♪Ding Dong Dong Doong, Dong Ding Dong Doong♪

Bev’s doorbell woke him up. He had been watching a rerun of NYPD Blue and fallen asleep in his easy chair. He was angry at whoever was at his door before he was even fully conscious.

"Cocksucker!" Bev yelled loud enough for the prick at the door to hear. "That had better be either the President or a SWAT team, because otherwise I am go to tear you a new asshole."

Slowly, one precarious step at a time, Bev made it to the door, his palsied hands shaking on the bar of his walker. Leaning forward he put his good eye to the peep hole.

A man stood on the porch in a suit and, from Bev’s perspective, wore a shit eating grin. "Go. Away." Bev yelled, and then peered through the peep hole like an eagle.

The man did not go away, but cleared his throat and spoke. "Sorry sir don’t mean to be a bother, I was just hoping we could talk for a moment."

From the man’s perspective, the door went silent for a long moment and then barked at him. "We can’t. Fuck. Off."

Nervously, the man in the suit looked back towards the neighbor’s azelea bushes, behind which his two supervisors had secreted themselves. One of the two popped his head up over the lip of the bush and gave the man in a suit a stern look with his eyebrows.

The man in the suit turned back to the door and cleared his throat again. "Uhm sir, I just have an amazing opportunity to share with you from your local branch of Healthline Life Insurance. If you have a moment."

The door went silent again, for much longer this time.

Inside, at the words "Life Insurance", Bev had started the long journey to retrieve his shotgun. It took a full three minutes, as it was about 20 feet away in the kitchen and the journey back with the gun in tow was significantly more difficult.

Outside the man inquired again. "Sir, are you there?"

In response, the door just made the loud, unmistakble Chick-Chick of a shotgun shell being loaded into the barrel of a shotgun.

The man in a suit stepped off the the porch and was beginning to run away when the supervisors jumped up out of the azaleas and confronted him. If he didn’t at least complete the full pitch, they made clear, he would be failed out of the Healthline salesman training program without recompense.

Terrified, but desperate for a job, the besuited man returned to the front door, his palms sweaty. When he arrived in front of the door, the man dived straight into his pitch, desperate to just get through it and leave.

"Sir, did you know…" he swallowed a lump in his throat, "…did you know that with Healthline you can get over 100 thousand dollars in coverage without medical pre-approval?"

The door was not impressed. Inside, Bev’s eye was glued to the peep hole, the shotgun balanced on the bar of his walker.

The man in the suit never stopped talking "…And sir, that premium is a fixed premium…" his voice got highpitched for second and he cleared his throat again, "…a fixed premium sir, and so, sir, it cannot be increased no matter what." The man only had the last line to say, which he felt hit the wrong note in this situation, but also felt he had no other choice but to say it.

"Sir, do I have your attention now?"

The shotgun blast came through the door at shin height, ripping a hole through the wood and into the man’s right shin bone. He fell to the cement porch, screaming bloody murder.

Inside, Bev had been thrown to the floor by the blast and lay prone on the carpet. "My hip! I broke my hip! Someone call a hospital!"

Outside, the two supervisors peeked over the azalea’s, looked at each other nervously, and ran away down the block.