Tuesday 16 October 2018

On fleek

The house looked pleasant from the outside: there was a paved path across a neatly mown green lawn and the white picket fences were bolstered by medium-height green shrubs.  A couple of tall, leafy trees cast shade over the white patio furniture, but they were far enough away from the house that it was unlikely that their roots were doing terrible, invisible things to the plumbing.  The house itself was a piece of classic Americana: it was made primarily out of wood and about as resistant to storm damage as a cardboard box.  It sprawled: the main house had four wings coming off it in seemingly random directions, some of which had two, three or five stories, and others of which slummed it with only one.  The roof was shingled and cellar-doors hinted that the house had below-ground floors as well.  There was a veranda at the front, a porch down one side, a deck at the back and barbed wire on the fourth side, though that might have been an oversight.  A small name plaque just above the doorbell read "Dunnukin".
There were also nearly one hundred and eighty people camped outside, spread across the road and occupying the front gardens of the rest of the houses in the street.

"What, I say what, and I mean, what, in the name of all tarnation is going on here?" The tall, portly man in the military uniform sounded like Foghorn Leghorn.  He was smoking a cigar, which smelled like a damp bonfire in December, and he was staring at a young woman sat in a high-backed chair.  She had an iPad in her hands, and was tapping at the screen with a look of concentration on her face.
"Interviews," she said.
"I say what now?"
"Do you?"  She looked up, uncurious, and then went back to the screen.
"All of these people want interviewing?" Foghorn Leghorn gestured vaguely at the windows.
"No silly, those are the journalists.  They want to conduct interviews.  With the gentleman of the house, should he be at home."
"And if he be'ent?"
Now she looked up with interest.  She had a face like a porcelain doll: skin the colour of fresh milk, eyes a dazzling blue and lips reddened with just a caress of lipstick.
"Be'ent?  Not aint?"
"Aint if you like it, I say.  What now, though, what now and why do all these folks want an interview with a man who mightn't even be at home?"
"To find out if he is who he says he isn't?"
"What what?"
"To find out if he be who he says he be'ent? Is that clearer?"
"Young lady, you're not so young as you can't be bent over my knee and slippered!"
"You so much as lay a finger on me and I'll hashtag-meToo you all over my blog," she said, just a tinge of pink blushing her cheeks.  "You can go and pay for that kind of thing like any decent pervert."
"Lords of creation, you're a minx, madam, what!"

"Is this really fair?" asked Death.  He was sitting in a motorcycle side-car wearing a leather jacket he'd borrowed from James Dean.  Riding the actual motorcycle was War.
"They're everywhere," said War.  "It's not about fair anymore, it's about attrition.  And I know all about that.  That turned out to be me too, even though I thought it was Pestilence."
"Did you?"
"Turns out he does malnutrition instead," said War.  "Too many words these days, that's the problem."
"So you set Psychological Warfare on the journalists?  That still seems... unfair," said Death.  "Couldn't you just have asked one of the kids for help?"
"Pestilence is looking after Famine," said War.  He sighed.  "Famine's been overtaken by himself I think.  He's barely coherent these days, I met him at a state fair a few months back and couldn't understand a word he was saying.  If Pest can bring him back to himself, that would be good."
Death gazed off into the distance for a long moment, and War shivered.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," he said.  "It's not nice being reminded that you come for all of us."
"Famine's a long way from my reach," said Death thoughtfully.  "Though he's enriching my sphere of influence all the time."
"Keeping you busy?"
"Tasteless," said Death.
"You can talk.  You don't have journalists wanting to idolise you whenever you set foot outside of your house."
"Move house?"
War shrugged.  "And go where?  It's not like it's hard to find me.  Even here: I thought I could avoid conflict and three days after I moved in the Residents' Association had started a pitched battle with the Neighbourhood Watch.   It was like the Somme all over again.  Even down to the trenches."
"I like the trenches.  They add to the ambience I think."
"You just like skulking in the shadows."

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