The Secret of Suriname: Chapter X

Ben Hansen

Surprisingly – or, more accurately, not – the utter disregard the smaller man had for the corpses he’d just helped to create caused the remaining German to have a lot more respect for him. Ben, despite having very little in the way of blood on his hands (although a little had been smeared on his pants during a very poorly judge attempt at improving the mood with a pratfall) was still impressively unrespectable. As a result, after divesting the heavily armed German of his heavy armaments, lighter armaments and vest, Ben decided he’d wander about the building while Hugh, armed with the least bloody machete he could pry loose from a German’s teeth, led the interrogation.

“Firstly, where is Muskens?” Hugh asked, too shaken up by his recent double homicide to ask for the man’s full backstory and motives as per usual.

“Who is Muskens?” asked the German, perplexed.

“Don’t play smart with me,” said Hugh, as threateningly as someone with such a distinct aroma of terror and feces about them could. He raised the machete in what he hoped was a threatening manner.

“I am not ze smart player with you!” the German responded, eyes bulging. Hugh lowered the machete and they returned to their sockets via the exits provided.

Hugh tried raising and lowering the machete a few more times just to see how long the eyes would keep bulging in and out, but after one popped out and the German screamed for a few more minutes he decided he should probably put the weapon down and get on with it.

“Why were you people attacking us, then?” he asked.

“Ve are hearing the story of two escapees from the Amazon Lost Tribe Experience, a company we invest in. We are coming to collect for our business to not crash.”
“The Amazon Lost Tribe Experience is crashing?”

“Surely, unless this month of decadence is paid for. It is an experience with very high overheads, you understand.”

“So we... we destroyed the business and killed the debt collectors who came after us?”
“Ja.”

“Huh.” Hugh turned to the three-quarters-of-a-living room. “Hey Ben, we’re evil now!”

“I thought we were just... messy?” Ben asked, head appearing around the door.

“Yeah, apparently we’re ruining lives now.”

Ben walked back into the room, pointing at the two bodies piled in the corner with all the weaponry suggestively. This silent statement on the obviousness of Hugh’s information did not detract as much as he had hoped from the fact that he was no longer wearing pants.

“Okay, but we’re ruining lives that are not necessarily bent on ending ours,” Hugh told the wall a meter and a half to Ben’s left, not allowing a period’s worth of pause between this sentence and “why are you half-naked?”

“I found half a bathroom and tried to wash the blood off,” Ben answered. And you won’t believe what I just found. Also whose lives have we ruined?”

“Half of the bathroom?”

“Well, yes, but it’s more what’s in the bathroom. Is this about Grace again? I’m eighty percent sure she’s not allergic to Little Ben. The one you’re not trying to avoid looking at.”

“No, it turns out we ended the Amazon Lost – look, do you mind?”

“Oh, go for it.”

“No, I mean put some–“

Hugh gave in to the mounting pressure in his skull and turned back to Ben’s form, only to discover after all the effort of keeping his eyes elsewhere, Little Ben was hidden beneath Big Ben’s trademarked baggy t-shirt with pop culture reference. Hugh sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment only the fanfiction writers could say.

“Right. Put some pants on. We’ve got to pay for our month of luxury or the company dies.”

Ben popped back into the other room, and stumbled back, hoisting his pants into place. “Well, we’ve needed some financial pressures to complain about since the whole Christmas debacle. Will they let us pay in instalments?”

“Will you let us pay in instalments?” Hugh asked, turning back to their prisoner and accidentally bringing the machete a little too close to the German genitals. His high-pitched wail as the foreskin was pierced was accompanied by a weird slurping sound as the fear caused his eye to suck back into his socket.

“Ja, ja, anything! Just let me live!”

“Deal!” Hugh shook hands with the German and returned his vest. The German ran screaming into the street.

“I’m not sure what you said, but you made a damn good deal,” Ben said, watching him go.

“Yeah, I was pretty satisfied. What did you find?”
“Well, two things, thanks to that extra walk you made me take. The mirrors in the bathroom? All made with Musken’s tempered glass.”
“The company or the man?”

“Well, I assume the company, but I don’t know, really.”

“Suspicious. And the other thing?”

“The insulation in all the walls here.” Ben smacked a hole into the wall with a handy machete and a viscous yellow goo oozed out.  “Also Musken’s.”

“Musken’s tempered glass?”
“No, Musken’s custard. You can tell by the taste of tempered glass.”

As Hugh moved to look closer, the sound of sirens began to make itself audible in the distance.
"I wonder what they're for," Ben mused as Hugh stuck a finger in the custard.

"Hard to say," Hugh said before sticking a finger in his mouth. The mingled flavours of custard, tempered glass and plaster from the wall made his mouth into a moue of distaste. "Suriname seems like such a law-abiding place."

"Does it seem like they're getting closer?"
"Hard to say."
"Should we be further away from people we killed than we are?"
"Hard to - actually, that one seems pretty easy to say. Let's go."