You are dead broke, your cabin is unfurnished except for absolute necessities, and you barely know anyone except a Shadow Lord occultist. With time to spare and a burning desire to own more socks, you log in long hours at Gorsky Manor. The crumbling old building is practically falling down, and any hour spent snowblowing the walkways, bleaching the heinously unsanitary bathrooms, or patching cracks in the plaster helps keep the place standing for another year. You also spend time buying equipment, because you have a small budget and winter is actually the quiet season—in a few months you're going to be fighting a war against vines and leaves, and you need a working mower.
You also spend some time shadowing Ernesto, the elderly fix-it man. You don't know anything about mechanics or home repair, but he points you to YouTube guides to repairing all your equipment. Even you can follow those instructions. A nice thing about Ernesto is how grateful he is to have someone else around who actually works. It's good to be appreciated, especially when you're up on a roof, chiseling ice out of gutters and wondering how quickly you can Change if you fall and break your neck. And you and Ernesto actually manage to clean the place up a bit.
So it's all okay until you get your first payment at Mr. Veiss's office. It's a wad of twenties. Not nearly enough twenties.
"What's this?" you say, counting the substandard wage. Definitely less than you agreed upon.
"You receive the maximum payment our accounts can permit to someone with your mental disabilities," Mr. Veiss says with a dismissive shrug. "Just like Ernesto. Since our contractors require more payment than last year, wages are down across the board. Those payments have to come from somewhere."
This place is obviously crooked, but where else can I go? I'm not going to push for more.
"No. You've seen the excellent maintenance I've done. I'm a qualified technician and I'm worth more. Here or elsewhere."
"This place is a cesspit of labor and housing violations, and you're gonna stiff me? What if someone who works here starts talking?"
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Mr. Veiss regards you with irritation.
"Young man," he says, "you are nothing but a custodian." He takes a twenty off your earnings, slides it back into his desk. "Complain again and I'll replace you with the next developmentally disabled runaway. Now get out of my office."
Seething, you take what Mr. Veiss hands you.
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