Balls stared out the window of his office in one of high-rise buildings in DTLA. It was mid-morning, and, for some reason, the marine layer was sticking around.  Normally, it receded to the beach communities until around noon when it went away completely, but it was thick in DTLA and on this particular day went deep into the San Gabriel Valley.

He liked it because it made LA look like Gotham in the dark early mornings and that was the closest he would ever get to experience living in New York.  It was a nice place to visit, but no.  Not for Balls.  And especially not for Lady Balls.  She, like Balls, preferred wearing the least amount of clothes possible.  He was still pissed he had to put pants on this morning to go to the office.

The phone rang.  He ignored it.  He never answered his office line.  Anyone worth talking to knew that he only ever answered his work cell.  The only problem was his boss sometimes called him on the office line. It was annoying, but his boss was a good dude.  It wasn’t his fault he was older and set in his ways. He turned his head and looked at the phone.  It was not his boss.  He turned back to the view below him.

There was a knock on his door, which was weird because it was always open.  He turned around.

“Yes?  Who is the shy person that feels the need to knock?”

“Boss, I need a signature.”

“Is there anything particularly weird about this request?  I mean, is there a reason why you didn’t email it to me?”

“Just wanted to see your smiling face, sir.”

“You are so full of shit, Juan.”  Balls signed it and laughed. “Trying to get your steps in?”

“Yeah, you know.  The wife’s getting on me.”

“Luckily, I don’t know about that, but yeah, I get it.  Gotta make sure your health is good. How are you doing?”

“Better.  The doc says if I keep going like this, I’ll live to be a hundred!”

“Careful what you ask for.”

“Yup.  Thanks, boss!”

Juan walked away.  Balls yelled at his back, “Watch it with that boss shit!”

He thought about it for a second and pulled out a yellow pad of paper.  That triggered some questions for tWBS for the next time he saw him and he didn’t want to forget them.

Would it be better to live to a hundred than to die relatively young and be stuck in Limbo haunting your friend and his girlfriend and trying to pull a fast one on old Saint Peter to sneak into Heaven?  How much could tWBS see if he was able to pick out any random service worker to inhabit for a few minutes at a time?  Would he wait until they were alone and horny and then appear mid-wank?  That would totally be something he would do.

Even worse, was tWBS watching him RIGHT NOW?  Could he see him and Lady Balls have sexy time?  Fucking perv!  He probably would if he could.  Wait, so does that mean tWBS could see ANY couple having sex?  Is Limbo just a non-stop real live Amsterdam Sex Show?

Balls’ mind was reeling and he wasn’t really concentrating on work.  There was still no way he or Lady Balls could get tWBS into Heaven.  They had not figured out the solution quite yet.  He put the pad down and decided to go for a walk.  The Taco Bell Cantina was not far away.  No one would be able to tell that the Baja Blast Freeze he brought back to the office had alcohol in it.

He stepped over at least three homeless dudes still asleep on the sidewalk and narrowly avoided stepping in doodoo.  It was best not to think about whether it was human or canine.  Eventually, he made it inside and walked up to the kiosk.  He put in his order and decided against the alcoholic Freeze. He didn’t need another headache.

As he waited for his order, he looked around.  There were a lot of people in the place considering it was 9 in the morning on a Monday.  He noticed they all had alcoholic drinks.  The weekend must have been rough.

He heard his name called and walked to the counter to get his food.  As he looked up, he laughed to himself.

“What’s up, dickwad?”

“Jesus.  You’ve really outdone yourself this time.  How do you not get these girls fired?  You know you are supposed to be HELPING, right?”

“Honestly, she was dressed like this when I went in.  Don’t put that one on me.”

“I stand corrected.”

“Anyhoo, I wanted to answer some of your questions.  Yes.  A lot but I can’t read minds.  I can only observe like a fly on the wall.  Yes, that’s my favourite part.  Yes.  No, I wouldn’t do that.  Yes.  And finally, yes.”

“Fuck. Wait, how the hell do you know about the questions?!?”

“I was reading behind your back.  Nice paper pad.  Is your work going to get dictaphones soon?”

“They can’t afford them.  Wait, are you sure you want to escape Limbo?  Sounds kinda fun.”

“Trust me, it gets old after a while.  Turns out non-stop porn is also not a good idea.”

“I suppose.  Listen, we’re trying really hard to come up with a solution, but we are drawing blanks. Any ideas on your end given you have all this secret knowledge we don’t?”

“That’s another one of the rules.  I can’t relay any of the knowledge I have to you.  But I think you guys are on the right track.  I liked Lady Balls’ idea about the hot lesbian but fuck you for saying what you said.”

“Was I wrong?”

“No, but still.”

“Is there any timetable to this?  Like you have a week to atone or you’ll be sent to Hell?”

“Nope.  I’m stuck here for eternity until I can get the fuck out.  I tried haunting Low Commander but he just thought he had a batch of really strong weed and ignored me.”

“RTD?”

“Same”

“Litre?”

“Same”

“We really have a lot of DFOers that love the ganja, don’t we?”

“Unfortunately for me, yes.  I’ll take some of the blame as I sent a bunch of my seeds to a lot of them.”

“Phrasing.”

“Ha!  Look, I didn’t want to say this because it sounds really gay, but help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope!”

“Not quite Liberace gay, but yeah.”

“Okay, I have to go.  This girl needs to hit the bathroom and I don’t need to be there for that!”

“You have standards now?  Maybe there is hope for you yet.”

“Fuck you.  Love yas.”

The girl rushed away from Balls and towards the bathroom as quickly as she could. That wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. Specially at a Taco Bell.  In the meantime, he walked out of the restaurant towards his office building. When he got back to his office, he opened up “[email protected]”.

He and Lady Balls figured that they need to analyze the situation logically.  They had developed a spreadsheet that ruled out possibilities.  They determined pretty quickly that anything politically-related was out although it would have been fun to have tWBS inhabit AOC for a bit and see what damage he could do in Congress.

They also figured out that anything sports-related was out.  Yes, maybe they could get the Cleveland Browns or the Buffalo Bills or the Minnesota Vikings to finally win a Super Bowl, but they would have to play against SOMEONE and the other team would be sad.  For any sport, there was a winner and a loser and the losers always felt sad.

Anything sex-related was out.  Not that it wouldn’t provide happiness to someone but the condition was that this needed to help a LOT of people and they didn’t have any experience organizing orgies. Besides, Saint Peter might not approve…

They were at the point where they were looking for loopholes within the loophole.  For example, tWBS said that he could only inhabit a service worker for a few minutes at a time.  What if Balls and Lady Balls could line up a bunch of service workers Hands Across America style and do something truly big and beneficial?  It was worth exploring, but every time Balls and Lady Balls talked about it, every solution they came up with ended up in an orgy.

Great minds and all that, but it wasn’t helping. What was helping was the California Breakfast Crunchwrap he was eating.  It hit the spot perfectly and soon he stopped thinking about tWBS and started focusing on work.  He did have to do SOMETHING to earn his paycheck, after all.

After a couple of hours of decisions, phone calls, emails, and directions, Balls was done.  If he left now, he could possibly get in nine holes at his local course.

As he was turning the music off and getting ready to leave, his phone buzzed.  Lady Balls had sent him two messages.   The first was a picture of her butt in a thong.  The second simply said, “I’ve solved it.  Dinner tonight.  Steakhouse.  Dress up. Put in a vacation day for tomorrow.”

He replied back, “WHOOHOO!  Got any more pics?”