From the old sofa in Tony Ballz’s Basement—As our three loyal fans can attest, The Daily Discord’s Search Truth Quest team continues to unravel the truth behind many hauntings and cryptid sightings across the southwest. Just last month we discovered that nothing paranormal whatsoever was occurring over at Hops on Birch pub. We shut this case after dedicating dozens of man hours, night after night, staking the place out. We left no Stone IPA unturned.
Why the managers over there weren’t willing to pay for our services remains another mystery and may well be the focus of our next investigation, night after night, staking the place out. We’ll leave no Stone IPA unturned.
Yet just as we became recognized locally as paranormal investigators our momentum ground to a halt—and that usually only happens when Zano refuses to buy another round. Our team was notified by our CEO, Pierce Winslow, that the Existential Ghosts for Assuming Dominance and Superiority (E—G.A.D.S.) had opened a legal claim against team STQ. Winslow went on to say we were all fired again, except Cokie, and that all of our security clearances at Discord Tower were hereby revoked.
Lucky for us, Winslow never allowed Ballz to officially move in so we could still crash in his basement as long as we promised not to touch anything, make any phone calls, use the internet, eat any of his food, use the shower or the bathroom, or touch anything.
But why were we being sued and by whom? I thought.
After an exhausting phone book search, we found the local chapter of E—G.A.D.S. What is the deal with phone books? The Joogle was down so we went retro. Anyway, I hopped on my bike and rode the fifty miles to their clandestine headquarters. Zano said he would have given me a ride, but a new coffee shop had opened and he needed to investigate some of the expresso as well as some of the baristas.
Upon reaching E—G.A.D.S., I was led through a passageway built from tombstones into a small crypt that served as the office for a lawyer named Ecto P. Lasim. When asked why we were being sued, he said, “We spirits of the liminal nether realms have taken great offence at your lame attempts to expose us via bad puns and the like. But Zano’s ectopilsner theory will not stand!”
When I asked him about all the other ghost busting shows, he replied. “Oh those ones are way off base, but if the secret of ectopilsner were to be made public, we’d be ruined! We might even have to start paying our own afterlife bar tabs.”
Rubbing my brow for a moment, I looked at his floating form and said, “But won’t the fact that we are being sued by ghosts be the one thing that could really prove your existence?”
Then, before I knew what was happening, his head began to smoke and the building shook under my feet.
“Everything I say is a lie. I am lying,” I added. His body pulsed red and cracks appeared in the walls. “If God is all powerful, can he create a nipple so big that even he can’t suck it?”
Lasim screamed as he burst into a thousand ecto-piddled pieces. The headquarters of E—G.A.D.S. collapsed around me as I fled. It wasn’t too different from that last Discord party at Winslow’s mid-august home—the one we threw without his knowledge while he was on his two year cruise to Atlantis.
Looking around I saw that no evidence remained. If only our cameraman hadn’t been busy making sure all our card decks had fifty three cards in them, he would have been here. We could have finally proven that ghosts do exist. But instead my bike was stolen by elves and I had leprechauns and paranormal serial killers harassing me on the long walk home.
As for the last insult:
I tried to take pictures of them with my cell, but Winslow had already canceled my cell phone service.
