THE PIÑAZIS (An Original Short Story - Part 1)

The dance anthems of three years ago played in the auditorium.

It was the last day of Strocher Energy Services’ annual weekend sales retreat.

There is a foot locker in the middle of the room, beside it a box, and behind it a small stage. The box is the size of a nice walk in closet, half the size of a shipping container, and exactly the size of a changing room in an upscale boutique.

The box had been in rooms like this before, and had been in this very same room 2 retreats ago, for that self same Dallas branch of Strocher Energy Services annual retreat. John made his living off of repeat business. John is not a salesman from Dallas. John is the owner and operator of this peculiar box.

Yesteryear’s dance tunes of faded out as the Dallas sales team gathered around the makeshift stage behind the box.

Spotlights turn on. Well not spotlights but lights, lights turn on. Now there is on the stage a man. He is nearly, but not quite, the perfect stereotype of a corporate sales man.

• His hair is nice, but not too nice.
• His suit was perfectly tailored, but for a man that outweighed him by 15 pounds.
• His teeth while perfectly straight had just a bit too much of a dullness to them, white though they may have been.

This man grabs for a microphone, there was no feedback. Feedback would have been cliché, and this man, only comes so close to clichés and stereotypes. Close but no cigarillo.

"Ladies and gentlemen" he clears his throat and mimes but does not fulfill or rather alludes to miming the mic tap and rhetorical hey is this thing on?

All 31 members of the Dallas sales team are now gathered around the stage.

Men and women ranging in age from early 20s (clearly the newbies, but not without sharklike eyes that surely indicated a willingness to move up the ladder by any means necessary) to seasoned vets, the gray hairs. Folks who in their own unique ways fell short of that icon that is the perfect stereotype of a salesman.

"We've had a great year, and hell we've had a couple of great years now. Ever since I came to this team, back when the Dallas branch was the most underperforming in the whole of the company, but no through hard work and some grinding, I'm looking at you Gary!" the penultimate stereotyped laughed and pointed as the crowd chucked and the man who we can only assume is Gary blushed and shrugged.

"But we pulled it out and yet again we set the standard across the company this year with the highest sales on record." he paused for the applause.

"We sold more to our old customers getting them upgraded improving their operations and we brought in more poor would be savages from the dark and showed them the true light that is the reliability and service standards of our great company. We set a record here guys. And, gals. We did it." We murdered it this year, killed it."

The man on stage looked over to his left (stage right) and a 20 something woman came over and handed him a glass of champagne.

"We killed it metaphorically," this was John's queue. He walked behind the crowd and over to his box. Beside it a trunk which he opened, revealing an array of daggers, bats, whips, chains, and other non projectile weapons. The audience growing more and more excited kept one eye on him and one on the speaker.

"And now let’s kill some shit literally ya'll earned it!"

The crowd made its way to John’s trunk which was in front of John’s box and picked from the weapons inside. Blood and excitement in their eyes. John smiled a wee bit.

He'd been overseeing and managing gigs like this for half a decade, but still, the times like this when he could smell the adrenaline on a crowd was why he was still in his line of work.

Once everyone had his or her preferred weapon in hand, John got on the stage. With out the use of the microphone he addressed them, "Alright folks it is fantastic to be back here, it's been a couple years and I see some new faces but I am truly honored to be sharing this experience with you. Watch out for each other and yeah let’s do this!"

A distinctly human smell is the first thing to come from the box. Shit, fear, and the sour milk smell of the unwashed. The second thing to come from the box is whimpers of fear and confusion. Panicked questions in German.

Then out walked 15 Nazis. Confused and befuddled. Lead by a man in his mid 30's in the all black uniform of an SS officer. With blond hair and blue eyes, he was an exemplar of the supposed Aryan race. He starts screaming commands to his men, reaching to his hip he pulls out a Luger, leveling it at a member of the Dallas sales team.

The sales team starts laughing, brandishing their weapons. The SS officer is confused, his men are confused. He pulls the trigger. There is a click, but no shot. He tries again.

Click but no bang.

Ammunition, as well as rifles, bayonets, and knives had all been removed in John's procurement process. He throws the weapon down and looks back at his fellow National Socialists. The last think he would ever hear was:

AUFEDERSEIN MOTHER FUCKER!

As a 9 iron collided with the side of his head, he was out cold. Luckily for him as the rest of the beating he received from the near perfect stereotype of a salesman was brutal. His nearly perfectly fitted suit was left covered in a modern art museums wet dream of blood splatters.

Dallas's award winning sales team finished off the rest of the Germans in their own bloody fashion over the next hour. Sometimes 1 on 1 sometimes 4:1. Always bloody, and always a great bonding ritual.

Photos were captured and shared garnering likes a plenty. The unofficial leader in the likes received contest was a young woman, Penny, who had just made the transition from intern to full time. She posed with the decapitated heads, she was shaping up to be an incredible sales person.

After the blood bath the sales team continued drinking as John loaded the expired Germans onto a dolly and rolled them back into the box. John stepped in along with them.

All the Dallas sales team saw was that the box shimmered for half a second, then saw John walk back out of a now empty box freshly washed and in a change of clothes.