The History of the world- Part2 Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

 The History of the world- Part2

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

                                                                  V

After a brief ten minutes stroll we both arrived at the Castle court inn, which rose up several storeys high at the end of the main cobbled boulevard of the underworld.

The pomp and the glory of the place could be immediately felt, in the warm comfortably furnished surroundings of the inn’s fine placed decorum. It reminded me of some old Bavarian drinking house, with its roaring fire at the main living room near the adjoining vestibule at its entrance, the suits of armour and the stag’s head that adorned the wall near the entrance gave an eloquent touch to the atmosphere of the place, along with the smell of fine cooked food and the sight of the fancy opulent display of several barmaids that greeted us both on our arrival. Immediately after our arrival, Beth took my hand, tugging and pulling at my somewhat reluctant behaviour and led me up two flights of stairs unto the second floor of the inn. Bright royal blue carpets on the corridors gave the inn a certain sense of luxury along with the smell of some peppermint air freshener that odorised the corridors.

As we strolled quietly together hand in hand, I gazed upon a truly disconcerting sight, it was the sight of a fully grown naked man fettered hand and foot to a set of iron cuffs connected to a small steel chain. He had literally been chained to the back of the closet and now he lay with his arms crossed and his feet bent on the floor at the entrance of his room completely prostrated and without movement whatsoever, he looked at me with weary eyes, sobbed a little and then continued to focus his eyes downwards towards the ground. The man’s will had been subverted and his life had been completely subdued by the will of the employment staff.

“That’s a disturbing sight to see! What has the man done, to deserve this?”

“He refused to obey the commands of one of the chamber maids. He was caught stealing things in the hotel, that’s the real reason why he has been tied hand and foot like a dog. But in all truth he is a dog and he deserves a dog’s fate, which he will get when the boss hears about it.”

She turned to me and smiled, as if this vision of depravity meant nothing, neither to her nor to anyone at all.

“Here we are, its room 59, come right through”, she said as casual as one can get.

The room had a certain Bohemian essence to it. The room was neat and tidy, there were several shelves filled with books, a closet occupied the far left corner of the room and a big king sized bed, adorned with fluffy pillows, red roses and teddy bears were all neatly and finely organized into little rows on the top of the bed.

The main feature in the room was the fine oriole window that looked out onto one of the side streets of the underworld. The floor was covered with several Turkish rugs and on the wall, there were several paintings, origami pictures and certain pencilled in collages that gave fine detail to the room.

“This is a nice room, its seems to be like something from the old Habsburg era”, I said politely.

“Yes, your right because this whole building would date back to the time of Emperor Franz Josef.”

“Hey, did you make them?” I pointed over at the pictures on display on the walls.

“Yes, I certainly did, I went to Art College. I am quite the artist. I love to sketch at night, it keeps me up at night in ecstasy, I never sleep these nights because I cant stop thinking about my next painting or drawing, it makes me completely wild, I go crazy and I indulge in my irresponsible pursuits.”

“What are these irresponsible pursuits”, I asked bewildered.

“Oh you don’t want to know, but I suppose in someway since I have been suffering all this extreme ecstasy over the past few months, I find that it was probably responsible for my engaging actions and pursuit of you. But that only helps to seduce you, now doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know”, I said rather sheepishly.

“Sit on the bed, while I read you some of my poems”, she said as rooted through the closet on the extreme left hand side of the room.

I sat on the bed and looked to see that she had produced a great big folder of poetry and that she stood before me and had removed her bunny tufts and was now wearing her tartan coloured nighty. I sat, completely upright on the bed being completely motionless, while she read out a poem quietly.

“The course of day, is just a lifetime for a man, the coming night, is the death and end of a man, the evening time is old and grey, the twilight years are middle aged, as youth is just the dawning of a day. The fleeting moment has begotten the fallen days of our past, the course of time, is rigid, tough and…… Ahhh!”

Suddenly, without warning and to my complete surprise she threw herself on top of the bed, literally jumped on top of me and started to kiss me all over, from my neck, down to my belly button and up to my lips and she started to stroke my chest as she growled in excitement.

“I am having one of my ecstasy attacks! I can’t help it! I cannot control myself when I have these attacks, the only medicine and therapy available is for you to succumb and embrace my will. Give in to these attacks doctor, for you will be my doctor whenever these attacks take place, I will need you right here, right in my room.”

Very slowly she started to unbutton her nighty, but before she could unravel her grand apparel I withdrew myself from her tight clutches and stood at the side of the bed, in shock and amazement at what she had done in such extremity.

“No I cannot do this. I cannot give myself to you. Not tonight, not any night can I give myself to this kind of behaviour”, I said with a swift and urgent command.

“What! What is wrong with you? You have no choice? I order you to come to me, to close your eyes and rest yourself on the bed, let me do all the work. Just stop talking, stop thinking, enjoy yourself, indulge your senses in this moment of ecstasy.”

She then rose from the bed and started to pull my shirt, she tugged my shirt with an act of sheer force and perhaps even violence and in all her excitement she tore a small hole in my shirt and she tried with her arms to literally pull me back to her bed. She lifted up the sheets, and pointed to the bed and commanded me to get in.

“No, I wont do this! I don’t even know you. I wont listen to you any longer. You are mad, you are completely mad and I’m going to leave, I have no time for this. I’m going to leave now”, I shouted at her in a rage of such force that she sat on the bed, slightly shook, surprised and with a face of extreme austerity.

“Either you take your belt off, or I’ll give you such a box that you will never forget. Do you understand?”

“No, I’m leaving and that’s that, I want you to shut up. You can keep your ecstasy to yourself and for once your command will not be obeyed. There’s nothing you can do about it!”

She suddenly rushed at me with a scream of rage and started to drive her nails into my face with such force and speed that she nearly knocked me to the ground. I pushed her back and then she started to throw the cushions off her bed, along with her teddy bears and the books off her bookshelf.

“You useless freak, don’t you ever act human every once in awhile. You don’t belong with us you don’t belong anywhere! You are a truly useless creature. You damn fiend!”

After her screams had passed she started to lift the pillows off the floor and with all the energy she possessed she started to belt me over the head with her cushions.

With each attempted blow, I tried to dodge and duck and force her back with my hands.

“Hey calm down. I have nothing against you. You are a very attractive girl. I am flattered that you like me in such a way, but I swore after my marriage never to get involved with a woman again and this isn’t what I hoped for. I only came so that you might give me a room to sleep in for the night. Because its so late and I have probably missed the last bus home. I’m sorry its me, its not your fault, I just don’t want to get involved. I am not that kind of guy, alright”, with my words I tried to assure her that violence and complete hatred on her part were not necessary whatsoever.

“Well, I understand then, if you have made a commitment to your decision and if you are not that kind of guy, well then I perfectly understand. You just should have told me in the first place. I am sorry that lost my temper with you, its just that I had been looking forward to this all week and I had gotten excited. By the way as you can see Karina is not my roommate, I lied, she sleeps next door and as I said she’s out on business tonight, so if you want you can sleep next door, alone, to your own privacy and I will leave you be. I have her spare key. Would that suit you perfect?”

The maddening rage in her eyes had faded and her face gave out certain sympathy once I had explained things to her. She sat on the bed for a moment, to catch her breath and so to try to calm down.

“That sounds perfectly alright to me. I’m sorry about this, I’m just going to try and get some sleep.”

She then handed me Karina’s bedroom key.

“I will call at nine o’clock tomorrow, a complementary breakfast will be served in the dinning room tomorrow. Be sure you don’t miss your breakfast, its on me.

Don’t forget that you have an important meeting tomorrow with the boss at twelve o’clock. I will escort you to him and introduce you to him. I will advise you on what you should and shouldn’t say to a man of such importance. Anyway I’m just going to go to bed now, goodnight, sleep well and have sweet dreams.”

“Good night, sleep well.”

I walked off quickly so to leave her before she decided to change her mind and try to give me brain damage once again with one of her teddies.

I went to bed, and lay my worried head on the pillows and thought that such an experience could never help produce sweet dreams, never in any circumstances.

                                                                    VI

 

 I awoke the following morning to the pleasant sound of birds chirping and warbling and as I gazed out through a small slit in the blinds I could see the sun shining through, to illuminate the very buildings all around, the back streets and the very room, which I slept in. For some reason, for one brief moment this sun-drenched vision reminded me of St. Mark’s square in Venice, all bright with the glitter of the old perfectly preserved quarter of the city. As I lay in bed, a sense of temporary serenity had filled the room and my being, since no sounds, nor interruptions were made, not even by a maid or a bell boy out in the corridors. At nine o’clock there came a knock on my door, it was Beth and she politely inquired into whether I was ready to leave for breakfast. I simply told her that I would be out in five minutes and that I would meet her down at the main dinning room, since I knew exactly where it was. Beth seemed calm and composed and appeared to be quite bland and so unappealing that I pondered for the briefest moments on whether or not it was the same “seductress” from the night before. She wore no makeup, no bunny suit, her hair was a tangled mess of wavy curls and her eye lids looked rough and swollen.

I simply slipped into my clothes, combed my hair and strolled down to the basement confines of the Castle Court inn dining room. The smell of bacon, sausages, and lightly grilled mushrooms filled the air around the gathering mass that lined in sequence carrying trays and plates as they waited impetuously for an old man at the top of the queue to move ahead. The dinning room was filled with twelve main tables and all of these were finely decorated with stainless steel cutlery, paltry measures of corned beef, cheese and coffee were left for every guest, as this was a special continental breakfast for the esteemed guests at the Castle Court Inn.

After a fifteen minutes wait I sat down to face Beth at one of the tables, which was allocated beside the main entrance door to the dinning room.

I sliced my bagels in half, garnished them with butter and corned beef, with lettuce and lightly grilled tomatoes and I washed this mixture down with several highly concentrated glasses of pure Californian orange juice.

Beth seemed to be awkward and shy, as if she were somewhat embarrassed about last night’s incident.

“Beth, why does your boss want to meet me? I am nothing in relation to him; I mean I don’t even know him. I can be of no benefit or service to such a man as a business tycoon.”

“Well, if you say the right words, you may leave a good impression, just enough for him to even tolerate you. Anyway, he summoned you, not me. He summoned you for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“I don’t know, he never told me, its purely confidential. He says that he wants to talk with you in private and when you are both alone, then and only then will he reveal the nature of his request for you.”

“Beth I am sorry about last night. I have principles and such principles are irrevocable to me. Such situations are not to my taste.”

“Are you still talking about that? Don’t worry it was a minor triviality. Its all in the past now, so you must realise that I hold no grudge against you. I just did not know what kind of guy you were.”

“Incidentally, have many men obliged your commands and desires in such a situation as last night?”

“Many have, many have loved me with a saddle and a corset, but the last man, he was strange, a little stranger than yourself, it did not go well with him, he did not take it lightly at all.”

“Well what happened to him?”

Beth frowned and bit her lip in agitation.

“Well he kind of got a little bit of a shock, and when I leapt up on his back, one night, he spun around in fright unaware of what was happening and tried to escape as quick as he could. I had cornered him to the edge of the window and was about to wrestle him to the bed, when suddenly he turned and jumped through the window.”

“Oh! That’s terrible; see what a horrible effect you have on these poor men! These men have suffered enough from you. You strip these poor innocuous flies down and wait for the perfect moment of surprise and when the timing is correct you set the trap and leave them completely bound and helpless in your web of crazed seduction.”

“Your right! I showed penance for his death. I went to the church every week following his funeral I laid roses on his poor cold grave. The boy was only 18, he was timid and he was terrified of women and what women can unleash on such poor boys like him.”

“Well if I were you I would drink my cup of hemlock and be done with the world. The world is not your oyster and you are not made for the world. That incident was another lesson you should have learnt more carefully.”

We both finished our half eaten, half digested food and we both preceded, one after the other out the dinning hall into the main lobby of the Castle Court Inn.

We both stood facing one another.

“Well are we going to see Mr. Andrecovich or not?”

“Yes you are, but I am not. My works finished with you. I have some important errands to attend to at the Dukes head Casino, so this is my last goodbye. One of Mr. Andrecovich’s servants will arrive in five minute to ten minutes to escort you to his quarters.”

Before she left she gave me a little peck on my right cheek, smiled faintly and gave me a brief almost lifeless and loveless hug around my shoulders before she departed and went out onto the main street amid a crowd of soccer fans that had congregated out on the main street.

I was happy to let her go, she was more trouble than she was worth and who knows poor misguided fool was next on her waiting list. She was most definitely a predator of men, but a predator with some compassion for the victims of her profession and her sordid life’s choices and decisions. 

                                                       

                                                           VII

A tall thin man, a rather gaunt looking character emerged in the wide wooden vestibule of the Castle Court inn, wearing what looked like a stained second hand suit and a pair of thick-framed glasses. He immediately came to me and beckoned me forward to follow him.

“Where is your boss, located?”

I spoke in an attempt to try and tempt some information out from my guide, who only occasionally gave me direction as we turned both left and right on several different occasions down past the main street of the underworld and into several adjoining streets which I had never known before in my life.

“I will show you, its not far, just down the end of this street, you can’t miss it, since it dwarfs all the buildings either side.”

The guide pointed towards a large building of several storeys, that looked quite honestly like the prosperous dwelling place of a lord or a noble, during the Dutch renaissance of the 17^th century. The buildings features protruded out, with stone figures placed in tight arrangement on the finely carved wooden roof, that moved in little grooves together around the roof’s perimeter. In its size and width the building could once have been an old storehouse used during the days of the monarchy or perhaps it was once an old meeting house for one of the Reformer sects that had once a popular foothold within this hidden quarter of the city, before they had mysteriously declined and diminished from all affairs not just in the quarter itself but in the city as a whole.

On our approach to the great red-bricked house, I peered through several of the windows to see several shadowy figures in conference around a small kitchen table of some sort. Outside the windows to the house, I could see a small herb garden along with several small Olympian like statuettes that looked almost like several small stone made armed guards in close proximity to the front door of the house.

“This house is old, it must date back to the 17^th century at least”, I said to my guide who was busy bending forward while trying to turn his key in the front door.

“Yes it is, its one of the few remaining traces we have of our old town, that has remain intact since the end of the war”, he said as he smiled and opened the door, while trying to usher me forward.

“In we go, just follow me.”

As I walked through the front door, I was amazed with my luxurious surroundings, with the eloquent tapestries that hanged on the walls, both left and right, the fine marble floor with its multicoloured tiles, gave a certain pristine freshness to the hall which ran extensively into a large main dormitory like kitchen that faced us.

The hall was empty, no commotion could be heard and to my immediate left I could see two closed doors and to my immediate right I could see a winding stairway that ran up beyond my gaze.

“This place is fancy, it suits a million like Mr. Andrecovich?”

“This is only one of his twenty houses and in fact its his summer home, the smallest of the one’s he owns”, said my guide who confided to me that he was employed by Mr.Andrecovich as a butler and a messenger for business clientele and an organiser for private contractual meetings.

“Wait here sir, while I go and speak with my boss, he may already be engaged in some business affairs with some of his contacts”, said the butler who paced several steps forward into the darkened room facing me and disappeared completely under a shadow.

Facing me to my right, below one of the eloquent tapestries, there hung a huge almost Georgian style mirror, the glass appeared to be warped or damaged in some form or manifestation, for immediate image appeared to be somewhat blurry, with my face and head being much bigger in proportion with my body and the image I beheld was indeed ugly, ugly and deformed in the face of the mirror. Before my thoughts could explore unto new heights and depths of meaning, I found myself distracted and disturbed from my little pensive moment, by the arrival of the butler, who paced forward and called me over to follow him in through the butlers pantry and in through the main living room.

As I walked on through the semi-darkened environs before me, I was amazed to see that the butlers pantry was glowing in flickering light of many candelas which were all arranged and put in pattern over all of the counters and left on the very edge of the window sills. The room was filled with press doors, several cabinets and cookers and many containers were left to my left and right, filled to the brim with cooking materials and slices of raw cooked meat.

“As you can see, I have only just come back from the shops myself, and I have simply temporarily stored some of the food in these containers. The place is a mess, I must get the meat into the fridge soon”, said the butler smiling while we both stood in the kitchen waiting for a brief moments respite from our search to find the master of the household.

“Why are the candles laid out? Is there some special occasion on today?”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Andrecovich herself is celebrating her birthday with her husband and few guests in the living room. That’s why the candles have been laid out; it’s a romantic gesture on the part of my boss. You see he is a very romantic man, with a passion for many things and his voluptuous appetite for life is best conveyed in his love for his wife, which he is devout to.”

After a few minutes of petty talk, I thought I heard a man’s voice shouting out something from the room in front of us.

“Oh come on, we have been summoned.”

Both of us walked forward through the butler’s pantry and parted once we entered in the main illustrious living room.

The room was so wide, so spacious and so lavish that it could have passed almost for one of the rooms in the royal palace at Versailles.

The floor was covered with several blood red carpets all of which trailed down from a small series of steps that ran beneath a high “throne” on which a man with a small golden crown, encrusted with jewels sat. The man certainly looked eccentric and off-putting, but also simultaneously omnipotent in his presence and immanent force of power. This eccentric man was wreathed in a red robe, and he wore a long golden breach that drooped down around the circumference of his neck, beside his hands, which rested on the arms of his throne, and they were covered with rings of ruby amulets, gems and sapphires that bore bright the wealth and power of this uncanny man. The man gazed forward to the butler, who graciously bowed and kneeled in some act of holy ritual or rite, while several men stood on either side sipping their champagne as they chatted and amused the magnanimous figure on the throne.

To my immediate left, a fire burned quietly, while to my left several flattering portraits of the master himself hung up beside a large and awkward coat of arms. Around the room one could see many large bookshelves, complete with cabinets and cupboards and in each shelf there housed at least several dozen books on philosophy, economics, dictionaries, encyclopaedias and many tattered looking journals and letters which were left in a somewhat messy and organized manner on top of one another.

“Come forward. I would like to speak with you”, said the master politely as he waved me forward.

I walked forward several paces, smiled and nodded my head in salutation to the strange man before me. His body was built like a Russian bear. He was not a chubby man whatsoever, but he was certainly a broad, muscular man that must have rose up to about 6 ft 5, judging from my immediate estimation and his face was pot marked, scared and weathered with wrinkles and bruises that had never healed. His eyes were deep and penetrating; since he seemed to study and almost judge everything that he could observe from his throne.

“So I see that you were looking at my collection of encyclopaedias and journals?

A man with a voracious thirst for knowledge, certainly fares better in the world, than an uneducated, unlearned fool?”

“Yes. You are right. I can adhere to you’re pursuits and interests, because I myself am a writer and an educated man”, I said merely with a grin to match his gleaming smile.

“Well then we have that much in common at least, but why has a man of your talents and abilities been drawn in and sucked dry in this underworld, my world of all places?”

“I came here two years ago, after a difficult period, a testing period in my life. You see I was informed on the whereabouts of the underworld by a colleague of mine, who could see in the very pain and anguish in my eyes that I wanted to embrace another side of life I had never known and I wanted to escape my past, its cold sober reality with all its troubled convictions.”

“One of my girls told me that you were once a great barrister, a rich barrister to be precise. I am not correct?”

“Yes, I was, but I began to hate my line of work, for the sheer corruption that the law of our city came to symbolize. That was only one of the reasons; the other was simply that my clean-cut professional image had been tarnished, as I became slack, uncaring, uncouth and lazy with my clients and my colleagues. After a messy divorce, I became insolent and certainly self-loathing, and this all happened when I became sick with prostate cancer. I fought the cancer tooth and nail for over twelve months with various treatments available and after a brief period for recuperation, I found that the cancer and its harsh treatments available had left me wounded and were having further adverse effects on my health. I had been given the all clear over two years ago, and my doctor had told me that perhaps on the long term scale of time, my cancer might have been eradicated for good, but this was only his mere calculation and it was more likely that the cancer would return, and that my treatment only came to aid and benefit me on the short term scale of time. Basically I believe that the cancer is dormant, and that I have only a short period of time, indefinitely, to live and enjoy my parting days forever. That is why I came to the “heaven of pleasure”, the “den of bliss” and the “palace of inebriation” as one of my colleagues has aptly named the underworld.”

“Well you seemed to have your reasons for venturing forward into my great kingdom and this is my kingdom, which I control beyond any measure and without any equal or restraining force of any kind.”

“May I ask something quite irrelevant?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“I thought you were a Russian from St.Petersburg?”

“No, I was born in Kiev of Ukrainian parents who came to this land many years ago. I have lived here most of my life. So that is why I do not have the Ukrainian accent.

Who said I was a dirty, good for nothing Rus?”

“Beth, one of your girls.”

“Oh she always gets things wrong, that is why I send her on such few errands and operations these days, she always makes mistakes and gets me and my boys to clean the mess up afterwards, she’s a waking tornado”, he laughed and bade his butler to go and fetch me a small chair for me to sit on and as soon as he had done so, the butler came and offered me small glass of champagne, to which I simply thanked him but refused to take the drink.

“I believe that it’s your wife’s birthday today?”

“Yes, it is and she is upstairs right now, getting ready, for her big day out. I think I have given her the whole city, this year which is not a bad birthday present, don’t you think?”

As he said this he started to laugh and was surprised to see the serious expression on my face.

“Why have you called me here. I have spent the night at the Castle Court Inn just to meet you today. Beth told me that you wanted to talk to me about something very important, or is Beth mistaken once again?”

I had to be abrupt and blunt in my speech and tone, because I wanted to get down to the very reason and the motive for the meeting itself and why he had sent Beth to summon me in the first place.

“Could you leave us for just ten minutes. Go and wait for me in my study I will call for you later”, said Mr. Andrecovich, waging his finger to his butler and the three guests that stood mere lingering, idly by drinking glasses of champagne.

“So, you are Mr. Hopkins, right”

“Yes, Luke, Luke Hopkins”

“Well, I am a sympathetic man, I am sorry for your troubles, and have thought well and hard on your case, for many nights and days altogether. With your past experience, your skills in arbitration, oration, your knowledge of the law, your skill with writing and your work with customers and clientele over the past ten years, all this bares down your credentials, which are impressive on paper. But in practice, given your recent history of events, would make me doubt whether you could even hold down any profession at all. I called you here, because I wanted to offer you a job with my legal team of representatives, who work all over the city. You will most likely be working as a clerk or an assistant of some sort, to file and draft reports for clients and any actions taken in the courts. I regularly take actions against the police, the local council, the government and the tax office, so you will be busy and will work on the clock. If you do work for me, you will have a permanent residence with my team at the Crowfoot club, so that I can keep you close to the team.

Pay is good, and you will have the right to see as much of Beth as you like! If that takes your fancy of course.”

“To be honest no! I don’t think she’s my kind of lady. I think she’s a bit unstable and certainly not for me! I just want to know why you’re giving me a job, me of all people; I am a complete stranger to you. You don’t know me. Why did you suddenly decide to give me a job? Does this result come the report that Beth made about me, when she went to spy on me and gathered information on my private life for several weeks?”

“Yes, its our primary source of information on your life and your current whereabouts.”

“May I ask what has made you into a master, or a sort of king of the underworld?”

“Well, if you want to know I am a master of life, a supplier who supplies to the demands and the needs of my customers. Only a master, such as myself can control life through a product or a series of products that the public cannot function without.

That’s how a man becomes a master, because he has left his people completely dependant on his industry and this industry may create slaves to benefit and profit the master, but the master must teach himself the abilities and the powers required to subdue an entire people, or otherwise the people will devour him. It is in this world, a game of wits, of exploitation and good business that the battle will be fought between masters and slaves, it has always been this way, for this is the history of the world and this is why the world is run by modern business men, it’s a plutocracy, specifically designed for the consumerists, who are the slaves. We present a nice icon or an image, a pretty all-deceiving lie to the public, to make the person think that our goods, services and products are the fundamental want in their life, but of course this is not true, this is a lie which makes the most off the slaves and lets the masters reap the rewards. My kingdom alone is an incredible feat to achieve, that was built up on years of exploitation and deception, propaganda and of course a seduction made to the public or rather to an entire ocean of naïve, decadent, lonely men, who are my target audience. You yourself, don’t seem to be a conformist you seem more like an individual and that’s natural for me to see, given your past history and everything.

That is why I am telling you all this, so you will have the confidence and the unequivocal respect for me. Some would call this information confidential, but I don’t classify it as such I only call them business management secrets from which I have made you one of my priority members within my company. If you join us, you too will grow within my empire, will be entitled to my companies preferential shares and of course I might even send you out on special operations, when the time is right and when you have some experience in the field of worldly affairs.”

“I still don’t understand why you chose me. I mean to tell the truth I don’t know you and you don’t know me, we are strangers to each other, I am just some washed up drunk, perhaps I am one of these weaker men, whom you have spoken about, who knows?”

“I chose you, simply because you are a customer, a veteran of the underworld and I randomly choose and recruit my new employees, my novices, from the herd so that I can use them like pawns against pawns. You see I want you to infiltrate and question the customers that come here, you will survey their interests, dislikes, observe their virtue and vice, their addictions and their abilities, so I can consume a greater proportion of the market, or the people beyond the underworld. I will send you out door to door if I have to, to the furthest reaches of the city, so you can promote my needs and my products to a whole universe of people and bring them to me, so that my empire can expand. I have already gotten planning permission to knock down the adjoining walls of the underworld, so that I can begin construction the Medusa’s Palace, which will be my newest and latest edition of casinos set “above” the underworld near Francis Street. This is the scale of my operation, it never stops, the operation never sleeps, the party never stops, the wine flows forever from the fountain of the underworld and into my pocket, and I sleep on beds of money, literally beds of money from the wealth and the power accumulated in the underworld.”

As I heard these words I was shocked initially, but I had decide to play it cool, to compose myself and play along with this devious character, who had fooled nearly an entire quarter of the city into loving the underworld, their “one and only” and if I did offend this man to quickly perhaps I too might be at the receiving end of his wrath and so suffer the consequences. It seemed to be the law of the land, no a law of nature and human society that the businessmen, the tycoons and the rich could by and sell what aspects of life they so desired. Both the French revolution and the October revolution which were mere illusions, where power was merely transferred from one account to another and more men rose up in a conspiracy, or perhaps a business on a grand scale, this could be compared to the democratic revolution which likewise gave the people an image, fed them lies, like pigs to slurry and ultimately a certain rich elitist clan of businessmen came to pick the cherry off the cake and completely devour the cake itself. The coup had been staged and performed perfectly under the very eyes of the people with the products they so loved and cherished, they were all puppets in the epic delusion of their time. Maybe all people are part and parcel in the epic delusion, and it is our sole conquest in life to expose and destroy the delusion or else be rendered futile to the seemingly invincible force itself. All I had to do was to play along with his little game until the time was right for me to break free and maybe even bright this man to the attention of the authorities.

“I know what you are thinking, in your silence, you are wondering whether the authorities and the law enforcement agencies have tried to stop me, shut me down, arrest me and impeach me on my colossal set of crimes in accordance with “their law”. Well first of all at the rate things are going I will soon have a 50% share in Ludmill and Ludmill Ltd and that’s the company that runs the police these days. They are solely in business for charges, fines, taxes and as many handouts as they can get. It’s a money making racket and a damn good one if you ask me. The police don’t really concern themselves with acts of homicide, larceny, domestic violence, rape and drug trafficking, they changed long ago, they became absorbed and assimilated into every big business there is, they care about their shareholders, their members and their managers, but never for the public and I think the public are not as oblivious as they once were, even they have started to realise that the police don’t really care about civil virtue and civil vice, no its all down to good and bad business and that’s the bones of the argument. From my dealings with the police, the local commissioner, commissioner Miller, has set a certain quota for me to pay him each month and he helps me to secure a rapid, successful business and protects me and my management from the powers of the unreachable, like Judge Walton, who comes down tough on police corruption and abuse of power. But he too will succumb in the coming years, when I control the police and have my hand in the judicial and legislative procedures for this city, and when I do, I could effectively run my own country if I wanted to.

Power and position are bought, maybe it can be earned for the hardworking and the hardy, but the truly cunning, and the Machiavellian man seizes power, like a snake as subtle as can be from the den of the lions.”

He could see that I was completely stupefied and surprised even further with every word that poured forward from this power hungry egomaniac. I wanted to attack him, I was frozen with a moments indecision, I guess that my brain swelled with rage at this corrupt monster and master mind criminal, but yet my body was counting and examining the situations available to me and how I could survive this fate knowing that he told me all his secrets, his very plans and future operations only so I could collude like some slave to his all encompassing omnipotent desires.

I could not go to the police for they had been buried in his pockets long ago, lost in the sea of modern corruption, that makes this city. I knew that I could appease him, be polite and courteous and pretend to agree and acquiesce with his little offer and his future plans and operations. So I nodded politely, gave a wide toothy grin and congratulated and complemented him on his great towering achievements throughout the business world. I had decide to collude with him fro the moment because it suited my situation.

“Well your offer sounds tempting enough to me. Let me think on it, give me one night, and by tomorrow after a good nights rest I will give you my decision”, I said in a persuasive tone.

“What do you need a night for? Are you sick? Only a sick man, an unsound man in mind, could refuse this offer and I know for a fact that you are not sick. You may have had cancer but I am convinced that it has been beaten back at least for the moment. So why would you want to refuse the best offer you will ever get, what would you do without it, you could probably crawl back and die in that little shit hole of an apartment of yours. You know this offer will set you up for life, but still I can see you hesitating and feeling some sense of doubt on the matter. You still have scruples and principles that I can see and that is what has held you back in life. I on the other hand can make life infinitely more enjoyable and completely unscrupulous for a man like you, that has everything to learn about life.”

“Look, just give me a night, to think about it, it’s a lot for me to take in. I just want to think things through, alright”, I said trying with my last plausible excuse available, and to excuse myself at least temporarily from the position offered to me.

“Well you think good and hard on what I said and don’t let me down, because if you do, you will know that it will be the very last thing you will ever do and I will put you in the worst place you can ever imagine. My vengeance will be like no other.

But don’t worry, I want you to relax, get drunk and amuse yourself tonight. Stay at the Crowfoot pub if you want, or maybe you can meet Beth and have some fun if you like.”

“Well to be honest I think I will just spend the day at the crowfoot, sleep there tonight, take it easy, have a few drinks and then I can meet you tomorrow morning at twelve o’clock sharp, that’s if you are available, alright.”

“Hmmm, let me think, no I cant meet you at twelve, I’m busy with a client. I will meet you at eleven over lunch, how does that sound.”

“Good enough to me. May I ask one question.”

“No, I don’t mind, fire away.”

“Where did you get the crown, the ceremonial robes, the jewels and the gold chain from?”

“Oh I bought the royal regalia of King Adolphus of Sweden, off the Swedish government, during a private bidding which I made several years ago, hard to believe that the king of Sweden once wore these very robes on his coronation. But to be honest, I made myself king, I elected myself an emperor by the merits of my power and good fortune, like when Bonaparte seized the crown for himself without the interference or the approval of the holy see. Now you can finally understand, what I mean, I can tell by that little grin on your face.”

“I just think it is a devilish thing to do, something few men would do.”

“Yes, certainly nothing no lesser man would commit, but only an heir in waiting. All business men will one day rule their own governments and probably have their own throne in their lofty palace, but that will take some more moral deviation, and persuasion on the parts of others to come to our conclusions.”

“I must go now, I am hungry and I would like to rest my feet in the Clubfoot inn, if that’s all right with you”, I said hoping to pry myself away from the conversation.

“No, go on, relax and don’t worry I will ring the local bar man there and he will give you your key for the night and a few drinks on me. Go on and relax yourself.”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

All I could do was smile and bow, to show my gratitude and my inner restraint.

As I walked back through the hallway and out into the main front cobbled street behind the butler who escorted me once again, I thought once again for the real reason for all his kindness, his favours and his employment offer. Everything seemed to be too false for me to comprehend. I had to ponder and ponder well on the matter, and that is all I could do once I had left the master’s summer home.