There are a lot of things you get warned about when selling health insurance, like fake claims, prank calls and the occasional odd death. Most days, these things are minimal. Sure, we get the bored teenager pretending to needing to know how much he'd get if an unnamed bodily organ got accidentally removed, or the angered housewife who wants to know how much her husband's death would get her.
I once had a woman ask how much silver platters went for. It was something that kept me up for days afterward because she was so...serious about it. Sent chills up my spine every time I thought about it.
Today, as I sit at my desk after answering various emails, I sipped coffee from one of our many company mugs and proceeded to go over my schedule for the day, and found that every appointment today was for men aiming for health insurance for themselves, except for one. One was looking for insurance for what I assumed was his spouse instead.
Finding it a little odd that a man wouldn't want coverage for him but instead his wife, I opted to make a note of that while I waited for the first appointment to arrive.
While I waited, I organized the papers on my desk, removed the dust and even vacuumed the maroon carpeting. The window to my left was clean, giving me a clear view of the parking lot that still remained empty at the moment, letting me know I had a few minutes to make sure the large wooden chairs with matching maroon padding were without stains and crumbs.
Awards and certificates hung on the walls around me, while a large, two drawer wide and four drawer tall white metal filing cabinet sat behind me in one corner and a large potted plant in the other, making this one of the cleanest and and well organized offices in the building.
My secretary, a woman of about thirty-five, stepped into my office carrying the completed forms the gentleman who was my first appointment, had filled out before he saw me so we could talk about them.
"Hello, Miss Thomas," I greeted as she made her way toward me. "How are you this morning?"
She looked white as a sheet as she handed me the forms with shaking hands, making me curious as to what was wrong.
"Are you alright?" I asked her.
"The man waiting for you...I think it's a man, anyway..." she began, trying to find both her words and her voice at the same time. "Is here for you."
"What's the problem?"
"He's wearing this...mask. And I can't...I can't understand a word he's saying! It's muffled and just..." she said to me, visibly shaken.
"Mask?"
"Gas mask!"
"He...wore it to the office?" I asked, looking over the forms. "Ah, yes. Apparently his name is...Pyro."
She nodded, hugging herself. "He's got a tank on his back."
"A what?"
"A flame throwing tank!" she yelled, cringing when she realized the office door was still open and her voice had a habit of carrying throughout the entire building.
I cleared my throat and motioned her away, letting her know she needed to go bring in Mr...Pyro.
When a man...I think...walked into my office wearing flame resistant, shiny black boots, a red jumpsuit with yellow patches, red and yellow rubber gloves that went to his elbows, a large black and yellow flame thrower on his slightly humped back and a black gas mask over his entire head, all I could do was stare.
He looked no taller than five-seven and was maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, but the jumpsuit and gear made him look so...scary.
I could see in an instant why Miss Thomas was so pale and frightened of the sight of him.
"Hello, Mr...Pyro, is it?" I asked, clearing my throat a little and motioning for him to sit down.
He nodded once and obliged, not making a sound as he waited for me to continue as his cold, empty black eyes stared at me from behind the mask he didn't seem to want to take off.
My gaze drifted to the forms he had filled out in front of me, thankful his penmanship was at least legible.
"And you work at...RED?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
He waited.
"Oh...Reliable Excavation Demolition. RED. It's why you're wearing the red...uniform, right?" I asked, a little proud of myself.
He nodded just once.
"Right. And uh...your position at RED is...welder?" I asked, hoping I had it right.
He shrugged.
"Uh...huh," I nodded, clearing my throat again as I stared at the forms in front of me.
"Height...good. Weight...good. Is your job dangerous?" I asked.
His mind seemed to drift a little as he pondered my question, taking a few minutes before looking up at me and shrugging once more.
"I'll just put down 'no'," I nodded.
He waited.
"Let's see...not married. And this is your annual salary?" I asked, pointing to a rather large number on the form.
He nodded proudly.
"Good for you. I've only seen that kind of income from doctors and lawyers," I told him, starting to become a little more comfortable.
Silence.
"Right...well...everything seems to be in order. If I have any questions, I'll...call you," I said, standing up to shake his gloved hand.
He didn't oblige and walked away, leaving my office quietly but quickly as the door closed softly behind him.
Letting out a shiver, I filed the papers in the cabinet, doubting we'd be able to give him coverage.
It was something I was going to have to discuss with my boss later.
If I discussed hit later.
"Miss Thomas, is my nine o'clock here yet?" I asked over the intercom I had on my desk.
"Yes, sir. A Mr...Sniper and his family," she said carefully.
"Uh...are they done filling out the forms?" I wondered, a little confused as to how this was going to work.
"Just about. Mr. Sniper is refusing to fill them out, so his mother is doing it for him," she explained.
"I see. Just have them come in when they're ready," I said, going back to my computer to finish up the case file on the man who was in here previously.
After another few minutes, a tall, lanky man wearing cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and authority sunglasses, a red shirt with a black vest over it, dark pants and a nice looking sniper rifle on his back, walked into my office and sat down heavily in one of the chairs in front of my desk.
"So you're..."
He held up his hand to shush me, shaking his head as looked at me not to even start just yet.
"I'm not the one who thinks I need insurance. My parents are," he told me in a thick Australian accent.
"Just tell me one thing!" a woman, whom I was assuming was his mother, yelled at me, her hands on her hips as she stood in front of him and me at the same time. "Why does a Demolition Company need a sniper? How is that legitimate? How is he not a crazed gunman?"
I leaned over to look past her at her son, who was nodding a little as if to ask 'do you see what I have to put up with on a daily basis?'
"Please...have a seat," I said to her as her husband handed me the now completed forms. "Thank you."
"Do you have kids?" his father asked, taking a seat next to his son who was now in between his parents.
"Uh, no. I just got married about a year ago," I said honestly, going over the forms. "It says you're a sniper?"
"An assassin," he clarified. "Not a crazed gunman. One is mental sickness. The other is my job!"
"And why does RED need a sniper?" I wondered, trying to placate his mother who smiled and looked at her son with smug superiority.
"It's a different branch of the company. I don't ask questions, I just do what I'm paid to," he sighed.
His mother shook her head in disappointment. "You kill people for a living!"
"You kill people with your cooking," he fired back, staring at her while his father knocked him upside the back of the head. "Damn it!"
"Language!" she scolded, causing the poor sniper to sigh in defeat.
I waited.
"Go ahead," his father told me.
"Right. Well...your overall health his good. We're going to need you to take a psychiatric evaluation as a precautionary measure, to make sure you're not a crazed gunman as you so...delicately called it. If you pass, we'll talk coverage options. If not, well...we'll then have to report your company to the government and have them take a good look at what you're doing over there at RED," I explained, opening my desk drawer to find the proper papers.
"It's all legit!" he promised as his father took the forms from me.
"I'm sure it is. Go ahead and fill those out for me and then turn them into Miss Thomas out there. I'll call you in a few days with the results," I said honestly.
"That's it?" his mother asked me.
"Until I know the state of his mental health, there's not much this company can do. We're very weary of covering anyone with a mental sickness. They're very unstable, unreliable people and are capable of doing anything at any time."
They stared at their son who had the same drifting look Mr. Pyro had earlier, going from bored to satisfied and back to bored before looking at me and realizing he'd drifted off.
"Right," he nodded, standing up. "We'll be in touch then."
"You bet."
Miss Thomas would not get her forms back and I would spend the next few weeks with my blinds closed and shying away from any open windows or spaces until I was sure they were all back in Australia.
"That was odd," I nodded, going to the computer to finish up my report. "Another one for the cabinet."
"Sir, a...Heavy Weapons Guy is here for you."
"Heavy...what? Send him in," I said, shaking my head a little at how odd this day was getting already.
A man of about six-eight and four hundred pounds of muscle, wearing black boots, dark pants, a red shirt with a belt of spare bullets over his broad chest wrapped in a red t-shirt, black gloves that stopped mid-finger and the shiniest bald head I'd ever seen walked into my office, carrying a mini-gun he tried to place on my desk.
"Whoa," I breathed, my eyes wide as I stared at it.
"I did not fill out forms," he informed me, his Russian accent apparent.
"No?" I asked. "Why are you here?"
"Forms were for me. I do not want insurance. I want insurance for Sasha."
"And Sasha is...?" I asked, trailing off. "Your wife?"
"My gun!" he yelled, pointing at the large weapon that seemed to shine in response to his voice.
"We don't...allow people to take out policies for weapons," I began, cringing when the large man narrowed his tiny, yet intense eyes. "Usually. Would you let me talk to my boss about it?"
"Can I tell you about Sasha?" he asked, his eyes lighting up as he spoke.
"Uh...sure. I'd love to know about your...Sasha," I agreed, trying to hide the fear in my voice.
"She weighs over one hundred and fifty kilograms and fires two hundred dollar custom cartridges at ten thousand rounds per minute. It costs four hundred thousand dollars to fire this weapon for twelve seconds," he said darkly, his eyes never leaving mine as he spoke.
I nodded, jumping a little as he started laughing like a maniac when he saw the expression on my face.
"So...Sasha is with you at work?" I asked, struggling to comprehend his reasoning.
"Yes."
"And it...she gets hurt?"
"Yes."
"And you work for...RED," I noticed, nodding a little. "She get hurt by Mr. Sniper or Mr. Pyro?"
"How do you know about them?" he roared, taking Sasha off my desk so fast I didn't have time to move out of the way.
"They were here earlier trying to get health insurance. Just like you're here now," I said calmly, hoping he'd do the same.
"They shoot at her! Try to burn her! But Scout...Scout is worst. He tries to hit her with bat and I am too slow to stop him," he said angrily.
"So...this company...is there any legitimate work going on there or do you just run around and try to kill each other all day?" I asked.
"The second one," he said simply, resting the large weapon in the crook of his even larger arm as he spoke.
"I see. Well...if you want to cover Sasha, you're going to have to fill out the proper forms. I'll have Miss Thomas give those to you outside. Give them back when you're done and I'll call you later to set up a time where we can discuss how much it'll be to cover her," I said to him.
"You cover her now!"
"It's not up to me, Heavy...Weapons Guy. If you want coverage for her, take her upstairs to see my boss. Eighth floor."
He nodded once and left my office, making me smile a little.
Now he was going to see the kind of day I was having.
A Pyro. A Sniper. And now a maniac trying to get coverage for a freaking mini-gun!
Holy hell, what next?
"Sir, your ten o'clock is here."
I sighed. "Is he from RED, too?"
"Yes, sir. A...medic. I think he's a doctor."
"Send him in," I said, ready for the next lunatic to walk through my door.
A man of about six-one and one-sixty came in wearing a white lab coat, dark pants, black boots, red gloves and some kind of weapon on his back came into my office, holding what looked like a human heart with some kind of machine attached to it.
"Okay, no hear me out," he began, setting the heart on my desk before pushing his thin glasses onto his nose.
German. Of course. The crazed medic is German.
I waited.
"This is Uber charge! It makes a person become bulletproof!" he said proudly.
"And this...will help with someone's overall health?"
"Yes, of course! For a few seconds, anyway. It takes awhile to charge."
"Charge?" I asked, looking at the beating heart on my desk.
"Yes. It charges and makes the whole body bulletproof."
"Uh...okay."
"Don't you want to know how?" he asked eagerly, having paperwork in his hands.
"No, not really."
"No?"
I shook my head.
"And you call yourself a patent office?"
Again, I shook my head. "We're a health insurance office. We offer health insurance."
He swiped the heart from my desk and stuffed it into his shirt, stared at me and said "You didn't see anything!"
He was gone before I could even nod in agreement.
While he exited the office, a man wearing sunglasses, a hardhat and black coveralls over a red shirt entered, carrying forms on a clipboard.
"I don't need your health insurance," he said to me in a thick Texan accent.
"Why are you here?"
"It's mandatory. My company."
"Then you filled them out because you had to?" I asked.
He nodded, tossing the clipboard onto my desk. "I have a health dispenser to heal me. Don't need no insurance."
"Alright."
"Good," he nodded, walking out without another word.
"He was probably the least crazy," I noticed, looking at the forms he'd filled out properly.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, I got onto the intercom and asked my secretary who was next.
"A...Mr. Scout."
Of course. "Send him in."
A skinny, small young man came into my office wearing black shoes, white socks that went to the middle of his shins, black pants tucked into said socks, a red shirt and a black hat holding a baseball bat.
He couldn't have been more than twenty.
Why the hell was he involved in a company like this?
Gang violence? Inner city kid?
"Yo," he greeted, his Boston accent coming through clearly. "I don't need insurance, man. I'm in great shape."
I stared at him as he flexed his non-existent muscles and swung the bat a few times.
"I'm fast, too," he added, running up and down my small office like a maniac.
It couldn't have been natural quickness. No one is naturally that fast.
"So your forms? I don't need 'em," he added, leaning on his bat a little as he spoke.
"I can see that," I agreed, nodding as I spoke. "I'll let your boss know."
"Good. This whole health insurance thing is a joke," he told me, hoisting the bat over his shoulder as he walked out my door.
"Young inner city kid on Speed. Does god-knows-what with bat," I thought to myself as I typed it into my computer.
"Sir?"
I froze. "Yes?"
"Your eleven o'clock."
"Send him in."
A man whose eyes were hidden by a military helmet, holding what looked like a grenade launcher stepped into my office, wearing a red military style coat, dark pants and black boots.
When I heard Miss Thomas scream, my eyes widened.
"Oops," the man chuckled. "Forgot my friends."
He stepped out of my office, muttered 'ma'am' to my secretary and then returned with a canvas sack filled with heads that still wore helmets and whose eyes were still opened, staring up at him.
At us, really.
"I'm the soldier," he began, puffing out his chest and saluting me proudly.
"Don't soldiers get insurance from the government? I think it's called Tri-Care," I said to him, resisting the urge to vomit.
"They don't cover me. Said I was never a soldier. Can't find my blasted records. Now I have to come here through my company. RED," he told me just as a drill sergeant talking to his soldiers would.
"And you're here because it's mandatory?" I asked, now breathing through my mouth.
"No, because they keep hounding me about it," he said, looking down at the heads in the bag.
"The...heads."
He nodded.
"I'm going to give you the same forms I gave one of your other co-workers. I need to make sure you're not...unstable before we can insure you."
"Can you believe this yahoo?" he asked the heads, referring to me.
"Probably not, sir. They're dead," I said, handing over the forms. "Have them help you fill them out. And then make sure Miss Thomas gets them."
After he left, I found my twenty-one year old scotch I hid in my desk drawer and drank straight from the bottle, needing to calm down after seeing six heads inside a bag like that.
"Long day?"
I looked up to see a tall, lanky, but elegantly dressed man wearing a light brown suit, a white undershirt and red silk tie standing in front of me, casually smoking a cigarette as he leaned against the wall.
On his wrist was a gorgeous watch and in his hands was a briefcase that looked expensive as well.
"Yes," I agreed. "That man just left with a bag full of heads."
"The soldier," he said, releasing the smoke from his mouth. "He is nuts."
"They all are. Except maybe the engineer," I told him.
"The engineer makes and builds machines that fire bullets at us for him. He is probably the craziest one of us all," he pointed out.
"Crazier than the head in a bag guy?"
He smiled. "Yes."
"I don't see it."
"Good. You are not supposed to."
"No, that's my job. I'm supposed to spot the crazy. So far, it's been pretty freaking obvious."
He chuckled. "I know."
"So are your forms in the briefcase?"
"No, not mine. I have everyone else's," he told me, tossing his finished cigarette in a plastic bag before putting it into a breast pocket. "DNA."
"I see."
"Anyway. I am certain they have lied to you about who they are."
"So...they're not as crazy as they seem?" I asked.
"Crazier."
"I don't see how that's possible," I told him.
"I don't think they have been honest with you."
"The...boring Texan, the giant hulking of a Russian who thinks his gun is a person, the Sniper who was dragged here by his parents all the way from Australia, the crazy German medic, the inner city Scout or the silent but very disturbing Pyro?" I wondered.
His eyes narrowed. "They have...told you the truth?"
I nodded.
He opened his mouth to say something else, but the sound of machine gun fire could be heard from three floors up.
"What the...?" I asked, staring at the Spy.
"Sasha," he smiled, bringing his wrist up to his face before disappearing before my eyes.
"Ah, hell," I sighed, starting to follow after him to help my poor boss.
Being stopped at the sight of a large, black, crazy, Scottish cyclops who was now aiming a weapon at your office kinda puts a damper on the whole 'rescue your boss' thing.
"Die, spy!" he cried, firing the weapon toward me.
"What the-" I cried, diving back into the office and finding cover behind my desk.
After a few minutes of silence (you know, after the maniacal laughter ceased), I raised my head and looked around, noticing nothing was happening.
"Da."
To my surprise, the giant Russian was near my doorway, looking at the present left from the crazed Scotsman.
"Sticky bombs."
"What...what are those?"
"Stick to doors. Won't explode until you walk through them."
"Why the hell would he do that?" I demanded as the Russian fell to the side with a knife sticking out his back.
"Isn't it obvious?" the Spy asked me.
After today, nothing was obvious!
I shook my head.
"He thinks you're me. Enjoy," he smiled, turning invisible once more.
"Miss Thomas...you can go home," I sighed, taking a seat at my desk once more and turning toward my bottle of scotch.
While I sipped a little from a shot glass this time, I took out my phone and called my wife.
"I'm going to be late," I told her, letting out a sigh as the expensive scotch bottle exploded at my desk thanks to a well placed shot from a Sniper who didn't like the meeting we had. "Very late."