Once Upon A Time… When I Went On A Date With Accounts!

One night, while walking down the neighborhood, I came across a new food joint that had come up – Finance. I hadn’t seen it anything like it before. It seemed super fancy and glam from the outside. “Might as well give it a shot”, I thought to myself.

So, I walked into ‘Finance’. The place was full of suits and ties; it made me think that it was a black-tie event, at first. Anyway, I was there to have fun – I moved to the bar and got a seat. I saw the bartender’s name tag, “Liabilities” & called on him. He told me about the best cocktails they served; they had funny drinks - debts, mortgages and bonds.

Nevertheless, I ordered one of those and was sipping away on my drink when my eyes met this lovely woman. I made my way over to her to introduce myself. As it turns out, her name was Ms. Accounts. 

As the night wound down, she asked me over to her house – it was called Excel, right down the Microsoft Office lane. She was pretty, decently interesting and I was enjoying myself. I decided to just go with the flow not suspecting anything.

Soon enough, we reached Microsoft Office lane. At the entrance, there were two guards named Debit and Credit. They had this dark, shady vibe to them. I got to know that they were the ones who killed Plus and Minus. I should have taken the hint and left but, I was still entranced by Ms. Accounts. I kept following her.

As I walked into the house, I observed the walls had tons & tons of rectangles with a million rows and a billion columns. There were pie charts and bar graphs on the wall for art. Before I could see anything else, she pushed me out the door and asked to enter again. Apparently, she was big on ‘double entries’ and single entries were a bad omen.

Finally, she allowed me to enter after careful analysis. Being the excited young man I am, I didn’t want to waste much time. Already drunk with one of the mortgages from the bar, I made my move on her when she stopped me abruptly. She wanted to talk dirty about random fictional stuff before we started focusing on hardcore fun part of it. She was a sapiosexual maybe – real, enjoyable activities (fixed assets) didn’t excite her but talking about intangibles got her off. But, then again, she didn’t know how to account for it.

In between all the talking, I got curious asked, “You’re so beautiful and successful. You have a massive house, which is a big asset. Why were you wasting away time drinking away at the bar drinking with Liabilities?” She looked into the distance and said, “I balance it out with my husband’s money. He’s the most important stakeholder (shareholder) in this whole situation, he’s got the most skin (equity) in the game.” Her husband, Mr. Audit.

I didn’t know she had a husband. I wouldn’t have messed around in the first place. Now I didn’t know what to do. She went on with the unsolicited information broadcast; Audit and she had a terrible relationship. Audit would keep finding mistakes in her, demean her and make her follow unnecessary rules. She just wanted to break free from all of this. I sympathized with her situation.

Then she turned to me. “My husband was away for the night. You were my hope, one of my investments for an escape. You were supposed to be my other comprehensive love interest (OCI), who was never supposed to know about the bottom line. Yet, you were the same as the others.” With that she pulled out a coffin, she had hidden inside the house.

Inside the coffin, there were bodies of other young men who looked strangely similar to me. “These are all my bad debts and bad investments.” She went to the kitchen table and started gathering something. “They all promised and showed high interest in me. But, with time, their rate of interest in me went down.” 

She turned around with a huge knife. Her eyes pierced right through me. “So, I wrote them off.” I was paralyzed from all the fear and shock. She started moving slowly towards me. “And now, it’s time for you to be written off.” She swung the knife in motion, and all I could do in the moment was to shut my eyes.

Swoosh! Thud!

I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in my room; I was okay and that loud sound was of myself falling down from my bed. My phone’s alarm was ringing in the background. It was the notification for my Financial Accounting class that started 5 mins ago.