Where's My Damn Money?

“This is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose, you fucking lazy bitch!” said the deep and dark schizophrenic voice in Pia Caine’s mind. The humanoid cat would kneel to the stone floor of her laboratory and clutch her paws over her head. Was this all in her imagination? Was she going crazy? Would she be destined for a trip to Bedlam? The thought of her fuzzy arms locked in a straightjacket brought tears to Pia’s eyes and a quivering in her jaw. She managed to get some spittle and tears on her pink dress, but she wiped them away and tried to pull herself to her feet using one of the many tables in her lab.

Pia convulsed in fear while gazing through teary eyes at the many chemicals and potions scattered across her tables. The fact that she had a surplus of these items and nobody was buying shattered her heart into millions of pieces. She pulled a satchel out of her dress and spilled the few gold coins she had across one of the tables. Baby steps towards paying her debt: that’s all it amounted to. The grating voice in her head had no patience for baby steps. In fact, it blurted out, “Where’s my damn money!” and Pia was jittering on the floor once again.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?!” Pia begged. “I’ll get you your payment! I swear! Just give me some more time!”

“You had all the time in the world and you came up with chump change!” belted the voice once again. Only this time, when Pia lifted her trembling kitty head out of her paws, she saw a slender figure covered in a black robe and hood standing only a few feet away from her. That must have been him: Chetty Claymore, elven necromancer and relentless dunner. He slowly paced towards the spilled coins and scooped them up in his hands while counting at a brisk pace with his elongated finger. “It’s not enough!” he shouted.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Claymore! I really am!” sobbed Pia. She pulled herself to her feet yet again, but almost lost her equilibrium. “Business has been slow lately and…”

After Chetty pocketed the gold coins, his hand glowed with purple energy before he grabbed Pia around the throat and hoisted her high in the air, booted legs kicking and all. “No excuses!” he bellowed. “I saved your life on that battlefield and you repay me with the bare minimum! Unacceptable, you stupid whore!” Chetty threw Pia to the ground and left her coughing violently, even spitting up a little bit of blood.

Once Pia was able to regain her oxygen (albeit with raspy breaths), Chetty leaned down and grabbed her by the nape of her neck so that their eyes could lock on each other. He angrily whispered, “I gave you life and I can take it away. As a necromancer, I’m well within my abilities to do that.”

Without even a modicum of struggle against Chetty’s grip and with trembling in her jaw, Pia asked, “How is that supposed to get you your money? If I’m dead, you’ll have nobody to pay you back.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart,” said Chetty has he tightened his grip and earned a yelp out of his victim. “If I don’t get the money from you and your so-called business…I can always get it from somewhere else. Just because the debtor dies, doesn’t mean the debt goes away. Surely, you have other members of your feline family who are willing to foot the bill for their lazy clan member. Maybe your mother. Maybe your father. Maybe your siblings. No matter where the money comes from...” Chetty leaned closer to make his final point. “I own the Caine family!”

As Chetty Claymore chuckled evilly, Pia pictured her elderly parents at the mercy of this madman. They were just feeble felines who snuggled in bed and rested their old bones next to the fire. And now this deranged elf was going to take full advantage of them. He could slap them. He could punch them. He could even do something involving his genitals. The more Chetty cackled, the louder Pia hissed in response. She took a huge bite out of the necromancer’s nose and the scream-inducing pain forced him to let go.

Pia crab-walked backwards in disbelief at what she had done. As she pulled herself up using the table’s edge, she assessed the damage with wide kitty eyes. Once Chetty pulled his hand away from his nose, he revealed a chunk had been dangling from his face and blood was pouring like a faucet. “I will teach you some respect, you disgusting harlot!” he shouted.

The necromancer raised his pointy hands in the air and summoned more purple energy. From this bright radiation, he shot a skull projectile at Pia, who dove over one of her tables out of the way of the blast. “You can’t hide from me forever!” he roared.

“I don’t need to hide!” sassed Pia. “Stay away from my goddamn family!” She picked up one of her magical potions and tossed it on Chetty’s face. The glass shards combined with the acidic content turned the necromancer’s face into rare hamburger meat. He screeched in agony and threw purple energy skulls blindly around the lab.

The potions exploded into wildfire upon contact with the projectiles. But instead of getting the hell out of her laboratory to safety, Pia used the flames as a metaphor for her anger and leaped into Chetty. She struggled to feed his face to the open flames, but the elf pushed back just as hard.

“You don’t get it, do you?” said Chetty during the struggle. “You think killing me is going to end your debt? I’m just one small part of a bigger agency. If not me, then someone else will come knocking at your door! And another! And another! Or maybe they don’t have to knock at your door. Maybe they can get inside that pretty little head of yours!”

Pia loosened her grip in contemplation of Chetty’s point. This brief opening allowed Chetty to bite down on Pia’s hand and draw enough blood to heighten the flames around her laboratory. The feline chemist ran around while clutching her bloody paw, desperately trying to wrap it up with the length of her pink dress. The harder she pressed, the more she bled. Meanwhile, Chetty’s horrific visage was still able to give off a wicked smile with every tooth showing.

The necromancer stood up and snickered, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have parents to harass and quite possibly have some…fun with!”

The constant snickering sent a firestorm through Pia’s adrenaline system. She didn’t care about the blood in her paw. She didn’t care about the massive debt she supposedly owed. She cared only that this maniac was even considering messing with her family. The many dinners the Caine family had with cherry pies, the snuggle sessions with catnip, and the comfort of living with such warm hearted people gave Pia the motivation necessary to deliver a running drop kick to Chetty, knocking him into the flames.

The necromancer rolled around trying to extinguish the flames that consumed his body, but it was all for naught. One of the pillars in the ceiling above came crashing down on top of him and obliterated his ribcage into bloody pieces. Meanwhile, Pia wrapped her bloody paw once again and scurried for the front exit. The growing flames blocked the doorway along with every window in the lab. She tried several times to walk through fire anyways, but the burning pain and chemical odor from her potions slapped her away every time.

If Pia was going to die in this lab, that would leave her family open to an attack from these asshole debt collectors. They would be defenseless, just like any other family member that inherited the debt after their deaths. The Caine family of kitten chemists would be wiped off the face of the earth and it was all for the sake of ill-gotten money. Money was overrated. Money was the root of all evil. Money wasn’t worth dying over. Pia took a deep breath and dove through the fiery front entrance. The heat singed her fur badly, but after rolling on the cobblestone streets outside, she was able to extinguish the assaulting flames.

There she was, lying in the gutter while her potion lab and her only source of income went up in smoke and flames. Her body ached, her paw bled, and her fur felt like she went swimming at the base of a volcano. And yet, she stood up tall and proud, this time without anything to aid her.

She took some deep breaths and limped away from the burning lab, almost losing her balance, but still standing tall in the end. She willingly knelt down and screamed to the sky, “You want my money?! You want my debt?! Come and get it, you stupid sons of bitches! I’ll take your whole agency down! Nobody fucks with the Caine family! Nobody!”

And then the schizophrenic voices assaulted her mind like a thousand lobotomies. “This is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.” The dark voices said this over and over again and all Pia could do was clutch her head with her bloody paw while skeletons in hoods and robes gathered around her. One of them knelt down beside her, grabbed her by the nape of the neck to make eye contact, and said, “We’ll be in touch!” before a snake crawled out of the skeleton’s eye socket.

The skeletons and the snake disappeared in puffs of smoke not unlike the flames surrounding the laboratory. Pia wept a rainfall of tears onto the ground as she realized what she had gotten herself into. With no job, no income, and too much fear to fight against her dunners, the Caine family would succumb to the whims of this horrible agency. Debt collection was a business and business was booming as loudly as the flames in the background. Even so, Pia picked her head up, wiped her tears and blood away, and reluctantly said, “I’ll be ready for you!”