the lad and the dignitaries

The lad piped up, always did when push came to shove, when the buck flapped, or something. “No no,” he said. “No no way way.” The assembled dignitaries fell immediately silent and the silence felt like a presence, heavy and damp and ultimately rancid; water swallowed into desert dry mouths was amplified in it, lowered glasses loud as day, the weight of their worn gold and other finery itself almost given sound, somehow, a dull creaking of straining bonds. The doorman nodded in response to the dignitaries unspoken commands and strode to the lad and slapped him across one cheek and then the other and then the originally slapped cheek once more; the lad’s head jolted with the impact, his cheeks immediately reddened in both shame and from the handprint left, the fingers like four smeared tentacles across his flesh. Even as the slap hit he felt himself jumping surprised at its volume and – over and above the degradation and pain – it felt like the worst part, the noise; it was both loud and as if separate from his existence. Mentally he composed apologies to the wood panelled walls, the buffed tabletop, the crystal tumblers, the assembled dignitaries; he retracted the latter as quickly as he composed it. The doorman offered the lad a tissue which he took and folded into a fine triangular point and used to calmly dab each corner of his mouth, then placed within his jacket pocket for later use. The doorman grimaced and slapped the lad again, and yanked the tissue from his pockets and tore it to shreds that he dropped like snowflakes onto the lad’s head, and then returned to his post by the doorway.

“We have a problem lad,” said one of the dignitaries. It might have been any of them. The lad smoothed his hand upon the top of his hair and a number of stray pieces of tissue fell from it; his eyes watered as the tissue fell past them, as for some reason they did when confronted with whiteness. He stood from the seat he had been directed into on his arrival and walked to the doorman and kicked him incredibly forcibly in the genitals. The doorman vomited and fell and curled into a foetal position and without apparent summons two further doormen entered the room and carried him from it, and one returned to take his place at the room’s only doorway. He gestured towards his own hand as if to suggest that he would slap the lad and enjoy to do so, if he was driven to or requested to by the assembled dignitaries. The lad considered this a mutually respectful position and returned to his seat. “To repeat,” said one of the dignitaries. “We have a problem lad. A significant problem.” The lad took in each of the faces in turn and spoke quietly. “The problem is not mine,” he said. “I do not care about your ‘problem’. I do not care about it at all.” The dignitaries resumed their silence, broken only by the creaking leather of the doorman’s shoe as he slightly redistributed the weight of his formidable body. One of them wrote in black ink upon a small piece of paper what appeared to be four or five words of uniform if otherwise unidentifiable characteristics; he read the words back to himself and when satisfied passed the paper amongst the other dignitaries. They read for many minutes despite the relative brevity of the assembled message. Once the final dignitary had read the message he screwed the piece of paper tightly in his right fist and handed it to the doorman who in turn placed it first into his jacket pocket and then – as though thinking better of it – into the dustbin; the dignitary stood from his seat, removed his suit jacket, which he positioned on a coat hanger, and with some assistance from the doorman climbed onto the tabletop, his shoes polished incredibly competently. The lad watched as the dignitary walked across the table in his direction, removed his braces, opened the waistband of his trousers and pulled them and his underwear down to his ankles and raised the shirt tails up slightly, and then with some discomfort squatted on his haunches and proceeded to defecate, his gaze unflinchingly – aside from a cursory glance to ensure the falling excrement did not catch the back of his shoes or trousers – upon the lad. The smell of the excrement was particularly unpleasant but the lad betrayed no unease. The doorman passed a compact box of tissues to the dignitary who wiped himself in silence once or twice and proceeded to dress himself with the same rigorous formality he had employed in the undressing process. He returned to his seat in silence. “Tell me lad,” said one of the dignitaries. It was the same dignitary who had spoken just moments ago, a spokesman of sorts, the lad assumed then as now. “Is this” – he gestured towards the excrement, that glistened on the table as though alive and not merely waste – “your problem?” The lad examined the excrement with some care. “It is not,” he said.

The doorman opened the door and the lad listened to the heels of his shoes clip-clopping away down the hallway. After two or three minutes the heels clip-clopped back towards the room in which he sat and the doorman re-entered accompanied by several people, the lad’s family, his wife, his little daughters, his aged parents, they were all present. The lad licked his lips slightly as the doorman moved down the line of gathered family members and slapped each of them very hard. The lad’s little daughters were sobbing as he did so and his parents appeared apologetic. Once the doorman had concluded his violence the dignitary asked the lad again: “And this? Is this your problem?” The lad smiled at his wife. “It is not.” The family were led from the room by the doorman. When he returned the lad stood from his seat and calmly picked the mounded excrement from the table with one bare hand and carried it to the doorman and smeared it over his face, and then down the front of his jacket. The doorman accepted his fate passively before once again exiting the room, immediately replaced by another, third doorman and the lad returned to his seat.

Now another of the dignitaries stood and this time walked to the window; he invited the lad to likewise. He pointed to a Ford Escort and the two of them watched as a mother and what the lad assumed to be her three small children entered the car. The dignitary took a very old mobile phone from his inside pocket and dialled a selection of numbers; when he depressed the ‘call’ button the car exploded, engulfed in the profound heat of its own burning metal, the persons destroyed. The lad saw burning flesh upon the pavement and severed child limbs. “This below,” said the dignitary, without any malice or frustration. “Is this your problem?” The lad considered his answer carefully, imagined an endless regression of worsening atrocities resultant of his meticulous honesty. “It is not,” he said quietly. The dignitaries looked amongst themselves at a further piece of paper written with a handful of neat text that was circulated among them. “Very well,” said the gravest-looking dignitary after a considered silence. “You may go.” The lad did.