Welfare Bros, a short story (from 2019)

I stood outside the long, gray welfare office building, in partial disbelief that I was really about to go through with this, but I had no other option. It had sure been a cozy living situation, playing Call of Duty and smoking crack every day in my mother’s basement. Lately, though, my dear sweet mother had been spouting some stupid nonsense like, “Kyle, you’re 40 years old! Time to get off your ass and go get a job!” I probably shouldn’t have waited to be forcibly removed from the house before I did something about it. 

Anyway, it was time to make a change. I was about to go do something with my life, dammit! It was tough to walk with the full body cast on, and my crutches scraped against the ground as I gingerly ambled up to the building. I needed to make it look like I was actually using them as much as possible.

“Hello, can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“Uh, yes,” I responded, pretending to slowly hobble to the window. “I would like one welfare, please.”

“Sir, this is a Wendy’s,” she scolded me in disbelief. “Get out of the drive-thru, you’re holding up traffic.”

“Ope, sorry,” I apologized sheepishly.

“God, all you crackheads are the same,” the woman muttered before abruptly tripping and falling out of the drive-thru window herself, nearly landing on top of me as she crashed to the pavement. “Linda, I broke my hip again!”

I limped away from that mess of a situation as quickly as I could. Continuing to practice my hobble, I made my way across the street to the actual welfare office. The full body cast was getting more and more painful.

“I would like one welfare, please.”

“Um, do you have any qualifications for these benefits you are requesting, sir?” the receptionist replied, skeptically but with a bit of flirtation in her voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said matter-of-factly. “I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break both my legs, and every afternoon I break both my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.”

The receptionist took a long, hard look at me with her striking bright blue eyes, giving my crutches and cast a thorough examination.

“Oh, well that checks out, I suppose!” she suddenly chirped with a smile. “I can go grab you a check.”

“Awesome!” I replied a bit too happily, trying to mask my excitement. This was almost too easy. She handed me a big, fat check for a life-changing amount of money and patted me on the back as I walked out. Now that I had gotten my payday, I could go live my best life and follow my dreams.

After a few more hits from my crack pipe in the parking lot, I shed the cumbersome crutches and body cast. My next move was to meet my buddy Bill behind the dumpster in a local alley. Bill was a local scavenger who had recently re-upped on crack and found a nice cardboard box to lie in, so his life was really coming together. We were going to make plans for how to spend the welfare fortune I had worked so tirelessly to obtain. Completely carefree, I wandered into the gray and desolate alley off to the side of some heavily graffitied buildings.

“Ay, Kyle, what’s up, my bro,” Bill grunted as we performed our traditional handshake. “You got the money?”

“Hell yes, brother!” I exclaimed, pulling out the welfare check.

“Oh, we gonna be living good tonight, my dude,” Bill said. “Getting kicked out of your mom’s was definitely the right call.”

“What can I say? I’m the best decision maker around. What do you wanna do first?”

“I was thinking we could go buy some lottery tickets,” he said excitedly. “You know, try to REALLY hit it big.”

“Sounds like good stuff, big man,” I said. “But I have something even better. How about we start an underground animal fighting ring?”

“Man, that’s cool, I guess,” Bill grunted. “How ‘bout we split it two ways? Your half goes to fighting, mine goes to the lottery.”

“Sure, brah, that works,” I said, realizing it was a fair settlement. We both had big dreams, and I was confident that we would both do great work toward achieving our financial goals.

As Bill drove an hour to the next town to fulfill our lottery destiny, I stumbled away to go meet my friend Jerry at his office. I was going to find some nice, sweet animals in need of a home and toughen them up, really make them ready for the streets. Jerry always managed to have some kind of weird-ass animals around, so he was perfect. He also had the power to rent out space for local businesses if needed. 

“Hey Jerry, I got some big power moves for you today, chief,” I announced as I walked in.

“Sir, this is a Buffalo Wild Wings,” the man behind the counter said sharply. “If I see you in my restaurant one more time, I’m going to be busting some heads. All you bums coming in here all the time, thinking I owe you something. Well, THIS IS AMERICA, DAMMIT!”

“All right, all right, I’m getting out! Geez.”

That B-Dubs guy was always so rude to me, telling me off in between the Jerry Springer episodes he had on the TV. People like that really got my blood boiling. Oh well, fuck him. After a few more hours of just wandering around and vibing, I eventually found the man of the hour.

“My man Kyle!” Jerry yelled enthusiastically. “It’s been a hot minute. What’s popping, chief?”

“Oh, so much, man, we’ll catch up soon! Right now, I just have a new business idea I wanna discuss with you.”

“Right on, brother.”

We got to talking business, and a few short minutes of conversation led to a lucrative deal. For only $50,000 a month, I was able to rent out five square feet of property in the bathroom stall of a nearby Applebee’s for my animal fighting operation. Additionally, Jerry was able to wrangle me a couple of sewer rats and a mangy old shrew that were sure to be big-time powerhouses in the ring.

I went back to meet Bill at the dumpster and analyze my great success. After driving such a hard bargain, I was really feeling myself. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of power moves Bill had been making with his brilliant lottery scheme. He pulled up in the rickety ice cream truck he had recently stolen to use as his vehicle. 

“Ay, Kyle, I did it, brother!” he exclaimed victoriously.

“Hell yeah, me too, man! What’s the haul?”

“So I spent about half a million of this money on scratch-off tickets, right?” he began. “And dude, they were like picking the numbers right there in front of me. It was last minute, ya feel? And we came, like REALLY close to winning on one of the tickets. Only one number away!”

“Okay, I got you. And?”

“Well, I think that’s pretty damn good, personally! We gave it the ol’ college try, and we were really close!”

“Hell yeah, bro! So did we actually win anything?”

“Yeah, dude! They gave me a consolation prize.” He reached into his pocket and showed me. “It’s a Double-A battery!”

“DUDE, FUCK YES!” I screamed in pure bliss. We really needed that battery. How else would we be able to power my laptop so we could keep track of the rodent fight results? I told Bill about my own business breakthrough and he was just as excited as I was. We were a couple of entrepreneurs on a path to inevitable superstardom. No force in the universe would be great enough to stop the brilliant shooting star of our success.

We decided to advertise our operation to try and attract a crowd, so we find some nice brick walls near the restaurant to write on in chalk. “ANYML PHEYETING. APPLBI’Z BAFRUUM. B THEIR,” Bill wrote on the side of an old warehouse. Our ingenious marketing strategy had been executed.

The next day, we headed over to the Applebee’s restroom for our first official day of action. We had managed to attract a packed and electric crowd, making sure to keep them within the half of the stall we had rented out. A dentally challenged homeless man and a couple of stray pitbulls were anxiously waiting to take in the cultural experience of a lifetime. 

“All right, fellas, let’s do this!” Bill screamed. We placed the shrew and one of the rats together in the ring, which was made of rubber bands hastily taped together. 

“Let’s fight, boys!”

Admittedly, the animals weren’t super aggressive toward each other at first. It appeared that moving and showing signs of life was not exactly their M.O.

“Wait, you gotta be kidding me, Billy boy,” the homeless guy protested. “I ain’t get to see no gosh-darn event! Just a couple’a dead rodents. This has to be some kinda sick joke.”

“No, no, no, bud,” Bill retorted. “We did the work. We rented out this nice-ass space. We got these fancy fuckin’ exotic animals from our guy. So, in conclusion, you owe us your hard-earned money.”

“Nope, not happenin’. I’m outta here.” In a flash, the bum was gone.

“Hey! You better fork it over, you old geezer!” 

I looked on in awe as Bill ran after the man and tackled him just as he opened the bathroom door. The two fell out into the dining room and began rolling around on the dirty floor, likely contracting some kind of diseases. Innocent Applebee’s diners leapt from their seats screaming as panic and chaos flooded the restaurant. Bill and the homeless man continued to go at it without restraint, with Bill dealing the majority of the blows. I stood there frozen, not knowing what to do. Within a few minutes, the jig was up, and the police arrived.

“Sir, did you assault this man?” a cop demanded of Bill.

“No! He jumped me, bro!” Bill indignantly growled.

“Sir, everyone in this joint testified that you were the aggressor in the situation. You’re guilty. Cuff him, boys!”

The men in blue grabbed and handcuffed a struggling Bill before dragging him away.

“Kyle! Do something!” Bill screamed in panic.

Alas, I looked at him and shrugged. He had kind of done it to himself.

As the police hauled Bill out of Applebee’s, I noticed a small piece of paper that fell out of Bill’s pocket and went unnoticed. I walked over and picked it up. It was a lottery ticket that Bill had apparently forgotten to play. I glanced at the TV screen in the corner of the restaurant, where the winning lottery numbers were being revealed. The numbers on the ticket matched the ones on the screen exactly.

“Guys! I just won the lottery!” I announced to the room. “I feel God in this Applebee’s tonight!”

The entire restaurant cheered raucously for me in delight, and I ran to the nearest store to cash in my ticket. As I made my way into the Kroger across the street, I noticed that the cashier looked familiar. It was the same lady who had been working at the welfare office before, and she was still just as captivating. She flashed me a radiant smile.

“I would like one jackpot, please,” I requested.

“Hey, it’s you,” she said, unhinging the cash register from the counter and handing the whole thing over to me. “You seem to be doing better. How have you been?”

“Oh, you know, just concocting a failed get-rich-quick scheme and stumbling into an accidental fortune,” I replied as I took the register. “What about you?”

“Well, I got fired from the welfare office,” she sighed wistfully. “Apparently, I wasn’t actually supposed to give you all that money.”

“Oh well, it happens,” I shrugged. “It all worked out for the best.”

“Yeah, it did!” she said. “I saw you wandering around town, and I really didn’t like how everyone was so mean to you all the time.” 

Suddenly, she got a crazy look in her eyes. 

“By the way, you’re kinda cute,” she admitted. “I … I think I’m in love with you.”

“Wait, really?!” I was utterly baffled. “Uh, hell yeah, that’s awesome! Let’s run off together or something!”

“Okay, sounds good!” she giggled.

We ran off, got married, and are now living an extravagant life thanks to the lottery money. Welfare Lady and I bought a beautiful mansion in the countryside, where we now have access to not only crack cocaine, but powder cocaine. Our first child, Welfare Lady Jr., is on the way. The gender reveal said it’s a boy!

More than anything, I think it was my excellent decision making and impeccable work ethic that led to the life I have built for myself. I am a true self-made man, and I couldn’t be happier.