Shafted by Mandasue Heller

help him out even if they’d been able to – which they wouldn’t be, because they were such a bunch of losers.
    There was absolutely nobody he could turn to, and the realisation of just how alone he was hit him harder than he would have imagined it could. Overcome by a sudden urge to cry, he went back into the bedroom, calling over his shoulder for Flood and Baron to take whatever they wanted.
    Staying there until he heard the front door closing, Larry waited a few minutes to make sure that they had really gone. Then, wandering back into the lounge, he slumped down on his chair and gazed around to see what damage they’d done. They had taken everything of value, from the TV to the studio-quality stereo system, right down to the paintings off the walls. It was a wonder they hadn’t taken the cushion from under his arse as well, he thought miserably. But that would have been too much of a piss-take, considering that they’d get far more than the three and a half thousand he supposedly owed for what they had taken.
    Searching without success for alcohol to numb the pain, Larry held his head in his hands, wondering how the hell he’d managed to piss five years’ worth of earnings up the wall in one short year. He’d always been extravagant, splashing it about in the clubs and casinos, often picking up the tab for his fellow drinkers and whichever bird he was wooing at the time, and taking taxis and even chauffeured cars here, there and everywhere. But he’d never thought it was a problem, because he’d been paid enough to sustain the lifestyle and hadn’t concerned himself with trivialities like checking his account to see what a dent it was really making. Obviously, he’d been riding close to the line all along, though, so when the pay stopped coming in to top it up, it hadn’t taken long to erode the rest.
    Larry was broke now, and with no job to replenish his funds he had no means of getting out of the pit he’d fallen into – or, rather, jumped into, because he’d done this with his eyes wide open. He couldn’t even sign on to get him through, because they’d laugh him out of the benefits office. And he had nothing of any real value left to sell. He was already in danger of losing the apartment if he couldn’t meet the next mortgage payment – which, obviously, he couldn’t. But even if he’d wanted to sell it, he doubted that the bank would allow him the time it might take to offload it without heaping penalty payments and interest on his head, leaving him with nothing but more debt for his troubles.
    It infuriated him that he even had to think about selling his home. He’d worked bloody hard for it, and resented that he might be forced to move into some small tatty place – like the hovels his scummy family called home. And how could he live among the public again, anyway, now they’d made it so clear what they thought of him? He’d be dead within a week – if he hadn’t killed himself first!
    Left with no other option, Larry reached for the phone.

    ‘Well, well,’ Georgie said coolly. ‘This is unexpected, I must say. Was there something you forgot to say last time we spoke? Because I’m pretty sure you covered everything when you told me to go and fuck myself.’
    Like a spoiled child being taken to task by a disapproving parent, Larry wanted to scream at her to get off his back. But she had the upper hand right now, and if he was to have any hope of crawling out of the hole that life and ill fortune had landed him in, he knew he’d have to swallow his pride and throw himself on her mercy.
    Muttering ‘Sorry,’ he gritted his teeth when Georgie asked him to speak up because she didn’t quite catch that .‘I said I’m sorry ,’ he repeated tersely. ‘I know I was out of order the other day, but you caught me at a bad time. Anyway, I really am sorry if I offended you, but I’ve had a good think about what you were saying, and I reckon you could be right about giving that job a go.