Athanasius Finch: Private Dick | ONC 2020

Jack Of No Trade, Master Of All

The inside of 696 West Penn Street smelled like a macrame shop, for it was dank, slightly rotten, and with a strong hint of used adult diaper. But once your nose was accustomed to the smell could you appreciate the kafkaesque nightmare that passed as interior decoration.

The whole thing was made out of wood planks hammered together, all with different shapes and colors. Rich mahogany planks joined together with rotten birch patches in what I assumed was the worst nightmare of any person who ever bought an IKEA furniture.

It didn't help that every time I took a step, a symphony of creaks and shrills would reverberate across the house like the world's creepiest Yo-Yo Ma concert. What really stood out from the visual vomit was that every furniture was exquisitely made in wood with accentuations of brass and copper. Each piece of furniture had a golden plate that read "Hephaestus' Forge, Since 11th BC."

Forged tables with blown vases housed metal facsimiles of daisies and peonies, all made with exceptional attention to details.

"Ah, I peruse you admiring my craftmanship!" exclaimed Athanasius. "Every piece is permissible for acquiring, at the right price."

"I was actually wondering why the room looked like one of those jigsaw puzzles that you have to color yourself."

"You have a great power of perusing yourself," noted Athanasius, scribbling something on his clipboard.

"I believe observing the obvious is as big of a feat as differentiating the color red from the color blue."

"It is if you're a dog, or daltonic," said Athanasius, once again scribbling something. "And rather to my preoccupation, the world seems to be daltonic when it comes to logic and reason. Like a dog. And it is my duty as a man of logic and reason to tame said dog and teach it right from wrong!"

"So, you're saying the world is a bitch?"

He scribbled something yet again, shaking his rather abnormal head from side to side. "Profanities are unbecoming of a young woman like yourself, Miss...?"

"Again, not attached to any gender," I said. "You can drop the miss. And Beatrix Cagliostro."

"I am unable to drop anything," said Athanasius. "I was the world's strongest grip champion between 2007 and 2009. I only forfeited subsequent titles because the association begged me to stop competing. Attendance was low because people refused to spend money on inscriptions and travel expenditures because why would they bother to even try when they knew their efforts would be futile?"

There are a few things I have to say about Athanasius Finch that I wished somebody would've told me before I took the job. For the mental sanity of the reader, I will try to point them as they become apparent from that first interaction, starting with the fact the man was more full of shit than the poor man that had to clean the latrines after Woodstock.

He would often exaggerate, fabricate, and outright lie about his qualifications and life events. As the saying goes: little man, big...ego.

"I see, but that doesn't answer anything about the house."

Athanasius tapped a wall twice with his hairy knuckles, which, incidentally, made a piece of the ceiling to fall onto a nearby table. "I have been commissioned by the Islandic Royal Academy of Austere Philosophers, of which I am an honorary member for my contributions in the great debate of nature versus nurture with my revolutionary 'Nanurture' theory, to recreate one of the classic greek thought experiments. Are you familiar with the Ship of Theseus?"

"Of course. A ship that gets replaced piece by piece over the course of a century until no original pieces left, and one has to wonder if it can be said that the ship is still the original ship after all the parts have been swapped."