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Why's the damn water bill so high?" Brad asked. He sat at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming coffee at his left hand with a pile of mail at his right. He sometimes wondered if he were the only man left in the world that preferred physical mail. It helped him keep things straight while electronic bills could easily be forgotten. His eyes peered at the simple bar graph showing a forty percent increase in water usage since the last month.
Helen wiped her hands dry and hung the rag on the handle of the stove before answering in a hushed voice, "It's Mandy. You know how she likes to take those long baths."
Tension immediately knotted in Brad's shoulders. He could feel muscles screwing up and locking from his neck down to his clenched asshole. "That's unacceptable. Look at all these bills since she moved back. An extra hundred in electric, an extra thirty on water, and god knows how much she eats."
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And stays a waif nonetheless," Helen agreed in a bemused tone.
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This is getting untenable, sweetheart. Look, she's your daughter, you have to talk to her about this kind of thing. She won't listen to me."
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It's not her fault, dear. She had such grand plans when she started college, but then the SSA passed. Now the world is all topsy-turvy. Did you know Penny, Rick's wife, signed up? I saw her at the grocery store yesterday. I didn't speak to her because she was busy sucking off one of the bag boys."
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Don't change the subject," Brad grumbled. "I'm sorry her plans have been put on hold, but the truth is that she didn't leave college only because of the SSA. She was flunking out before they suspended classes."
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Oh god, the stories you hear. All our institutions of higher learning shutting down almost overnight while they figure out how to fairly separate the sexes. They had some video on the news the other night showing that class at the University of Michigan. It started with one girl stripping down and getting on all fours like a dog and before you know it that whole room was rutting like animals. Even the professor!"
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Helen, for Christ's sake, would you focus on our problems and stop fantasizing about fucking a room full of college kids." The SSA had caused Brad more headaches than most. Human resource departments everywhere struggled to adjust, and Brad's was no different. Tons of women had quit and, though they'd given notice, it didn't do much good to have them around the office when they spent all day on their knees. Adding to his concerns were the waves of new legislation moving through at breakneck speed meant to incorporate SSA volunteers into the workplace. The government envisioned a future where fuck breaks replaced smoke breaks. Brad was having to plan a room where an SSA volunteer could rest comfortably until one of the men took a break to empty his balls in her. And that was not the simple job of managing tax forms and insurance paperwork that Brad had originally signed up for. "Look, we simply can't afford to have Mandy here if she's going to use up this much stuff. We downsized when she moved off to college so that you could support her and her scholarships would take the rest. But then she wanted a car and then she lost her scholarships, and now she's back here eating us out of house and home. She needs to get a job, at least."
Helen sat down at the table beside him and put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make light of the situation. It is a stressful time for her as well, you know. Just yesterday, her friend Marika signed up for SSA service. Pretty soon, they'll all be doing it." She glanced at her husband, but he was too buried in the bills to notice her. "I'll talk with Mandy tonight when she gets home."
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Where is she anyway?"
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I'm not sure. She went out with some friends, celebrating something or the other. Maybe Marika's signing up. It's becoming something that they celebrate, like getting a tattoo." Helen stood up and put away a few dishes. "I'm going upstairs. Quit reading all this stuff and go do something to take your mind off of it. It's only going to make you madder."
Resentfully, he followed his wife's advice. After she went upstairs to watch television, he switched from the after dinner coffee to a glass of bourbon and headed to his study. The room gave him an immediate relief from the pressures of the rest of the world. In its center, he'd constructed a large table with the topography of a battlefield. On it stood dozens of small pewter figurines of fantastical beasts and men. He admired them briefly before heading to a second table he'd made into a workstation. He sat down and got to work on his latest endeavor, a dragon that he'd 3D printed and started to meticulously paint. The hours flew by without interruption until he heard the front door open and slam. Mandy's return home barged into his serenity and with it came all of the annoyances that he had momentarily shut out of his mind. He listened intently as his stepdaughter's footsteps clattered up the stairs. At least Helen kept her promise, he thought, as muffled voices drifted down from upstairs. Pleased with that minor development, he returned to his work, adding a flourish of red to the dragon's chest before setting it to the side to dry.
