Page 22 of Killer of the Bells
No one likes them. Like, literally no one. But they’re centuries old, and some rich, poncy person decided that we need to be inflicted with their ringing every hour on the hour throughout the month of December.
Yesterday was December 1st, which meant that it was officially open season on the bells.
For some unfathomable reason, after a few thousand complaints, the rich, poncy guy—who we call the Patron—decided to start a tradition of allowing the bells to irritate the ever-loving piss out of us for one whole day before we’re allowed to take matters into our own hands.
On December 2nd, we attack.
Not collectively, of course. No, we’re all way too stupid to do that. Instead, the town tradition is that we can’t do it together. It has to be done singularly or in pairs; otherwise, it doesn’t count, and the Patron will just have the bells up and working again within a day.
Just to be clear, the Patron didn’t come up with these rules; the town did. However, the Patron enforces them due to some twisted sense of humor.
Rich people, am I right?
The rules for this holiday tradition are as follows:
No groups larger than two.
You can’t pay someone to do it for you.
You can’t spend more than one hundred dollars on supplies.
You can’t get caught by the cops.
The bells have to be disabled in a way that the main structure isn’t compromised, or else the Patron of the bells will make sure they run all year long.
They have to be fully disabled. You can’t just stuff a bunch of material inside the bells. The mechanism itself has to be borked in such a way that it can’t be fixed easily. The local handyman must be incapable of fixing the problem and need to call a specialist for it to count as a win.
Don’t wake the pastor up, or the hunt is over for the night.
Usually, only townies get in on the fun because the colleges in the area are busy with finals and packing up to go home. But I have no life, and I’ve lived here for ages, so not only do I have plenty of time, but I count as a townie.
