the first guy said. ‘Fuck off’, the second …
When Legal and the Founder woke up in the drunk tank, Legal said, ‘This is worse than the time we were abducted by aliens’. ‘The first time or the second time’, the Founder asked. He didn’t like the way Legal kissed his ass, but when he looked at the large tattooed man leaning against him …
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When the thing happened, the Founder and Legal were drinking in a bar in northern New York called Media Res. The Founder was telling Legal about Mickey Mouse’s divorce. ‘So the judge says, ‘You say that your wife is crazy?’’ As he spoke, the Founder smirked. ‘’That is not what I said’, Mickey says’, the …
The Ninth Circle ‘Are we in Minnesota’, the Founder asked Vergil. They had walked down the slope that extended from the berm that shored up the final bolgia on the Eighth Level. As the rocks that line a river in northern climes will be covered by ice on a winter day, a narrow strip of …
The Eighth Circle A man with slack facial skin, a paunch, blond hair, blue eyes, a square jaw and a ski-jump nose stood smiling and rubbing his hands together next to a row of hang gliders perched on top of a cliff. A reptile tail protruded from the seat of his pants. ‘What the fuck’, …
The Seventh Circle At the entrance to the next section, an officious-looking woman with a Canadian accent asked Vergil and the Founder if they were carrying any weapons. They were not. Did they know what a weapon was, the woman asked. Knives, firearms, pepper spray, brass knuckles, ice picks, cattle prods, bear repellant, e.g. This …
The Sixth Circle The boatman had a thin face, a dewlap and a pencil-thin moustache, and he paddled his boat with a Greenland stick. When he saw Vergil and the Founder standing on the bank, he whirled the paddle and made a wake that oscillated off both banks of the river. But when he saw …
The Fourth and Fifth circles ‘I thought Pluto was an exoplanet’, the Founder said. ‘This guy looks like the town judge in Romulus.’ The guy did, in fact, look like the Romulus town judge. He was sixty years old, as wide as he was tall, with no neck and IT tech glasses. The difference was …
The Second Circle A large man with a shaven skull a stood in the doorway to the next level. ‘Stand on the scale’, he said. ‘I don’t have all day.’ ‘Kiss my ass, Minos’, Vergil said. ‘You have eternity.’ Minos narrowed his eyes and blocked the opening. ‘The man’s a prospie’, Vergil said. ‘Stand aside’. …
The Founder recently visited a pork store in New Jersey. Inscribed on the lintel above the entrance door, he read Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. When he entered, a large man with a thick neck was standing behind the counter, wiping a knife blade. ‘Sorry’, the Founder said. ‘Do you have a bathroom for customers? …