When we last left Horace the Hobo King, he was indeed king. He had just finagled his way into generous wads of cash. Over the next several months, he used his impressive billfold to trick people into giving him even more money. In no time flat he was a member of the millionaire club. Life was good for Horace.

Or was it…

“Well humble my mumble,” said Horace, as he kicked his feet up behind his desk. “I just shat a three-hundred dollar bill.”

Horace chuckled to himself, before he dumped gasoline over a pile of Sacajawea dollars, lit it on fire, and used it to light his cigar.

“Holy shit… I’m rich!” exclaimed Horace, before laughing maniacally.

Several hours later, he calmed down when he forgot what he was laughing at. Then he looked at his room lined with dollar bills, and started laughing again.

In the history of hobos, very few of them had ever achieved the resounding financial success Horace had. One time, a hobo was mistaken for popular yet scruffy actor Russell Crowe, and convinced an elderly Contessa to leave him millions of dollars in her will. This hobo made a tactical error however, for after she died the money simply went to Russell Crowe’s bank account. Russell Crowe used this money to beat the shit out of hobos for $20. Another notable hobo with serious bank was Rupert Murdoch.

At this point, however, Horace had more money than every hobo before him combined. Which really made him laugh. He was laughing so hard, he didn’t realize that his old hobo friend Gus had been trying to get his attention for the past hour.

“HORACE!”

“What the…” darted Horace, as he grabbed his solid-gold, wavy knife.

“Don’t get stabby thurr, Horace. It’s me, Gus.”

“I know!” shouted Horace, as he waved the wavy knife in Gus’s face.

“Just hear me out.”

“What’d you come for, money?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

“But also to talk with you.”

“What about? Money?”

“Yes, money. But not just about how I want money. What money’s doing to you.”

“It’s made me happy as a pig in shit.”

“I could tell by your laughing. And you seem to be living in a pile of shit anyhow.”

“You messin’ with my shit?”

“I ain’t messin’.”

“Don’t talk shit about my shit.”

The two of them then wrestled for a while, until they forgot what was going on.

“Gus, what are you doing here?” said Horace.

“I think you’ve sold out.”

“What the stink-breath are you talking about?”

“You’ve betrayed hobos and everything we stand for.”

“We don’t stand for anything,” exclaimed Horace.

“Oh yeah, what about the oath you took to the sacred hobo code?”

“Oh geez, I forgot about that.”

“You’re damn right you forgot about the hobo code. I’d recite it to you, but we couldn’t dare reveal the hobo code to everybody reading this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The two then fought again for a few hours.

“Get out of my office,” yelled Horace.

“Fine, but don’t you dare call yourself a hobo!”

“You’re dead to me!” said Horace, as he stabbed Gus. Suddenly, the doors to the room broke down. Horace reasoned that the doors could not have broke down by themselves.

“Freeze! IRS!” shouted several armed men with guns.

“What furr?” asked Horace.

“That furr!” said the IRS, pointing at his massive wallet.

“The better to break my fall.”

“You wouldn’t possibly jump,” scoffed the IRS. “It’s 28 stories down.” Horace had already jumped, however, rendering the IRS’s comments naught but preaching to the choir.

“Dona Nobis Pacem,” said the choir the IRS had hired to sing Hallelujah, upon the death of Horace.

Horace heard none of this, however, as he had recently jumped out the window of a 28-story building. Much to his surprise, however, his wallet did not successfully break his fall.

“Because he died,” smirked the IRS. But they thought wrong.

Forsooth, Horace had actually fallen upwards, not due to a sudden change in personality by gravity, but due to the suction of a passing jet. Horace landed safely in the cargo area.

“Heh heh… stowin’ away. I’m such a jolly hobo.”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit. ‘Twas but an accident,” lectured the IRS, stepping out from the inside of a puppy crate, where they had hidden in the event that Horace would try something like this. Horace was shot several times and decided that something must be done. This was hard to do, seeing as he had recently received several shotgun wounds. All looked bleak for Horace, until a crate burst open with none other than his good buddy Gus, himself bleeding from a wavy golden stab wound inflicted by Horace.

“Gus… did you come for money?”

“Yes. Have you any?”

“Not a good time, Gus.”

“That’s fine. I also stowed away to help you out.”

“But… why would you help me after I stabbed you for little reason?”

“Tut tut. Forget you not the hobo’s code.”

The IRS shed a single tear. Due to seasonal allergies. There would have been more, but there is no air in outer space. And the plane was now in outer space.

“Ok… here’s the plan,” shouted the IRS. You all kill the hoboes, I’ll guard the cockpit door in case they try to storm the cockpit. Which is adjacent to the cargo hold for some reason.”

“What should we do?” asked Gus.
“Die,” snarled Horace.

“We’re on a team now,” nudged Gus.

“He was right. Y’all should die,” said the IRS.

“What, are you the IRS’s team now?” asked Gus.

“Say! That’s a brilliant idea!” pinged Horace.

“What? Join the team of folks trying to kill you,” swoozled Gus?

“Nay! I’ll sturm the cockpit, which is adjacent to the cargo hold for some reason.”

“OK. You sturm the cockpit, I’ll hold off these guys!” echoed Gus. Gus’s plea fell on deaf ears, for Horace had already barged through the cockpit door into the flight cabin.

“Ding! This is your captain speaking. The dinner option tonight will be Salisbury steak or Salisbury mouse,” the plane’s captain put down the microphone and turned around to find an unkempt member of the hobo royal family named Horace breathing over his shoulder. “Well hey there, little buddy. What brings you to the cockpit?”

“I just came from the cargo bay,” said Horace as he ripped open a handy moist towelette to wipe off his gunshot wounds.

“Ah, it is adjacent to the cockpit,” opined the captain.

“For some reason!” offered the adjacent captain. The adjacent captain, having no more lines, flashed the thumbs up signal then leapt from the cockpit into the stratosphere, activating his parachute at a safe altitude. He landed safely, and started a new life in the jungles of Myanmar nursing hoboes of wounds inflicted by Russell Crowe.

“Say little buddy, we seem to be short an adjacent captain. How’s yer flyin’ skills?”

“I’m self-taught. Before I sign on, I’d like to know a little bit more about the job,” said Horace.

“Well, it’s purdy simple. I’m just flyin’ to the IRS academy on the moon. This here plane’s full of new IRS recruits, fresh from the IRS academy in First Junction, ME.”

“Why aren’t you shooting at me?” asked Horace.

“Well, aren’t you one of the new recruits? I reckoned that was why you were all up in the cockpit in the first place. I’m not so sure you can be in hurr if you’re not a new recruit. You’d have to head back to the cargo bay, which is around here somewhere.”

Horace sat and pondered for a moment. Being a hobo, he initially pondered baked beans.

“Mmmm,” thought Horace. His reflection was interrupted by the sound of the cargo bay doors being slammed open behind him. An IRS agent leaped out horizontally with a gun aimed square at Horace’s jaw.

“Hold up a tic,” admonished the captain. The IRS agent froze horizontally in mid-air. “You can’t shoot this feller, he’s an IRS recruit. Aren’tcha, li'l buddy?”

Horace looked at the barrel of the gun. He considered stepping back into the cargo bay to rejoin his hobo companion Gus, who was at the time being pummeled in the corner by a banjo which the IRS had insensitively removed from a locked crate and used to pummel Gus. Horace looked at all parties and confidently declared, “With Baked Beans as my witness, I am an IRS recruit.”

As he said this, the horizontal IRS agent suspended in mid-air evaporated in a puff of steam. The other IRS agents, somewhat perplexed, took a beat to look over at their gaseous colleague, once-solid. Gus, an e-string drooping from his left ear, looked towards Horace and flashed the OK sign. The door closed somehow, and the battle raged on. Horace noticed none of this, as he was in the bathroom, changing into his new IRS suit. Horace took his seat next to the captain, who was preoccupied by the steady deluge of IRS agents floating from the cargo bay hatch.

Several months later, Horace completed his IRS training and orientation. He sat down at his IRS moon desk and opened up the folder with his first mission. It read, in part, “the.”

In full, it read:

“Greetings, Agent Horace King. Your first mission is to hunt down and kill Horace, the elusive Hobo King. Here is a picture of him.”

Horace shuddered as he looked at this picture, for it was a picture of himself, a few months more youthful. Horace realized that his first mission was to hunt himself down.

He glanced out the window, where he saw a steady deluge of IRS agents still being thrown from the long-since docked ship, and said to himself,

“Looks like I got myself into an I.R. Mess.”