Jimmy Goulash and the Climb Twins

The story of Jimmy Goulash is a simple one, but you can’t make heads or tails of it if you don’t first know the story of the Climb Twins.   Nobody’s sure what came between the Climb Twins in the first place. Some folks said they fell for the same gorgeous paramour in their younger days, others that they were cursed by a witch to peck at each other like a two-headed bird. Whatever it was, Patsy and Kebin couldn’t stand to be in the same room for even a minute. This was no problem, until they jointly inherited the family estate - a large inn just outside Razor's Pass.
The Climb Inn was an opulent establishment not so long ago, but it did need a little restoration. They got to the restoration right away - arguments about window treatments punctuated with shattering glass, debates on bedding embellished with splashes of paint. With the torn wallpaper and the smashed plates, the inn looked worse than it had when old man Climb died right in the parlor.
So, on the advice of Sherriff Beauregard Ploomber, they came to an agreement. They were each entitled to half the inn - an entitlement that neither would ever surrender. But nowhere did it specify they had to share ownership of the whole inn. So for three weeks, Ploomber meticulously measured the place, painting a thick line right down the middle- half red, half white - till the whole building was perfectly divided in two.
And so the inn opened up again, and folks began to stay there. Every guest endured a complex series of rituals and negotiations before being placed on the appropriate side. A gnome with a penchant for jazz? You’re on Patsy’s side. An orc with a lisp? Head on to check in with Kebin. And so it went for decades. Wallpaper went up, dishes were replaced, bedding was ironed , and the floors were swept - one half of the building at a time. There was only one rule: nobody was to cross the dividing line.
So anyway, Jimmy Goulash was on the road again, running away from the debts he incurred from a pyramid scheme selling precious angel figurines. He stopped for a spell just outside Razor’s Pass, and strolled up the steps of the Climb Inn.
Nobody’s sure how he answered the sorting questions, and the truth is it doesn’t matter much. Cause as Jimmy headed up the stairs, his bag flipped open, and out tumbled his precious angel figurines. And boy did they tumble: right onto that red and white line, shattering into a million angelic pieces one after another after another, till the whole stairwell was full of fallen angels.
The Climb Twins, staring at the chaos wrought by little Jimmy Goulash, erupted into violent conflict: neither one of them would be held responsible for cleaning up all this mess on the Wrong Side of the Inn. Turns out, forty one years of peace hadn’t done away with the rage, they’d just been bottling it up. And boy howdy did the cork fly from that bottle. Whatever happened next (nobody’s sure, really) the whole house was rent in two - right along that dividing line.
And poor Jimmy Goulash? Well, there he stood, one foot on each side of the paint, reaching for the ruined remains of the only thing he had left. You can imagine how it went when the house split…Jimmy split right with it.
They say that when the moonlight is right, families with unaddressed resentment catch a glimpse of one half of old Jimmy Goulash. Just a moment in the mirror or out the window, reminding you of the dangers of a house divided.