The Word Thief

"I know why you're here."

"You do?"

Jaxon sighed, annoyed. "Aye. There's only one reason people seek me out in this fetid, sorry excuse for a tavern."

"I... well—"

"How many are we stealing?" Jaxon interrupted, cigar tip poised, exhaling a bulbous gray cloud into the already hazy air.

"Two hundred. Exactly."

"And whose are they?"

"God's."

He almost choked on his smoke. That'll be a first, Jaxon thought, glowering at the bald, gaunt man, his dark eyes serious. 

"You're serious?"

"Aye."

"Two hundred, exactly?"

"No more, no less."

"$111 to get it done."

"Deal!"

"Hundred and five minutes," Jaxon yawned, adjusting his copper pendant's outer rings with precision.

And suddenly, he was in a white-washed cathedral, staring at a faceless man. He stood at a podium of cascading paper, scribbling a soundless quill in the eerie silence. 

The floor was covered in countless, one-word pages, millions of them, springy beneath his feet.

Jaxon barely had to move. He counted forty words left and stood to fumble with his pendant.

Guess I'll be getting paid sooner than I anticipated, he thought.

The no-faced man jolted up from his podium, and Jaxon felt nothing but malice.

Oh, I don't think so.