This was bullshit, he didn’t want to go to that god knows what this place was—some bizarre fusion of a thrift store, a petting zoo, and a DMV waiting room. A goat stared at him like it knew things. The fluorescent lights buzzed with judgment. And the smell—was that popcorn or despair?

This felt like the place where a dude in his midlife crisis would come …to barter his dignity for a secondhand leather jacket and a sense of purpose. The kind of place where a man named Bradley—who now insists everyone call him “Blade”—would wander the aisles looking for a vintage guitar amp to mask the sound of his life falling apart.

He stepped around a bin labeled “Misc. Animal Accessories / Broken Electronics / Inspirational Calendars (2014)” and instantly regretted making eye contact with the volunteer at the counter. The guy had the haunted look of someone who’d seen too much—like maybe he’d once tried to return an alpaca and failed.

Somewhere behind him, a fax machine shrieked—a long, painful electronic death cry. A toddler in a dinosaur onesie was feeding hay to what was definitely not a certified service sheep

He was Jeremy Volkov, for fuck’s sake—people bent under a fucking look from him. Entire rooms shifted their gravity when he walked in. But here?

Here, Jeremy Volkov was just another lost soul wandering the aisles of some cosmic joke of a retail establishment, being silently judged by barnyard animals and fluorescent tubes that flickered like they were trying to communicate a warning in Morse code.

He adjusted his sunglasses—pure reflex, absolutely no practical purpose indoors—and tried to ignore the unsettling sensation that the goat was still staring at him. It was. It absolutely was.

He took a step deeper inside. Something crunched under his boot. He looked down. A cassette tape. Of whale noises. Autographed.

Jesus Christ.

This was his own personal hell.

Jeremy exhaled slowly, the kind of exhale that implied both resignation and the faint hope that maybe—just maybe—he was hallucinating or that someone would shot him in the dick. That would’ve been preferable, honestly.

This was crunching whale-noise weirdos jerked off to under his fucking boots.

To his left, a handwritten sign read:

“NO REFUNDS. NO RETURNS. NO QUESTIONS. NO EYE CONTACT WITH RONALD (THE LLAMA).”

Yep. He was leaving, there was no way—

“Jeremy Volkov?” A female voice came from behind him— “He’s inside”

He still didn’t understand why his father had wanted to meet him in this hellhole, but it better be important or he’d snap his neck

And there, sitting in a folding lawn chair patterned with faded flamingos, was his father.

Adrian Volkov.

Legend. Pioneer. Asshole.

“Son,” Adrian said, nodding once, dramatically, as if he were greeting Jeremy from atop a mountain rather than from inside a low-budget livestock-adjacent swap meet.

“Dad,” Jeremy replied, already exhausted.

“You came.”

“Sure did, daddy”

Behind Jeremy, Ronald the llama made a noise—something between a groan and an accusation. Jeremy did not look at him. Apparently, he wasn’t legally allowed to.

Adrian leaned forward in his flamingo chair, the poncho rustling ominously. “I needed to speak with you somewhere… neutral.”

“Neutral?” Jeremy gestured wildly around them. “This is a hostage situation with price tags.”

“Exactly,” his father said. “No one would suspect this place. It is… discreet.”

A balloon popped in the distance. Jeremy flinched. His father didn’t.

“What could you possibly need to tell me,” Jeremy asked, “that required meeting in the basement of a Goodwill owned by Dr. Dolittle’s fever dream?”

Adrian inhaled. Deep. Dramatic. Theatrical enough that Jeremy wanted to hurl a prop chair at him.

“It is about your wife,” Adrian said.

Jeremy blinked. Once. Twice.

“…I don’t have a wife.”

Adrian smiled. Slow. Cryptic. Infuriating.

“You do now.”

He was going to laugh, right? Laugh and clap him in the back, tell him this was a fucking joke