Anti-Flimflammatory

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

This brief sentence is the tip of the iceberg. The 90% unspoken is: any newborn with sufficient grandparents and aunties will accumulate more baby clothes than can be worn before they are outgrown. But another question arises. Who would bother selling a single pair of baby shoes?

A: someone who wants to troll the hucksters of Facebook Marketplace. Said hucksters always message with an offer below asking price. At the meet up, they have brought even less cash with them. The 'take it or leave it' is implied in the travel distance. They never wanted cheap baby shoes, they just wanted to feel big. To say they pulled one over a mark, look how manipulative and callous I am to an audience that laughs, but privately wonders what baby shoes go for in op-shops.

It was this milieu that inspired the Anti-Flimflammatory. Cameron works as a chemist. His days involve putting pipettes into vials, dripping chemicals onto blotting paper and recording the numbers that the machine spits out. He does this whilst high. To save costs, Cameron manufactures his own drugs on the weekends. He also does this whilst high.

Cameron spent one such weekend hallucinating on Pinback Extract. He picked up the phone and followed the caller's instructions. The anthropomorphic toad, in six-foot suit, left him with five Anti-Flimflammatories before closing the door. Cameron has decided against opening that door again - message received, he hung up the phone.

The Anti-Flimflammatory is 65 by 41 mm. It's psychological benefit is primarily the ability to detect bullshit. It is, of course, a suppository.

Saperavi pours second glass of Robert Oatley 2021 McLaren Vale Grenache: 'That, of course, is not a selling point.'

Cameron shuffles in his seat uncomfortably.

'You're using one right now, aren't you?'  Saperavi should have chilled the bottle. 'That, or you're high.'

'Despite what the patch of darkness in the corner says, I can do both.'

'I'm -' chewing on that but letting it drop '- offended that you can't trust me.'

'May as well use one - they've got an infinite gobstopper thing to 'em.'

'That is a selling point.'

Saperavi blazes a Catnip Page: 'I doubt they'd have resale value.'

₵$70 Trendy Pair of Jeans

₵$160 Contact Grimoire

₵$20 Level Up Fig

₵$100 Mud Proof Boots

₵$66 Fire Chicken Feathers (doz.)

₵$15 Fine MRE Spice (p/g)

₵$270 Four Pack of Beer

₵$77 Sex Doll Goon Sack

₵$106 Buxus Sempervirens X Cannabis Sativa (One Plant)

₵$10 Bottled Emotions (qt.)

Saperavi has a Four Pack of Beer, ten grams of Fine MRE Spice, a Brick of Cocaine and a Heritage Listed Dope Plant.

Cameron waves off the latter two: 'Terrestrial drugs show up on tests.'

'I want two Anti-Flimflams.' Saperavi rests clasped hands on table. 'One for personal use, the other to trade. I can offer you ten grams of Fine MRE Spice, one-fifty CatScript total.'

'But I thought - oh, re-sale value.' Cameron glares at the adequately lit corner. 'What if I want the Beer?'

'I am willing to give you one Beer for every Anti-Flippyflappy.'

But the Beers only work when consumed as a Four Pack. They provide the precise drunk which the drinker needs, but only when consumed in totality. Perhaps, Saperavi muses, that would be a rager that fails next morning's blood-alcohol test, in your case.

Cameron: 'Fine MRE Spice. What used for?'

'Meal prep. Do you do much cooking?'

'Every weekend.' Duh. 'Oh. Yes, food helps me live. You have a deal. I ought to prepare for a day of acid rain.'