There was always paperwork. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Even when you’ve swooped into power so quickly and efficiently as Alex – with all his peculiar airs and graces – there is still paperwork to be done. He didn’t want to have to read and sign these things. He just wanted to breeze through the entire experience in a swoosh of destruction. And, he could easily achieve it that way. But, Alex was just Alex, from Reaping Icon’s point of view. To be Peter Smith, with his near complete connection to The Space, would allow such smoother sliding into devastation. Not that humanity needed much sliding. A shave of gliding and be done.
Alex was sitting there at his desk with a big pile of stuff to go through, when one of his cabinet ministers knocked on the door. Alex knew who was knocking, and indeed why he was knocking. Calling him in casually, Alex yawned a little and stretched his arms into the space above his head. ‘Yes, Eddie?’ he addressed the man with indifference as his arms fell back to the desk.
‘Leader,’ Eddie opened, standing just inside the door as it sealed behind him. Alex pushed the papers away and stood up, walking over to the large mirror on the wall. He’d given up looking at, or indeed for, himself and simply bent down to the fireplace below. Turning the knob to release the gas, and pressing the ignition button, the fire came to life and started burning through the fake coals. Alex stood straight, looking down at the faux open fire with disappointment. There was even a sharp metal poker on a stand by the fire in which to stoke it. Stoke a pretend fire? It was perhaps this that annoyed Alex more than anything else right now. Ludicrous pomp was how he saw it, some kind of wannabe act lacking the effort to make that extra step necessary for a real open fire. ‘I must speak with you,’ Eddie carried on.
‘Must you?’ Alex replied, yet again yawning, as he fingered the poker momentarily.
‘Yes. It’s about this homosexuality thing,’ Eddie said nervously. Alex picked the poker up and held the tip over the searing flames of the fire below him.
‘You’re gay, aren’t you Eddie?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Yes.’
‘Drop your trousers and underpants, Eddie,’ Alex instructed him calmly. Suddenly, Eddie was overcome with suffocating terror. He felt as though he was deep, deep down and bound so completely. In turn, he thought he could see Alex flailing in front of him, but he was still holding the poker over the fire. ‘I shan’t ask again, Eddie.’
The tormented man could not fight the meld of Reaping Icon, and he dropped his trousers and underpants. They lay cumbersomely around his ankles as he found himself turning his back on Alex and bending over the desk. Then came the most unimaginable atrocity to humanity as a whole – the suffering of one single being – as Alex forced the red hot poker up Eddie’s anus.
* * *
Alex was staring into the fire when Ruby and Arthur walked in. They stood near the door, Ruby looking over at the desk and the brown stain on the carpet beside it as Arthur fixed his sight on Ruby. He felt he couldn’t look at Alex right now, though he didn’t know why.
‘There’s cleaning to do,’ Alex uttered to the pair.
‘So I can see. I, we, heard the screams,’ Ruby replied. ‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’
‘What we heard about Eddie,’ Ruby clarified bravely. Now Arthur looked across at Alex.
‘What did you hear about Eddie?’
‘That he just died in here.’
Alex smiled and looked up into the mirror. All he could see was Ruby and Arthur – there was no sign of himself in the reflective surface. ‘It was a terrible accident.’ Alex turned to face the pair. ‘He was gay, you see. He couldn’t cope with being a criminal any longer.’ He wanted the pair to step closer, and they did. Their bodily control was overruled as they lost all control and just had to get closer to Alex. He stayed perfectly rigid, though loose somehow, and spoke again once the pair were within an inch of him: ‘You’re not a fan of gays, are you?’ he asked them.
‘Of course not,’ was Ruby’s quick response, little thought behind it. She wasn’t here to think. Was anybody?
‘Turns my stomach,’ Arthur spoke.
‘I thought as much,’ Alex enthused, instantly allowing the pair from his mental hold and instead embracing them physically. The three hugged, Ruby feeling truly whole. She was all too willing to sponge Eddie’s blood up off the carpet now. ‘For the first time in my entire life, I’m truly happy,’ Alex whispered in their ears.
‘What about when you married our daughter?’ Ruby whispered back. Not really requiring an answer.
‘There was always something wrong with her.’
‘Yes. We know what you mean.’
* * *
Alex was alone, just standing there in his office with an empty mirror for company. He didn’t need company – no human could provide what he wished for now. He was both Alex and Reaping Icon in one, and needed nothing from any mere human. Humanity as a whole, on the other hand, could provide just what he most desired – total destruction. That way, suffering could actually end. It was a means to an end.
He focused his mind on Peter; drawing him close, winding the cord up. He was fully prepared for the time when Peter would come for him, and it was all known to him. He was Reaping Icon, and he knew everything. Even if he was in such a weak-minded body as Alex, he was still more powerful than any other individual currently on this pathetic blue-green planet. More powerful, bar one: Peter Smith. And yet, Peter was not so much an individual as an amalgamation of dozens of past, present and future lives clutching precariously onto an undesirably endless timeline. Reaping Icon knew exactly how to deal with Peter Smith. It was going to be very easy.
* * *
Clearance has been given to raid the fridge,