GUTTER GAZZETTE

SHITTY NEWS FOR SHITTY TIMES

Issue #27 /2025

Forecast

Almost a bad day

Monday, 10 March 2025

Chapter 1. The stench of scum always hides behind a backstab

Once, there was a VIP group, the crème de la crème of the city, trusted members of the Red Circle, a community built on shared success and mutual respect. They were the ones everyone admired, the golden few who held the city’s future in their hands. They were the pie, the sweet reward of ambition and hard work. Together, they thrived.

But greed has a way of changing things. The VIP group, intoxicated by their power and wealth, grew restless. The city was full of opportunity, but there was more to be had. One evening, in the quiet shadows of their gilded halls, a plan was whispered, a dark idea to double their fortunes. Instead of nurturing the community that had made them, they would take the very thing they had helped build and twist it for themselves.

Without warning, they began to copy the businesses, the ideas, the networks that had once been shared in the spirit of unity. What had once been the heart of the Red Circle was now their blueprint, their own version of the pie. They knew the recipe, the secret ingredients “the trust, the loyalty” and they used it to cheat, to steal, to run their own shadow business. The blurring was deliberate. They wore the Red Circle’s face while stabbing it in the back.

It was a double betrayal. First, they betrayed the community that had supported them, taking what wasn’t theirs. But worse, they betrayed their own souls, their own values. They had become mere imitators, pale copies of what they once were. The harm wasn’t just in the theft, it was in the lies they told, in the way they blurred the lines between loyalty and self-interest.

And the pain was felt by all. The Red Circle, once a symbol of trust, now felt empty. The community’s faith had been shattered. What was once a shared dream had been poisoned by ambition. Those who had once walked alongside them now saw only shadows.

The VIP group had run their race, but they had lost. The pie they had stolen had soured in their mouths, and they were left with nothing but the bitter taste of betrayal.