The story follows a man named Dave Peck, who is searching for the meaning of life, instead of employment, specifically in his father's moving business (to the dismay of said father). One day, Dave sees an advertisement for a book that says it will tell him the meaning of life for the price of $9.99. He begins to read this novel, and wishes to spread this message he has received to everyone else, who is uninterested. Along the way, other people and their problems are intertwined with Dave's story, such as a woman who likes "smooth men", to quite an extreme, literal sense.
$9.99 provides examples of:
- Body Horror: Oddly enough, it's not treated as scary. Lenny discovers that Tanita likes her men super-smooth and super-soft—to the point of being boneless; her very furniture consists of her other boneless boyfriends, and they're entirely cool with it. He goes out & does the same "deboning" operation they had, and she loves him better for it.
- Chalk Outline: Played straight, marking where the Angel fell to his death—the second time, if he was also the homeless man.
- Ignored Confession: Kweller, the old guy, fairly demands the police to arrest him for the angel's murder, but the cop lets him off, saying that, if he's a believer, God probably forgives him anyway.
- Line-of-Sight Name: The Hearing-Range Name version. Zacky names his Piggy Bank "Kweller" after the Angel shouts the old guy's name on the way down, after Kweller pushed him off the roof.
- Magical Realism: In some ways. There's an angel with actual wings, Ron's inch-or-so-tall stoner mates who do Farts on Fire, and Tanita's presumed prior boyfriends, who've somehow had their bones zapped out of them and are now literally her beanbags, but no one seems to show shock or surprise—at best, just good old curiosity. One of Ron's mates, for instance, even goes to university (or so he claims), presumably like normal six-foot people.
- Ms. Fanservice: In-universe and out, Tanita, the supermodel, whose Establishing Character Moment involves a TV commercial for a bank, and who's been a swimsuit cover. She's actually shown in the nude several times.
- Rubber Man: Oddly enough, it's not treated as scary. Lenny discovers that Tanita likes her men super-smooth and super-soft—to the point of being boneless; her very furniture consists of her other boneless boyfriends, and they're entirely cool with it. He goes out & does the same "deboning" operation they had, and she loves him better for it.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In some ways. There's an angel with actual wings, Ron's inch-or-so-tall stoner mates who do Farts on Fire, and Tanita's presumed prior boyfriends, who've somehow had their bones zapped out of them and are now literally her beanbags, but no one seems to show shock or surprise—at best, just good old curiosity. One of Ron's mates, for instance, even goes to university (or so he claims), presumably like normal six-foot people.
