The blonde man sat on the chair at the head of his impressive table. Indeed, it wasn’t so much a chair as a throne, cast with panther’s eyes and a seat made from tiger fur. The table itself was hand-crafted, fashioned from the finest onyx and and gilded with ivory from the cutest of baby elephants.
Sometimes he felt bad that he’d left behind so many tusk-less trumpeters but when he did he simply pictured them on their return from the elephant plastic surgeon, their ceramic replacements glistening in the midday sun with only mild teasing from the others.
“Clubfoot!” he exclaimed, as he became aware of his thirst. A man servant shuffled into the room.
“The ushual, mashster?” lisped the grotesque, clad in old blue robes, a strange v-shaped symbol barely visible beneath the twisted elbow he used to hold them together so as not to expose his length. The blonde man hated when he did that.
“Do you want to be a baby elephant?” he’d scream. Clubfoot would shake his head as mournfully as he could, knowing if this came to pass his peanut allergy would kill him stone dead within hours.
“Yes,” came the reply, “but I swear, if you add even the slightest bit too much of Ribena, well, you know what will happen …”
“Yesh. The boxsh. The shtroking. It will perfect, you’ll shee.”
“It had better be.”
The blonde man dismissed his charge with the wave of a perfectly manicured hand. He spent money every week having his cuticles shaped and his nails polished. To his mind dirty fingers were the reason society was collapsing upon itself. He recalled a meeting with an elder, one who worked in the banking industry he thought. Something to do with Lehmann’s perhaps.
That man had scolded him for wearing his hat indoors, but the blonde man felt the elder was ignoring the real issue. Life was better when men wore hats. Ok, there was more cholera and polio and small wounds were often fatal, but dammit people looked smarter and were prone to exaggerated displays of happiness when something good happened. Nowadays, one could not throw one’s sculpted hair into the air and exclaim ‘huzzah’.
He yearned for simpler times before pressing a button on his phone which launched an app which saw a mighty workstation emerge from the floor with a great Star Trekkian door woosh. The screen showed window after window of scrolling numbers and code, all of which were for show because he had not the faintest idea what they meant nor why anyone would use them when so much time had been spent on point and click interfaces.
Oh, it impressed the guests when they came over. Made him look like the l33t cracker hacker they all thought he was, but he preferred the luscious icons and subtle drop shadows of a GUI when he did his work. His work. His life’s work. He clenched his buttocks as he thought about how they had pushed him to this place. It was never meant to be like this, but they had created the villain. They thought they were so great, thought they could treat him like some kind of idiot, but he’d show them. He’d already showed them.
He pulled at the neck of his cashmere/alpaca mix turtle-neck. The room, with its awesome computer power, was hot. Where was that drink? He let out of a mighty roar, like that of a mournful hippo having a wolverine inserted into his anus, just as his man skiffed back into the room. The rattling of ice dried out his mouth further before Cluboot hurriedly put the glass down on the table.
The blonde man looked at it with rage. He stood, looming over his assistant, before cuffing him strongly about the back of the head. His anger intensified as his hand came away sticky from the gelatinous hair-product now smeared all over his palm.
“How many times have I told you? Use a coaster. Next time …,” he could barely finish. The minion braced himself for further violence, but then a chime rang out.
“New messhage, mashter,” he said, hoping to distract him. Indeed it worked, as the blonde man picked up his glass, and took a mighty swig of the pint of Tuborg, blackcurrant and ice with a few dashes of his own musk which he farmed from himself on a weekly basis. As he put it down, a coaster was hastily pushed underneath and the beads of drink sweat wiped surreptitiously from the surface.
“Haha!” he exclaimed. “They fell for it. Hook, link and stinker!”
“Ehéhéhé, good work, shir.”
“Indeed it was. ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ You know who said that?”
Clubfoot stared at the ground, unwilling to admit his expertise in 19th century sonnets.
“An Aussie man, named Dias. Silly name, top, top poem though. And now it applies to me. For I have thwarted them all summer long.”
“Yesh you have!”
“I made them think the Argentine was a genuine possibility. I didn’t so much lead them up the garden path, as chauffeur them up it in a stretch limo with a bar in it and TVs in the back of the seats.”
“Yesh, you did.”
“And when it came time for payment to be made, I, with my computery knowledge, fiddled the market with insider trading and that, and now where is he?!”
“Italy!”
“That was a pretorical question, you goon. It did not require an answer.”
“Shorry, shir.”
“Oh you will be. But not as shorry … *cough* … sorry as them. For once more I have done it again, for a second time! The Uruguayan. How could they think they knew so much about his contract without becoming suspicious? It’s like taking candy from a bay leaf!”
Clubfoot shook his head sadly.
“They have showed their hand and those that to whom they have shown their hand have declared that hand a nincompoop. They will no longer deal with that hand because that hand clearly doesn’t have a clue, does it?”
“No, mashster. It doesh not.”
“You idiot. It does have a clue. But the clue I gave it was false. And they have become the ones whom the people will mock and sneer. When they learn once more of my brilliance they will supplicate themselves to me, and I shall reign over them anew.”
“Oh yesh”.
“I even made them think they could bid for the fat freckly one. What fools! We’ve got them exactly where we want them, for we are a team, you and I. You know that, don’t you?
“Shir.”
“I might treat you cruel, but it’s only because you’re a buffoon. Now, they will have no choice but to issue us with new, lucrative contracts to keep us in the manner to which we have become accustomed.”
“Oh mashter, truly you are the greatest villian slash striker that ever lived.”
The blonde man smiled a winsome smile, stroking the invisible cat he wished he had.
“Yes, Marouane, I am. I really, really am.”
