against his will, so if he got stern with them they might let him through.
“Look, asshole,” he said, immediately wondering if “asshole” was taking it too far. “I’m here for the clue, and nothing else. If you don’t have it, then there’s no reason for me to stick around, so I’d like you to get the hell out of my way so I can keep searching.” He could see on the skinny guy’s face that “asshole” had definitely been too far, but it was too late now. If he apologized, he’d never get to leave.
The skinny guy stepped out of his way. “You were bringing the party down anyway. And you don’t smell good.”
“What the shit is going on in here?” a booming voice asked.
Ethan turned around. A man had emerged from a back room. A very large man in his thirties, well over six feet tall, wearing a white t-shirt with several brown stains on the front. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He had a unibrow, except there was a missing strip just over the edge of his left eye, making it look like he had one really long eyebrow and one really short one. He had quite a belly on him, but his arms were thick.
“Yo, Grendie, this guy is looking for a scavenger hunt clue,” said the skinny guy.
“Then why didn’t somebody wake me up?”
“You didn’t tell us to wake you up.”
“The shit I didn’t! I told Benny to wake me up if somebody came here looking for a clue.”
Some guy, presumably Benny, snapped out of a trance. “Huh? What?”
Grendie walked across the room. The floor didn’t shake with each step, but Ethan could imagine that it did, accompanied by a musical theme. Nobody in the house seemed happy that Grendie was awake. The skinny guy stepped far out of the way.
Ethan was hugely relieved to have finally found somebody who knew what he was talking about, though the sight of Grendie walking right toward him was not one that gave him peace of mind. Ethan couldn’t quite identify the aroma that wafted from him, but anything that could compete with the other foul smells in this place deserved respect.
“You looking for a clue?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ethan.
“I’ll sell it to you.”
“How much?”
“No, I take that back. I’ll fight you for it.”
“I’m not here to fight anybody.”
“Well, fucking duh. I know you didn’t come here to fight me. But you’re here, and I’m here, and when I get woke up out of a sound sleep, I like to fight.”
“I’ll happily buy it from you,” said Ethan.
“Are you deaf? I said I wanted to fight. You want the clue bad enough, you’ll fight me for it.”
“I can’t beat you in a fight,” said Ethan. “I mean that as a compliment.”
“Not in a one-on-one fistfight, no,” said Grendie. “We’ll figure out a way to make it more fair.”
“Fire!” somebody shouted. “Fight each other with lighters and aerosol cans!”
“Do we have any aerosol cans?” Grendie asked.
“I’ll run out and get some right now if you do it.”
“Naw,” said the skinny guy. “We can’t be shooting streams of fire indoors.”
“Well, you could take it outdoors, I guess. That would still be fun to watch.”
“Knives,” said Grendie.
“No,” said Ethan. “I’m not going to have a knife fight with you.”
“Do you want the clue or not?”
“Not bad enough for a knife fight.”
“Oh, I think you do,” said Grendie. “I’m not saying we’ll fight to the death. I get why you’d say no to that. What we’ll do is, the first person to get three cuts on his opponent wins. You win, I give you the clue. I win, you walk out of here with no clue and three cuts. Sound fair?”
Everybody but Ethan reacted with great joy to this idea.
“I’ll get the knives,” said the skinny guy, hurrying over to the kitchen area.
“This party sounded like everybody was having a lot of fun,” said Ethan. “Why mess up the vibe?”
“Oh, there’s no party that can’t be improved with a knife fight!” Grendie smiled, revealing teeth that were unsurprisingly discolored and low in number.
This had to be a joke, right? They weren’t really going to make him participate in a knife fight. Was this an official element of the game, part of the reason he only had a 20% chance to succeed, or was Grendie making up his own rules? Ethan supposed it didn’t matter. Unless Grendie burst out into laughter and said, “Juuuuuuuust kidding,” it appeared that Ethan was going to have his