“Well that’s taken care of,” I said with a smile.
He scowled at me.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Well, you know how that vampire’s been giving us trouble?”
“We’ve already taken care of that,” he reminded me.
“Oh sure,” I agreed. “He’s on the run, it’s just that,” here I started to giggle, “I thought to myself, ‘waste not, want not,’ and you see, well, I disguised myself as one of his servants, you know, and got in his castle. He’s got himself all packed up; nine boxes of dirt and the tenth for himself and well, I couldn’t very well stake him right then and there. Those people look askance at you if you try to stab their boss through the heart. But you know, they don’t pay attention to little things, like labels and what not.”
“Labels?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You see, all the boxes were labeled, and the vampire had already sealed himself away, and well, I switched the labels.”
“Switched them?”
“Well, switched, changed; the address, I mean.”
“Address?”
“Well, he was sending himself back home, but I thought to myself, ‘Now where would I like him to go?’ You see, he’s caused us a lot of troubled, but he’s saved us a bit of trouble in paying for his own shipment. Well, I might cause him a bit of trouble, and maybe he could pay us back for all the trouble he’s caused us by, well, causing more trouble somewhere else.”
“Where?” he demanded.
“Up north,” I admitted.
“North?”
“North, you know, where those bandits keep stealing our shipments.”
He nodded as realization came over his face.
“And as very often happens, especially with large shipments, they get waylaid.”
“By bandits,” he added.
“By bandits. And now our problem can be our problem’s problem.”
Tale Told 