Playing With Fire

It was a running gag that on the official town plaque the last listed sister city was Gehenna, A.K.A Hell.

As town historian I looked into it. Turns out in late 1600’s, height of the witch hysteria, the then mayor ‘made a deal’ so that all witches would leave the town alone.

The town council found this hilarious, and so a Sister City celebration was organised for Halloween week. Lots of events, witch pageants, keys to the city given to people in silly devil costumes, lots of kitschy touristy crap.

Actually went pretty well.

…

What, you expected something else?

Juliet & Romeo

Names have power. The name given to a product, or idea, can make or break it. But names also have certain expectations, cultural references weighing on them. And more often than not, even if they don’t know it, lives will be shaped.

So when the two biggest crime families in the city had in their ranks a boy called Romeo and a girl called Juliet, well, even though the two families were at war and made every effort to avoid interaction, they met and had a torrid romance.

And then Juliet killed him when she found out who he was.

The Occasional Acorn

She was clearly a novice player. Normally this would be fine, but this was a high end tournament, and she was just annoying everyone.

So they kept trying to bully her out of hands. And more times than not, they’d end up losing to her. And so she ended up in the final two with me.

Hollywood would end it with duelling straight flushes, but it came down to her having a higher kicker.

“So this is the part where you admit to fooling everyone, right?” I asked her.

“Huh?” was all she said, and that just broke my heart.

Blackmail Bargaining

The discussion was not going particularly smoothly, it was safe to say. Any attempts at positive, forward-thinking negotiation just started another round of arguments about who started some conflict hundreds of years ago or who owned what island. The exact opposite of the Collective’s aims.

                                  

So, we called it a day, and all the representatives went back to their hotels.

There, each and every one of them found a couple of women with no morals waiting to ‘entertain’ them.

And all of it filmed by my cameras.

Would have worked, but turns out some of them were in open relationships…

Little Grey Cells

Finally, the world famous detective turned to Miranda.

“And thus, it just leaves you, the so called ‘Sweet, Innocent’ Miranda.

But not so! No, I have deduced that you manipulated the Major into thinking you were his late wife with the mushrooms you stole from your brother’s laboratory. Why else did have your hair styled twice in one day and ‘lose’ your keyring when asked about it?”

Everyone in the room held their breath and waited.

She remained still and said nothing.

In the long, drawn out court battle that eventuated, it turned out that ‘deductions’ aren’t all that conclusive…

Spoilt Meat

Everyone knew that Elena’s Spicy Beef Stew was the best wet savoury dish in the state. But every year when the society cook-off happened, something came up, an uncle had a heart attack, the corn fields got beetles, some emergency forced her to pull out of the competition.

This year, since I was the new chairwoman of the prize committee, I went to her homestead and told her how we were going to give her a special prize for lost awards.

She was surprisingly upset at this.

I was confused, until I accidentally opened the larder door and saw inside.

A New Old Source

I walked into the boardroom looking confident. The boss sat at the head of the table, looking

“So where’s this new show idea? Remember, lots of sex and violence!”

“Picture a series of tales, based on a couple of collections of stories now in public domain, there are tales about women fooled into sexual service, about torturing women with hot nails, manhoods get cut off, as well as a bunch of more traditional quests and evil witches and the like.”

“Sold!”

As he left, his secretary smiled knowingly.

“Grimm?”

“No, Afanasyev.

There’s more than one culture out there you know.”