5 A Completely Normal Sunday (2)

Walking along the street, enjoying the morning sun, Ryker was having a fairly good morning all things considered.

"Aside from a slight bump that was waking up everything, is going good. All I have to do is make sure to avoid the markets and malls on my way to the realtors" thought Ryker as he made his way.

Carefully, oh so carefully he took the long way around just to reach the small little realtors office he had looked up earlier.

Happy that nothing had happened on his way here, further reinforcing the thought that today would be the long-awaited normal day, his hand froze upon reaching the handle of the door.

"Is that a wire…leading to a…GRENADE!?!?" thought Ryker as his body trembled and his hand started to shake, cold sweat pouring down his back like Niagara Falls.

Slowly he backed up, not paying attention to what was behind him which turned out to be a fatal flaw.

"Hello Customer, where might you be going? I had to exec- fire an employee who had cost us a good sale, looks like some children decided to play a prank while I was gone hohoho" said the voice from behind, which sounded like it came from a charming young lady at that.

"A child's prank…" muttered Ryker, as his rational quickly told him to bring up his façade of a cool, calm and unfazed by anything individual. With a deep breath once more he continued, "Yes what a prank indeed would you mind doing your due diligence and removing such a thing from the premises so that I may be able to enter and rent some property from your agency. Could you also remove the…persuasion device from my back?" said Ryker in reference to the cold piece of metal that was currently poking into his back.

"Of course sir, I was just testing it out how 'persuasive' it is. My last one just got ruined the other day due to rust, guess that's what I get from overusing it and not cleaning the remains of those it failed to persuade off it"

Outwardly Ryker laughed politely, inwardly however…

"WHAT PERSUASION DEVICE THAT'S A BLOODY SWORD…im not even going to think about the last part of what she said either, holy hell."

While Ryker was 'waiting politely' as opposed to being held hostage, the woman successfully removed the rather explosive children's prank so easily and with such practice that it could have only been an extremely common occurrence to her. He was so put off by the situation that he barely registered the eye pleasing sight of the good-looking woman in professional attire in front of him.

"Do come in quickly esteemed Customer" said the woman, emphasizing the word quickly for some reason or another.

Ryker had no reason to refuse, in fact plenty of reasons to accept without question, so he did just that and followed her into the small building.

"Miss, why are we going into the basement?" asked Ryker after he built up enough courage to ask such a thing.

"Oh, well we used to conduct our business in our above ground offices but for some strange reason our customers would sometimes find their heads spontaneously exploding along with our windows shattering at the same exact time. Quite a strange phenomenon, but instead of spending a ton of money and time to find and solve the cause of this we instead opted to move our dealings below ground" said the woman lightly.

"I see that is quite a problem. In the end all that matters that the matter was solved, correct?" asked Ryker in a similar light tone.

"Correct sir, we no longer have our customer's heads explode. Although they sometimes still do on the way in, but at that point they are not our clientele yet so we have no need to take action so long as our bottom line is not crossed. I suppose you could count yourself as quite lucky sir!"

The pile of thoughts that Ryker threw to the back of his mind, labeled as too dangerous too think about, increased yet again in that moment.

"Do come in sir" said the professional looking women as she opened the door to the main office.

Ryker did as commanded and walked in, almost taking a seat in one of the vacant chairs in front of the desk…but after considering everything that had happened so far he wisely decided to stand instead until he was instructed to do so.

"Wow sir, you seem to be quite experienced. Not everyone waits upon first entering and directly sit on the chair where our enemies are directed to sit, usually the representatives of our competitors. How could one have an office without a chair sitting directly over a trapdoor that leads to a pit full of spikes, right? Hohoho" laughed the woman as she pointed towards the seat next to the one Ryker had originally wanted to sit in.

"So, what kind of property are you interested in? I remember you saying that you wished to rent, in which district are you looking to rent in?"

"I am looking for something in the Campus District of The University, I just finished my time at community college and have proven myself enough for a scholarship to the real thing" said Ryker, trying to make himself seem more responsible.

"Good for you, as a gift allow me to look for something affordable for you. What is your price range?"

"$200 a month as my low and $300 a month as my high, I can go a little over but only if the reason is good enough to warrant the extra cost" said Ryker as he thought about one of the first things he confirmed when he awoke not too long ago…his financials.

"All right there are some options with that price range, but none of them are too good seeing as the area you are interested in has an extremely high demand. Most of them are in areas that have extremely high rates of crime, accidents, a vagrant homeless population or in such poor condition that even the homeless do not go near it" explained the professional woman.

"How about if I raise it to 350 a month?"

Clickety clacketing on her PC, the woman looked long and hard until she finally found something.

"Here is one, it is $330 a month and in a decent location. It is only a thirty-minute walk away from the University itself, which usually means that it is far more expensive. In this case, however, it seems that complaints about it being haunted have driven away most of the usual rent seekers causing the landowner to constantly drive the price down…between you and me we could perhaps bargain it down a little if you give me a good review" said the woman with a wink and low voice.

"Haunted hmm, well that should not be too bad. I can probably block out the noise with some construction grade ear plugs…" thought Ryker who did not notice that his common sense was slowly being altered.

"Are there any inexplicable deaths or a higher than usual missing person cases in the area? Specifically among the previous residents of the apartment."

"A good question sir, you would not believe the amount of bloodthirsty serial killers that decide to open their houses for rent. Home ground advantage, is it? Anyways, I already checked in advance for you seeing as a smart man like you would no doubt put in a good word for me to my corporate overlords. There is nothing odd about the area, just people claiming that it is haunted and leaving the building out of fear. It should be noted that the building is actually inhabited by a few other people currently renting, in total the building is at 1/3rd occupancy."

With that the transaction was completed successfully and he was free to leave, well after he wrote several positive reviews and answered a few surveys at the behest of the employee.

"All that is left is to meet the landlord in person for a quick little interview and for me to inspect the place in person, simple! Although now I know that even the small businesses are a place to be extremely careful of" thought Ryker as he opened the front door with two mops he had borrowed and taped together whilst hiding behind a chair.

"No booby trap this time, nice!"

With that he was off, first faking that he was leaving so as to avoid his head suddenly deciding to explode all of a sudden of course, then running as fast as he could to his next destination.