The Fiery Pool Noodle of Mark

No points for guessing who made the Fiery Pool Noodle of Mark. He runs a landscape and property maintenance business, chasing the money trickling down from landlords of industrial estates, shopping centres and heritage buildings owner-occupied by accountants doing good, honest tax-evasion. Much like how some people smith medieval weapons as a hobby, selling these for beer money, Mark side hustles as an enchantress, adding further value by imbuing such weapons with properties of broken electrical wires or hydrochloric acid, flipping these enchanted goodies for whiskey money.¹ For those of you playing at home, that is a gendered occupation title.

Thirty-four days ago, Mark milled around his warehouse, hands fidgeting behind his back and cigarette butts trailing his path. His teams of grunts were out completing work orders, likewise the subbies, leaving him to wait for one of them or a client to phone with problems - unusually, none did, a circumstance that Mark had not known for 5.46 years and which landed him outside his comfort zone. The Glenfiddich sang its siren chorus from the break room cabinet but it was not yet noon. Then he came across the trailer awaiting a dump-run: decomposing weeds, scrap wood, paint buckets half-full of hardened gyprock, rusted air conditioner, a pool noodle. Inspiration quivered Mark's shins.

Enchanting is a matter of transferring a previously enchanted item's magical caveats onto another item. Mark used his spirit level to determine that a metre-long roller door (in other trailer, awaiting recycling run) carried a +4 fire damage and a curse wherein the inflicted fire damage would be returned to the inflictor's crotch. That this roller door came from a client's smoker's yard suggests a worrying state of that workplace's politics. Then the enchantment simply required separating the +4 from the curse - proper demolition is separating trash from that which is useful to yourself or those with money. A quick incantation: badda bing, badda boom (not the incantation, btw) and Mark held aloft a gently flaming pool noodle, which he left in the gent's perpetually flushing urinal so as to not burn down his warehouse.

The Fiery Pool Noodle of Mark has quietly simmered until now, a day like any other i.e. someone phones with a problem.

Mark answers: 'Yep.'

From the worksite: 'Heeeey.'

Voice leaning angry: 'Yeeeep.'

'We've set up the cabinets and we're finishing off the windows. We've laid the carpet tiles along most of the hallway buuuut the ones in front of the toilet keep flying onto the ceiling. Fit right next to each other. Immaculate craftsmanship.'

'Clean up, you're done for the day. Finish the carpet tomorrow.'

Mark hangs up and dials a number not in his phone but memorised. He had made Graham's acquaintance nine years ago, when a prostitute double-booked and left them in the foyer whilst her pimp, panicking, brainstormed ways to keep this book keeping error unknown to the gossiping circles of the Pimp's Guild. Mark had been understandably irritated, impatient with anticipated cocaine wear-off and (cocaine) chatty, but he was struck by the silver fox seated opposite, quietly rolling catnip-and-tobacco cigarettes. They got talking, recognised entrepreneurs in each other: turns out that Graham is a medium and now Mark's go-to exorcist.

After dark, Graham uses the worksite's street number to open the key box and thereby unlock the front door, lighting a cigarette of Ghost Tobacco upon his entrance. Sure enough, near the toilet, a reaching hand materialises in his exhale. Graham accelerates the smoke with a sharp drag before offering it to the disembodied limb. The hand clutches, moves cigarette midair before the flame brightens again - smoke is inhaled downwards through faint ectoplasmic form and gives mass to lungs, then veins brain stomach spine then, ooourf, engorged anus. A bit later, a second offered dart of Ghost Tobacco has fully visualised the ghost of a grey-haired tradie, who sighs content:

'I hate to smoke on site, unprofessional, but I think that was my unfinished business.'

Lo, the ghost passes on to the afterlife. Next afternoon Graham arrives for payment at the warehouse of Mark, who gets one of his grunts to rinse off his fiery noodle before giving it to Graham.²

Graham sets up the joke: 'What am I supposed to do with this?'

Mark plays the role, whiskey held aloft: 'Sell it.'

'To who?'

The Fiery Pool Noodle of Mark shall be sold to Kev, who announced his life's ambition when to family when he was seventeen: 'I shall be Australia's greatest K-Pop girl group.'

His father had played dull patriarch, ruffling newspaper: 'No Noongar man will ever be a K-Pop girl group.'

His mother had actually listened: 'Group?'

But his auntie, a bit crazy and thereby the sanest of the lot, suggested: 'Low lying fruit, but not big money. Bit on the side?'

So Kev nine-to-fives as a mortgage broker to pay for tyres, pet insurance and, get this, a mortgage. He side hustles as Australia's leading K-Pop girl group on Friday and Saturday nights and every third Sunday afternoon. Kev performs for artistic kicks and drink tickets, so he seeks out the receptive audiences and better atmospheres at weird pockets of suburbia, where people seem to gather to exchange goods-not-explicitly-illegal-but-still. Coincidentally or otherwise, these audiences are more generous with commodities thrown into top-hat: El Dorado Green, which Kev is partial to, Bloody Mary, the hangover cure he begrudgingly indulges in occasionally, or Ghost Tobacco, which Kev has no use for.

It will come to pass that Graham and Kev will meet after a gig at Felicity's, over respective lager and dopplebock. K-Pop is not really Graham's thing but his toes discretely tap within shoe during Kev's requisite arrogant dance, so they will get talking, which will become bartering. Ghost Tobacco is a tool of Graham's trade and he will find an opportunity to buy two month's worth. Kev will find an opportunity to take an opportunity: he will, elsewhere, be offered a black-market gig at a warehouse pool-party but be unsure of this career booster because of safety concerns regarding large scale illegal gatherings, also the possibility that his performance could go badly. The Fiery Pool Noodle of Mark, however, is a casual floatation device which, in a pinch, can be lifted from water to ward off aggressors, or be a cool prop. A trade will be made.

 

1. Technically, he barters these enchanted weapons for esoteric spirits (pun intended) so as to keep these exchanges unknown to the taxman and the wife.

2. Everyone knows how this sounds.