The Corporate Mortician

o one suspected. Nothing showed on the polished glass and chrome exterior, but within. Within that frail curtain, behind the facade, the malign tumour grew rampantly; spreading tendrils of despair to the directors, leaving everbody with a paranoid feeling of dread.

The plush car drew up outside the offices one day. Beneath the black paintwork the motor purred and told everybody it was an exquisite piece of engineering. The windows tinted black leaving only a vaguely disquieting shadow. An emotionless chauffeur stalked around to open the passenger door, the day seemed to get colder. Out of the car stepped a figure in black morning suit, complete with a top hat, eyes hidden by a pair of dark sunglasses which perched upon a sour face, jagged nose and wrinkled, sunken flesh, flashes of grey under the hat.

The man slowly walked up the drive, lizard skin shoes crunching on the gravel, briefcase held loosely in his right gloved hand. He pushed open the swing doors and the receptionist shivered as if someone walked over her grave.

"Good morning sir. How can I help?" she smiled, hiding her fear, but her eyes revealed it. The fear in her very soul screamed out of her eyes.

"I have an appointment with the directors" stated the man, in a vice which suggested dust choked tombs of a forgotten civilisation.

"If you'd like to take a seat I'll see if they're available" said the girl, making her escape.

"Stay girl. Too flightly are you. I'll announce my own presence" and with that he strolled down the corridor whistling a jaunty tune which reverberated around the hind brain of a person, dredging up race memories of fearful rights around blazing camp fires.

The board room doors parted and in an unexpected wind stood the man.

"Greetings" quoted the man "I am the Corporate Mortician. I've come to collect your souls" he reached out his twisted hand and beckoned. The two directors tried to rise from their once comfortable swivel chairs then collapsed, whithering away, growing old, fading away.

The Corporate Mortician, young again, well fed strolled back to the reception. The girl cowered back as the dapper, young man smiled a predatory smile and said

"A hellish thing I do, to work my woe on people. The weak, the feeble, easy prey! I stalk them through the shadows and laugh at their misfortune, then I strike swift and sure like a cobra. You I leave to go to the underworld upon your own. You are redundant to my needs".

And so she was, no longer needed. The days of her usefulness over. Washed up, an old maid with nowhere to go. The Corporate Mortician left; the building slowly sinking into its component parts. Fungus and rust. Winds blow the debris over the grave of the company. No marker or memorial for this firm, just a note in the Corporate Mortician's book. A neat line through the company name, two souls screaming in Hell and a smirk on the face of the Corporate Mortician.

They could not pay their debts, they knew the risks, had read the contracts, had signed on the dotted line, in their own blood. They knew the risks. Boom times had come, success, wealth and happiness. Fast cars, yachts, mansions and fast women. But the bottle of champagne is not bottomless, a time world come. They were not ready and the darkness swallowed them up. The Corporate Mortician's fee rattled in his purse, as his car drove him back to the air conditioned offices, waterfalls and palm trees in the foyer. Nothing would disturb this calm. Too well entrenched it was.

Or was it. Did hairline cracks spread in myriad patterns across the emotionless wall the Corporate Mortician put to the world, was this once more all but a front, a facade?

Many years ago, when the mountains were taller, the sun brighter and the land greener, he had been a fresh faced entrepreneur. Still wet behind the ears, just out of polytechnic, a bright future ahead of him in corporate acquisitions.

The partners thought a lot of him, they gave him a considerable salary, a sleek company car and a mobile phone. He bought himself the trappings expected of him. Rings, smart suits, Gucci shoes, tennis club membership, golf clubs and a dumb blonde girlfriend. But it wasn't enough.

Power was the key! The ecstatical wielding of power over a cowering underling, not this row towing to the firms' big wigs. Not an ounce of commercial sense in any of them he thought. Toadying to this lot makes my gorge rise.

But what could he do, the promotion structure was tied up in a series of marriages. So the young man consoled himself with a series of piratical acquisitions of profitable, gold bearing companies. Defences were routed by the pirate and then he sent his cutthroat crew in to sort out the small fry. Slaughtering sleeping directors in the bunks and throwing the worthless overboard to the sharks.

"Jolly good fun" said the entrepreneur, wiping his cutlass clean. Fun it was, but still the desire of power drove him on. A fire burnt fiercely inside him, ambition!

He embarked on a murder spree, luring his managers to various bordellos. Stabbing them at the height of their lust. He kept the heads in a trunk freezer with the trout and asparagus.

Slowly he wormed his way into the Old Mans' confidence after an inspired but particularly bloody take over of an ice cream giant. The raspberry ripple was never quite the same again. With this came a managerial post and a secretary. He raped her over his table at lunch time, she came back at 6pm for more and brought her whips and chains.

A seat on the board beckoned, he took it with both hands. A cannon loaded with chain shot, the directors never recovered from a public expos‚ of their illicit affairs and insider dealing. Evidence coming anonymously from a concerned citizen. He packed the board with ruthless buccaneers and too the Old Mans' daughter as his prize.

He grew in stature and fame, or should it be infamy? Success followed success, prizes galore, his enemies sunken hulks in the Sargasso Sea of commerce. Eventually came the day when he got rid of the Old Man. He cast the weeping man adrift, without food or water, on the ocean of bankrupts.

Power was his, but still he felt a lack. The most powerful industrial magnate in the world and he felt a lack. He owned all he needed, works of art, hunting parks, yachts, governments bowed down before him, they names roses after him.

A fateful day came!

"I'll sell my soul to have what I need!"

That night, isolated in his penthouse by a titanic thunderstorm, he watched his wife undress, Dire Straits playing in the background. Subdued lighting, flickering warmth from the log fire. His wife stopped.

He sighed, impatient.

"Come on woman, I haven't got all night. It'll be back to the ..." but she didn't hear, she stood frozen, corset in hand. Rain drops hung in the air, a lighting bolt lit the sky, motionless. He stood up and moved over to his wife.

"This could be awkward" he mused.

"You said you'd sell your soul!" a dwarf hunchback strolled into the room, his hooves clicking on the red tiles. His breath condensed as he breathed out, goose pimples formed on his arms and the hair on his neck raised up.

"Did I say that? he he he" he laughed weakly.

"I propose a business contract, we give you your hearts desire and we get ours! All perfectly legal. I drew up the contract myself" he smiled a predatory smile.

"But ... but I don't know my hearts desire ..."

"We do. We know everybody's!"

"What is it? Ultimate power? Untold wealth? Superhuman abilities? It's not love is it? he spat out the last.

"What amusing things you are! Love, would we give something as pretty as that."

"Tell me!"

"First we sign the contract." he produced a pin. "The traditional ways are best." Reams of clauses littered the floor. The imp held up the last page.

"Sign" honeyly persuasive. He took the pun and dug it in.

"You're probably conning me. Setting me up!"

"Quite right we are, but you have to have it don't you?"

He signed, with a flourish. A blotter was produced and it carefully dried the blood.

"Well what is it? Give it to me"

"Are you sure you want it?"

"Yes, tell me!!"

"Well that's what we agreed. Your heart's desire, quite a boring one, but at least it wasn't to be irresistible to women, it's quite simply eternal life."

"Eternal life!" he said with awe.

"Yes, it's a slightly vampiric lifestyle, but you'll get used to it and we'll put loads of work your way."

The Corporate Mortician gazed through steely eyes into the past. Case after case had gone thought his hands. An eternity of bust businesses and the personal guarantees. The only trouble was that one's heart's desire quite often changes over time. All the Corporate Mortician now wished for was a thatched cottage in the country, a faithful dog and a plump, houseproud wife, who was damn good in bed.

What to do. Work on? The next job was a quick liquidisation. Not bothering to free the innocents he melted it into a pool of protoplasmic slime. Bubbles bursting in dull gloops, releasing the screams of those trapped.

What to do. The only thing humanely decent, a last heroic gesture. Stop the payments, revoke on the contract?

The imp stepped out from behind a car

"You refuse to complete your side of the bargain?" He nodded ascent "Then under clause 1(b) I claim your soul" he reached and plunged his gnarled hand into the Corporate Mortician's chest. The Corporate Mortician died, centuries of age finally ran rampant through his body. The dust blew away in a chill wind, mixing the litter and the leaves.

The hunchback drew forth another contract, newly signed, blood glistening in the weak Autumn sun.

"You've got a bankruptcy round the corner. A nice juicy soul to keep you young."

A young man in a black morning suit, top hat, dark glasses and cruel briefcase nodded to his employer and strolled down the lane.

The hunchback grinned with mischief, took out the old contract, now withered with age and stamped in bright red, across the cover

CASE CLOSED