Discworld Ficlet: Tax Computation
For
marah_sarie, who requested a drabble (too long for that) in which Nobby and Colon accidentally discover Cheery's secret collection of slash fiction.
Sorry, this kind of sucks.
Title: Tax Computation
Fandom: Discworld
Rating: G
Note: This is stupid. It really is.
If you happen to own private documents you want to keep private and you put them in a folder labelled ‘Strictly Confidential’ you can be certain that within less than an hour everyone within a radius of five miles has read them, memorized the contents and passed them on to their neighbours. Cheery Littlebottom, first and only member of the forensic department of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, actually knew this. So she collected all her confidential documents and put them in a folder labelled ‘My Tax Computations of the Past 15 Years’.
Unnecessary to mention it stayed untouched for ages. And all the time the folder grew thicker and thicker.
Until one day, when it was very cold outside and the snow was falling in a vain attempt to hide the city for it hurt the eye, Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St.John Nobbs, to all the world know as Nobby or as Plague On Legs, decided the have a look at all those tax computations. Not because he wanted to do one himself, but out of a rather morbid curiosity, since he had never seen one before. (Neither, it has to be said, had Cheery.) If he was completely honest to himself (and actually he was) his real intention was to accidentally trip and throw the folder into the fireplace, because it was an awful lot of paper and it was really, really cold in here.
So he opened the folder (Cheery had left it on the table instead of keeping it in her locker which would have been suspicious), already on his way to the fireplace and a conveniently placed chair to trip over. He read a few lines of the text on the first sheet and froze.
Sergeant Fred Colon found him like that when he entered the room ten minutes later: Frozen in mid-step, his eyes glued to the folder he was holding, only moving from time to time to turn the page (and with a terrible cramp in his left leg).
“Did you know Vimes is sleeping with Vetinari?” Nobby asked without taking his eyes off the text.
Colon gulped. And looked around if anyone was listening.
“Right now?” he croaked. Nobby shrugged.
“In general. It says so in Cheery’s tax computation.”
Colon was silent for a very long time. Because his brain needed a very long time to remember where his mouth was. A thought wriggled into his head and almost escaped through his ears, but he managed to grab it and pin it down.
“Does that mean we have to pay taxes for that?”
Nobby didn’t seem to hear him. He probably wasn’t interested since he didn’t pay taxes anyway.
“And Angua is cheating on Carrot,” he proclaimed.
“With whom?”
“With Cheery. Apparently she changed back into a human without having clothes at hand, Cheery walked it, and one thing lead to another. The handwriting gets a bit shaky and hard to read there so I can’t tell exactly what happened.”
Pity, a distant part of Colon’s brain thought, but the main part of his mind was still busy thinking of where his boss might be right now. Or rather, where he hoped he was not.
While his mind was elsewhere his body took the opportunity to move behind Nobby and glance over his shoulder. The Corporal turned another page.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Finally Colon said, in a chocked voice:
“I don’t remember us doing that.”
Nobby only shook his head in silence, too shocked to form words.
They looked at each other in disgust, their minds wandering to places they had never wanted to go. They gagged.
And threw the folder into the fire. (Save for the part about Angua and Cheery which they kept in a secret place to occasionally read so they would never forget why things like this should never ever be written.)
Three days later Cheery discovered that her folder was gone and had their heads for breakfast.
Literally.
-
October 24, 2007
marah_sarie, who requested a drabble (too long for that) in which Nobby and Colon accidentally discover Cheery's secret collection of slash fiction.
Sorry, this kind of sucks.
Title: Tax Computation
Fandom: Discworld
Rating: G
Note: This is stupid. It really is.
If you happen to own private documents you want to keep private and you put them in a folder labelled ‘Strictly Confidential’ you can be certain that within less than an hour everyone within a radius of five miles has read them, memorized the contents and passed them on to their neighbours. Cheery Littlebottom, first and only member of the forensic department of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, actually knew this. So she collected all her confidential documents and put them in a folder labelled ‘My Tax Computations of the Past 15 Years’.
Unnecessary to mention it stayed untouched for ages. And all the time the folder grew thicker and thicker.
Until one day, when it was very cold outside and the snow was falling in a vain attempt to hide the city for it hurt the eye, Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St.John Nobbs, to all the world know as Nobby or as Plague On Legs, decided the have a look at all those tax computations. Not because he wanted to do one himself, but out of a rather morbid curiosity, since he had never seen one before. (Neither, it has to be said, had Cheery.) If he was completely honest to himself (and actually he was) his real intention was to accidentally trip and throw the folder into the fireplace, because it was an awful lot of paper and it was really, really cold in here.
So he opened the folder (Cheery had left it on the table instead of keeping it in her locker which would have been suspicious), already on his way to the fireplace and a conveniently placed chair to trip over. He read a few lines of the text on the first sheet and froze.
Sergeant Fred Colon found him like that when he entered the room ten minutes later: Frozen in mid-step, his eyes glued to the folder he was holding, only moving from time to time to turn the page (and with a terrible cramp in his left leg).
“Did you know Vimes is sleeping with Vetinari?” Nobby asked without taking his eyes off the text.
Colon gulped. And looked around if anyone was listening.
“Right now?” he croaked. Nobby shrugged.
“In general. It says so in Cheery’s tax computation.”
Colon was silent for a very long time. Because his brain needed a very long time to remember where his mouth was. A thought wriggled into his head and almost escaped through his ears, but he managed to grab it and pin it down.
“Does that mean we have to pay taxes for that?”
Nobby didn’t seem to hear him. He probably wasn’t interested since he didn’t pay taxes anyway.
“And Angua is cheating on Carrot,” he proclaimed.
“With whom?”
“With Cheery. Apparently she changed back into a human without having clothes at hand, Cheery walked it, and one thing lead to another. The handwriting gets a bit shaky and hard to read there so I can’t tell exactly what happened.”
Pity, a distant part of Colon’s brain thought, but the main part of his mind was still busy thinking of where his boss might be right now. Or rather, where he hoped he was not.
While his mind was elsewhere his body took the opportunity to move behind Nobby and glance over his shoulder. The Corporal turned another page.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Finally Colon said, in a chocked voice:
“I don’t remember us doing that.”
Nobby only shook his head in silence, too shocked to form words.
They looked at each other in disgust, their minds wandering to places they had never wanted to go. They gagged.
And threw the folder into the fire. (Save for the part about Angua and Cheery which they kept in a secret place to occasionally read so they would never forget why things like this should never ever be written.)
Three days later Cheery discovered that her folder was gone and had their heads for breakfast.
Literally.
-
October 24, 2007