blood money
n.— «The impetus came from Ms. Nagle, who has long been fascinated by the Sanitation Department.…Blood money is “overtime for working snow once the novelty has worn off.”» —“Nothing’s Wasted, Especially Garbage” by Edward Rothstein New York Times Mar. 31, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...