Bills: I’m sick of ‘em. 

Just when you think everything is going along fine—BAM!—here they come, demanding attention and wrecking your day. Try as you may, you just can’t escape them. And don’t even think about ignoring them!

My issue with Bills began when I was little. I know you’re asking, “What? You had to deal with Bills when you were a little kid?” Well, no, not me precisely. But I was raised by my grandmother—on account of having terrible parents—and she would often say, “Grandson, these Bills are gonna put me in an early grave!” She had one mortgage Bill and another credit card Bill which were especially annoying. When she died one day from a heart attack, I knew it was the Bills’ fault. That’s why, as a grownup, I decided I was done with Bills. I resolved to make Bills go extinct; I was going to shred and pulp every single last one of ‘em. 

My method of tracking down Bills was to discreetly follow mail trucks, then look in mailboxes to find Bills. That worked for a while. I was able to find and neutralize a bunch of Bills that way, returning them to my apartment and transforming each into a satisfying pile of pulp. 

But I soon discovered I had to be more sneaky about my actions. As much as people go on and on about how much they hate Bills, they really get mad when you take them away. It’s mystifying. So I turned to online Bills. Although there was some pleasure in using the internet to take down Bills, checking boxes was more fun, so I went back to that. This time around, I’d go at night. Many weren’t good about checking their mail, so it would still be sitting there at 3 A.M. when I drove by. But I wasn’t satisfied. I missed stalking the mail truck, so I eventually returned to my original method.

Last week, they almost caught me. 

I was driving around my neighborhood, poking through folks’ mailboxes and looking for Bills, when this police cruiser pulled up. “Excuse me, sir. Did you know it’s illegal to go through other folks’ mail?” the bulky, male officer asked me. “We’ve been getting some complaints from the neighborhood watch about you today.” 

As I was getting my license and registration and all that, I was feeling super uncomfortable. I was more than certain they had my fingerprints on file, and I didn’t want the police to come over to my residence to find stacks of Bills lying around my house; piles of Bills scattered about in various stages of being shredded and pulped. So I said real nice and congenial-like, “Oh, that’s fine, officer. What’s your name? I haven’t seen you around here before?”

“I’m Sergeant William Townsley,” he told me. 

And then I lost it with him. I just hate Bills so much.

And now he’s in my most recent pile of shredded Bills…