"Racheal!" Noah shouted over the pounding bass thumping from the speakers. A woman by the grimy window turned and strode over to their table carrying a black tote bag. Five-inch red stiletto heels clicked against the sticky floor in the dim haze of the strip club—six-foot-one, slender, and athletic build. Dreadlocks with purple beads brushed against her firm breasts.
Noah leaned in. "You think she's hot?"
Osa's mouth watered like a bloodhound. He wanted to rip off her leopard-print dress and bury his face in her softness.
"She's beautiful." Osa smiled.
Noah smiled, pleased with himself. "You see? I don't keep trash. Only the best girls work for me."
He lifted his beer, took a long swing, then burped loudly.
Disgust flickered across Racheal's face.
"How much is she?" Osa asked.
"Two thousand dollars gets you the whole night—at your place."
Osa tilted his head. "How about one thousand?"
"Don't be cheap. She pays for herself by the end of the night." Noah grinned.
"How do I know that?" Osa folded his arms, trying to look unimpressed.
"What are you, a virgin?" Noah scoffed. "She's reliable. Professional. No complaints."
"Back when I was sixteen in Sumer, had a fling in high school before I got… bigger. But it's not me who changed—women just got shallow-"
Noah cut him off, "Paying or pissing off? Clients are lining up to get into her panties."
Osa pulled a wad of bills from his jeans pocket and handed it over. "Here."
He grabbed Racheal's hand. She followed him into the streets of Zo-Zo City, dimly lit by the flickering streetlamps. If money weren't a concern, she'd yank her hand free and run.
—
A pang of guilt flickered for Racheal. Noah exploited her—morals were never his strong suit.
Two weeks ago, Alan had warned him, 'Your story's too confusing.' Kill some of your darlings.
So he did. Ethan, James, Dan, Tobias, Tucker—all gone. More would follow. No regrets. Dan had begged for more chapters, but Merlot knew better. If readers wanted blood, then no character was safe.
Uncle Sam claimed seniority while shovelling dirt over Miss Columbia's 1738 debut. His arrival didn't come until 1814, a mascot stitched together not from ideals but from salted beef rations and military invoices. Time had gnawed at him: a white goatee, a face wrinkled by wars he never won, debts he never paid, and a mythology he mostly recycled.
Borealia, meanwhile, stayed perpetually twentish—waist‑length brown hair, unlined face—the nation that arrived late and learned early how to age by proxy: let older empires bleed first, then show up looking fresh.
Arriving late meant standing in Sam's shadow. Borealia never starred on recruitment posters, never pointed outward to scream I WANT YOU. Silence kept her off the battlefield.
Johnny Canuck stood at her side, hockey stick in hand, fending off Sam's tantrums. Sam hurled tariffs like frozen pucks, each one a rebuke for daring to trade beyond his reach. Johnny was a lumberman; he'd protect her mills the way his grandfathers had protected the forests the Crown once claimed as timber for its ships.
Borealia wasn't sneaking foreign goods through the back door. Sam hated losing his cut. Free trade, it turned out, applied only when she shopped in his aisle. Her timber towns cut down on jobs instead of trees—Sam had to punish her for subsidizing her people, whether they were millworkers on the line or patients in a clinic.
Johnny Canuck barked that Borealia wasn't for sale. Sam snorted—he didn't buy allies, he extorted them. Courtesy was for equals; fear was for the rest.
To Sam, Borealia's diplomacy was like whispering in a cannon's roar—civilized, cautious, and utterly pointless. Every gesture towards peace made him think of Liberatas, laurels gleaming, urging him towards victories instead of compromises. Sam could have courted Borealia, but he didn't—standards and pride came first.
Sam wasn't about to help Borealia save on taxes by letting her slip under his border umbrella. Protection was his oldest export. He'd be damned if anyone got it wholesale. Free security wasn't extended to nations that claimed they didn't exist the night his White House went up in flames.
Borealia's birthday stayed on hold as long as Uncle Sam insisted that the only acceptable outcome—on any battlefield—was his victory. At the Battle of Quebec in 1775, his troops were caught in a blizzard and captured, unable to break through the red‑coated line that held the city. By 1776, they had abandoned the effort, unable to bend Quebec into the shape of a willing fourteenth colony.
Borealia endlessly irked Uncle Sam, flaunting her "victory" over his attempts to seize her territory. He'd signed the Treaty of Ghent back in 1814—war over, borders reset to the way they were, no grand conquest, just a draw. Borealia wasn't even a twinkle in Confederation's eye until 1867. Impossible to claim triumph when you're a ghost who showed up decades after the battlefield went cold.
Conveniently, a new law appeared—under it, going to war with Borealia was forbidden, because Uncle Sam had placed her on his list of "allies," which meant off-limits when it came to invasion. Friends don't fight—not when they have access to heavy water and the know-how to make reactors hum without asking for enriched uranium. Sam would have to look elsewhere for enemies to unleash his collection of bombs on.
Sam knew better than to say never. He could own slaves while serving as president—twelve had pulled it off—so why shut down the plantation? Borealia's prime minister, for whatever reason, never got the memo: he paid his workers like a sucker, blind to the riches of unpaid toil.
Borealia reminded Sam that the first president regretted owning slaves but couldn't afford freedom—debts came first. Sam sneered: debts spared the wine. Freedom was unaffordable, but Bordeaux wasn't. The president promised he would never abuse power, but whippings with a hickory stick stayed proper—liberty for some, leather for the rest.
The Red Dragon flew in to burn Borealia's smugness. He roared: Borealia's PM wasn't a saint—he paid the whites more for their labour on the railroad."
Borealia smiled thinly. "Fewer coins, fewer cigarettes, healthier workers. You're welcome, Prime Minister."
The Dragon snorted. "Gratitude denied. First underpaid for their labour, then later penalized for arriving from a foreign place."
Uncle Sam knew Borealia would play the pity card with grainy clips of refugees outrunning his rain of freedom. The screen flickered with fleeing figures under falling fire. Borealia waited for remorse. Uncle Sam grinned. "Hold up—pause it. See that uniform? Sharp. Real sharp. Don't I look good?"
Uncle Sam's only regret? He didn't bomb sooner. Ricky was right—Communism was evil because it guaranteed housing, education, and health care. All toxic. Private insurance wins: fewer treatments, bigger profits. Efficiency, baby.
Uncle Sam threatened Borealia with tariffs if she dared sell her oil to Cubita. Cubita's communism was so evil, Yankees fled there for health care they couldn't get under his roof. No more mojitos on Borealia's tab. Flights cancelled, oil dried up, winter heating bills skyrocketing.