Episode 42: GO HOME!

You know me. You followed me around the country. You loved me on the TV when I had you in stitches with jokes about my penis. You followed me in the tabloids, you supported my charitable works. Then you didn't. I don't know why. You just stopped. Now, I have people who love me again. So much that they made me their mayor. This is my new story, From Under Dark Clouds.

It would have been so easy, a forth ticket. Go back to London. The tabloids would pick my bones cleaner than a bucket of bbq ribs. But if I could just lay low for a while, they would eventually tire of it, start picking on someone else. I could turn the whole experience into a show, start touring again. Maybe. I could go stay with some friends in the States. Do some tearful tea-time chat shows about my exploits at the hands of the cave-dwelling Europeans. Get a guest-star on a soap or some Netflix series. Fuck! If Piers Morgan could get a gig over there. Might have to stay away from the bible belt but that’d be no loss. It would all have been so easy. Relatively.

The message crucified to my office door was unambiguous, it said GO HOME! And the ink had made a sticky pool on the carpet. The messenger would not be missed by anyone who wasn’t already missing him thousands of miles away.

I was sitting on the steps sucking the calm out of another cigarette when Jude arrived, he touched my shoulder as he passed to Roni who showed him inside.

Socrates pulled up next, followed by the police. He started at me, I swung a thumb over my shoulder and told him to see for himself. As he passed I grabbed his sleeve.

“Have you got any…”

He looked down and grunted. “There’s a couple of bottles in the trunk.” He looked at his watch and walked away.

When he came back out he snatched the bottle from my mouth. “I need you sober!” I disagreed, no one needed me sober, much less me. I tried to take one last deep swig but the old bastard won, the strength to fight him was in that bottle.

“There’s a fucking slant nailed to your door!” I should have been offended by his racist slur but truth was the guy nailed to my office door did appear to be Chinese, Asian of some sort, but more importantly dead and beyond caring about any other word to describe him.

The police came out in a crackle of radio and started running yellow and black tape across the entrance.

I heard them snigger,”Yellows. Blacks. One less!”

They finally ejected Jude and Roni before sealing and went back to the squawking of their radios.

Someone told the officers to call an ambulance. “Too late! Chinese takeaway, send a fridge and the cleaners.”

Socrates was still holding the bottle and my mouth was arid for it.

The staff began to arrive but a police cordon sent them back home. None of them were too eager to argue but a crowd had begun to gather, many of them holding phones and cameras in the air. One of them I recognised as the ruddy-faced Englishman from the Town Hall towers riot. Bad news travels fast. My secretary broke through and ran to me, she was no athlete but she looked good when she ran.

She pulled the flight details from her bag and asked if I wanted her to call the wife. I did but I would have to do it. My hand fell to my cigarettes before my phone so I lit and sucked hard before tapping her face on the screen.

She didn’t know what was going on but she would before the flight. I had to be sure that she would leave. I told her I would call her mother to pick them up at the airport. Greek mothers are a force to be reckoned with. She made me promise to follow after. I promised, then repeated after. I couldn’t decide whether I was being brave or stupid. Fortunately the plain-clothes arrived and I didn’t have to choose.

We gave our statements in an unsullied end of the building, an English-speaking officer had been brought in for me, Roni and Jude. Their memory cards were taken after some protest. We were left with a uniform at the door.

Socrates had not been confined to the room, he’d arranged for a couple of the boys to go up and take care of the wife. I asked if we should get a police guard. He laughed, “I’ll send some boys up, they’ll be safer.”

Roni and Jude were being very supportive. They kept asking me how I felt and what I was planning to do and who I thought was responsible. I really needed to talk to Dr Alex but we had to keep a lid on this as long as we could. The less people knew, the better and I had Roni. She was quite the sounding board. The more I talked the better I felt. You know, it wasn’t me nailed to the door. The wife and the boys would be on a plane to London soon enough and the police would get them, after all this was a threat on a major political candidate. This could even swing the vote. In a few short months, I could be running this place. That would show them.

Jude yelled “Oh yes!” from the corner. I knew he was behind me.

I mused out loud over the idea while idly tapping through my facebook feed. The same last-night party pictures, inspirational memes and coffee cups. Roni ummed and ahhed and absolutely-ed. I liked and shared some of my campaign videos. Replied ‘thx’ to some kind comments. My phone continued to ping with interest. People were liking what I stood for. The fact that I’d rattled the fascists had to be a plus.

Jude leaped to the window and yelled, “Roni, camera!” I jerked up from my phone she didn’t have to ready her tool, it had been trained on me. How much had she filmed?

The stretcher coming out of the main doors of the town hall was covered with a white sheet that did little to obscure the gore of its load. The arms protruded from each side. The rectangular shape of his peddler’s tray lay flat on his chest. The same tray that had bore the message painted in his own blood, ‘Gamoto soy sou!’ I FUCK YOUR FAMILY! I could pick out every detail under the sheet, still seared in my eyes but the face had gone. All I could see now were my own features in place of his.

The legs of the stretcher folded as it entered the back of the blue van then dropped again as it was pulled back out. Some commotion began, arms waved. One of the crew walked away waving his palms in clear rejection. Jude sniggered and Roni echoed. A police officers stood forward and grabbed one of the arms as he thrust the stretcher hit the back of the van but the arm was now parallel with the body. He did the same with the other then thrust an open palm at the ambulance crew and walked off.

The man who had until recently been crucified to my office door was probably from China, well known in the low-rent neighbourhood for peddling smartphone cases and selfie sticks as well as cheap plastic toys that were popular with the kids. He would never be reported missing. Anyone who could have known or cared would be more interested in protecting their own safety. Anyone back home might notice the cheques stopping and never learn why. Just one of nearly 1.4 billion people who would quickly be replaced.

I had to get home, I had to see my kids. I had to see someone who cared if I lived or died. I ran out of the office to tell the officer that I would be leaving, with or without their sayso. The door swung open and bounced off the wall. The corridor was empty. Through the window I could see a lone squad car, the officers were nowhere to be seen. The ambulance had taken the peddler off to be forgotten, the crowds had dispersed.

We took Jude’s rental up the mountain. He was getting used to driving in Greece and no longer made a big show of stopping at amber lights but we arrived to an empty house.

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Episode 41: A message from beyond the grave

You know me. You followed me around the country. You loved me on the TV when I had you in stitches with jokes about my penis. You followed me in the tabloids, you supported my charitable works. Then you didn't. I don't know why. You just stopped. Now, I have people who love me again. So much that they made me their mayor. This is my new story, From Under Dark Clouds.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my term of office as mayor, it’s that I have no idea what I’m doing. Fortunately, I’ve also learned that I’m not the only one. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the only ones who do are the ones who’ve never tried. As for running an entire nation? Just look at the people running yours.

I have, however, been trying to find out.

You pay your taxes and the collectors give your money to the suits and they build roads and schools and hospitals. It was a simple formula that had worked for centuries. But, there were so many varieties of this plan. You encouraged people to pay people to make stuff so they had money to buy stuff then you taxed everyone to make money to build the stuff that no one wanted to build, like schools and roads and hospitals. You could then lend people more money to buy more stuff so more people are needed to make stuff so they can buy much more stuff and they also have to pay people to keep check of the people who borrow the money. Then you can turn a blind eye to the taxes from the people who make it all happen and more will come and pay more people to make more stuff and sell it around the world. But, you still need to build schools and hospitals and roads. This was free market economics and many argued that it was a perfect meritocracy because only the best makers would sell stuff and only the best debt-collectors would have money to lend.

The trouble here was, that for ages now nobody was buying much of anything and so they didn’t need to pay anyone to make anything and the suits had nobody left to tax. But, they still had to pay back all the loans they’d taken to build the schools and roads and hospitals because they’d never quite got the hang of making people pay their taxes and when they did, they had shared it amongst themselves to buy shiny cars from the Germans. The answer was clear, they borrowed money to pay the loans and keep the suits in suits and shiny German engineering. I was sure it was much more complicated than that but I was fucked if I could see how.

Then there was another way. On top of all the stuff people didn’t want to make, you took over making the stuff they did, sold it and made all the profit. Then shared it with the people. This was called Marxism and a few places had tried it with varying levels of failure. But why? Surely if you can run an entire country, making some washing machines and self-assembly furniture would be a doddle, right?

Then I stumbled on this guy called Jacques Fresco who had a totally different angle on the whole game. He has a vision which had been his life’s work and now he was pretty old so he must have worked out many of the kinks. He called it “The Venus project” and I was sold. It was a no-brainer. Of course, he was having some trouble selling it to anyone with a country at their disposal but I couldn’t see the down-side.

Eventually I got hold of Karaletsos, he’s an arrogant prick but he lectures at LSE so he must know his beans if he’s teaching my people how to count them.

“Listen, if you called to explain your nurturing tax-man strategy, you are wasting your time— and mine. I’m a very busy man.” He may be but he was intrigued enough to answer my call.

“No, on the contrary, Mr. Karaletsos. I’m looking for counsel.” I knew that appealing to his vanity would pique his interest and It did. “Your New Democracy chap proposed a more-of-the-same strategy but what do you think is the way to turn this country round?”

“More austerity? Bullshit! There is not an economist who is not on the Eurozone payroll who subscribes to this. This will only serve to degrade economic sovereignty in the peripheral Eurozone economies, ultimately resulting in a federal Europe.” I wouldn’t tire you with the exact content of his diatribe, even if I could remember half of it but it sounded pretty grim.

“So what can we do?” I asked.

“Nothing!” He left a pause that I could only fill with oh dear! “The more-of-the-same policy, as you put it, is just kneeling to the inevitable!”

He launched into a history lesson. “Adam Smith thought of macro-economics as a machine. Each action having an equal yet opposite reaction. Marx was one of the first to understand the political aspect of the science. He just got the language wrong. You see, economics is a language with laws as the grammar and tax as the lexicon. Marx thought that people would appreciate the common purpose and work as a community.”

“But they didn’t?”

“They didn’t. You see, people don’t want equality, they want better, so the language gets lost. Communism has to shout, louder and louder to be heard. Capitalism whispers. It lets you keep your money and your freedom but you do as you are told.”

“So tax is the language?”

“If I want to reduce the healthcare budget, I can ask you to give up smoking, that it’s bad for you. You ignore me! I use the law to ban smoking in public places and increase tax on cigarettes, you listen. Those who don’t, bridge the gap in my budget. A dialogue.”

“So what happened in Greece?”

“Well, Greeks don’t listen to anyone, they are always looking for what they want to hear and so many different, private dialogues began which confused the communication.” He laughed. “Here in Britain, you listen, you comply. We do not!”

I tried to ask for a solution but he was already back on a roll.

“Free market economics, Milton Freidman. Let the market alone to find its equilibrium, unencumbered by governmental bureaucracy. Survival of the fittest.”

“And if we were to take money out of the equation?” I asked. “It strikes me that there are plenty of iPads and houses. There is no shortage of them. But money, that is a problem. What if we did away with money?”

He huffed, “Please don’t be so naive! You are talking about barter. Have you not listened to anything? A state would lose its lexicon, there would be no dialogue.”

“No.” I contested. “A resource-based economy.”

He groaned and hung up.

I was sure there was something I was missing but no one could tell me what it was. The idea kept me awake half the night and I promised myself to get to the bottom of it as soon as I got the the office in the morning.

I was first to arrive at the town hall with Roni in tow. There was no ambiguity in the lexicon of the note pinned to my door. Roni threw up on her shoe, still holding the camera up to the door. I slumped against the opposite wall and slid down it without taking my eyes off it. I said Roni’s name as a question, she answered to confirm that were both seeing it. The clock on the wall tocked then seized, a moment on the rack.

I pulled out my phone, scrolled down the contacts to the police, stopped and scrolled on to my secretary. I started down the hall then went back to pull Roni along with me. I tapped the contact. The police could wait.

My secretary answered, perky and willing.

“I want to fly— I want tickets for my family. Today for London. As soon as possible!”

“And you, Sir?”

I dropped the phone to my waist, gripping it in both hands. I turned my head to confirm the truth still nailed to my office door. Roni was pacing back and forth, her phone to her ear, her lips moving. All I heard was my pulse thumping at my eardrums.

“Sir?”

“No— not me, I’m staying.”

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Episode 40: A New Hope?

You know me. You followed me around the country. You loved me on the TV when I had you in stitches with jokes about my penis. You followed me in the tabloids, you supported my charitable works. Then you didn't. I don't know why. You just stopped. Now, I have people who love me again. So much that they made me their mayor. This is my new story, From Under Dark Clouds.

She didn’t like it, not at all but I was unfamiliar with her approach. She didn’t shout and she limited her expletives to moderate and non-personal.

“I can’t have a camera in my face twenty-four-seven. I can’t do that again, not now, not with the boys.”

She was right, of course. This was about me and the campaign not her and the kids.

Jude and Roni were downstairs, I couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t recording this conversation. Maybe that explained my wife’s temperance. I went down to lay some ground rules to find Roni with her camera following the kids playing with their Lego.

“Stop!” My demand had immediate affect on the kids but not a twitch from the camerawoman. “Put the camera down, NOW!”

She did but looked up at me with bemused eyes.

It took more than an hour to come to an amicable agreement. She wanted access to me but negotiated like the girl with the golden ticket. Exposure was, is my business and she seemed to understand that like I couldn’t. She would get a couple of interviews with the wife, some shots of the boys, pixelated and with no interaction from her and I would have power of veto on interviews with anyone else. The last one was the hardest. She claimed the right to retain journalistic freedom. I gave her open access to me and the campaign. She agreed.

The narrative would be my fall from grace and subsequent rise.

“And whatever happens after that…” she added.

We wrote it all down and signed it with Jude and the wife as witnesses.

“Well, that’s that in order. What do we do today?” Jude enthused.

“Sit down!” the wife barked. “Same goes for you!”

We wrote out the same conditions, adapting some for copy journalism and signed. Roni relished her loopy signature planting a heavy full-stop at the end.

The local coverage of the attack waned a little until, maybe due to a dearth of real news, the channels all picked up on the foreign interest. The number of Youtube views of the English version of the campaign video was a prominant part of the story as well as one of Jude’s articles in The Cerberus. He beamed. The news was that our news was big news in their news. The attack, the campaign video and even the kid with the bouzouki went ballistic. Just as and when Mike had predicted. That reminded me. I needed to speak to him, he was getting weird… weirder.

My phone buzzed, not its usual ringtone, it just buzzed. I swiped and put it to my ear. Nothing. Looking at the screen, Mike’s avatar appeared. “Hey Boss! The Youtube videos are going viral worldwide but domestic stats are showing significant engagement with over eighty-four percent watching the whole clip. Ninety-six percent, excuse some rounding of figures, are watching more than seventy-five percent of the clips. I have planted a script on all GD and sympathiser sites that phishes all their data when they log in. I am in the process of analysing the emails and PMs as we speak. All online communication, forums, facebook, twitter etc that refer to you, or them, are automatically modified in our favour. Persistence invokes the phishing script.”

“Wow, good work, Mike.” I looked round. Jude and Roni we plainly eavesdropping.

“Oh! And Boss.”

“Yeah, Mike.”

“You have no need to worry about me. We are fine.” The image shrank to a dot and disappeared.

I turned to the journoes. “Wow what they can do, eh?” They stared at me. “You heard that, right?”

Jude looked at Roni. “Just heard like white noise.”

“Me too!” she replied.

I got Yiannis Galtides on the phone and told him to meet me at the town hall. He wriggled tried to schedule for the coming week. I needed to see him now, while I still had the ideas in my head but he was preparing for a tech startup conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. I told him that I was considering him for a consultant or even ministerial position but I need to find out if we were on the same page.

“One hour in the conference room.” I told him.

He agreed.

I grabbed the Vespa keys from their hook. “Get your stuff, you got some journalism to do!”

We stood round the scooter. I looked to Roni and Jude with their flight bags and back packs. “This is not going to work.” I stated the obvious.

Fortunately, they had rented a car but suggested following me on the Vespa. “Who’s that guy in South America somewhere with the VW?” Roni asked.

“Yeah, Uruguay, the president.” He squinted. “Jose Mujica. Drives an old original Beetle. You know he was offered a million for it?”

“Nah!” she regarded the Vespa and pulled out her camera. “Awesome narrative motif!”

It started on the forth kick, with a little choke.

Whether Yiannis and I were on the same page remained to be seen, but we were definitely not in the same time zone. He arrived nearly two hours later with a little girl in tow.

“I needed to see you alone.” I motioned to the child.

“She’ll be OK, she has her crayons.” He looked to her and she nodded. He turned to the journalists.

“They’re with me,” I assured.

Roni pulled out a piece of paper and told him to sign.

I picked up the phone. “Mike, I need a computer game for kids.”

“Language?”

Roni was filming Yiannis signing the paper.

“English,” I looked to the girl, Yiannis looked up and nodded.

“Gender?”

“Age?”

“About eight, nine?”

“I’m eight,” the girl confirmed.

“Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Workstation three, secretary’s office.” Mike instructed.

I turned my back “Oh! And Mike. Keep an eye on her, please.”

“Face registered, surveillance activated. She’s safe, Boss.”

Yiannis took the girl to the door, raised his arm and directed her down the hall.

“What are your ideas for turning this economy round when we get into power?” I asked Yiannis.

“When?”

“When!” I repeated.

“Well, we need to rebuild the entrepreneurial infrastructure. Build a new generation-wide mindset through tech startups and cross-border commerce.” He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his hands together and smiled broadly.

I looked up at Roni who was flitting around the room with her lens trained on us. “Did you get that, sweetheart?” She smiled and gave a thumb-up. “Now, Yiannis. What do you think we can DO to turn this economy around?”

“We need to expand the Startup Shed ideology to encourage young neophyte ventures to grow into viable value propositions for the world market and encourage international investment.” He dug into his backpack and pulled out his laptop. “Look! I got a powerpoint which outlines the strategy we proposed to Socrates.” He connected a cable to the machine and searched behind the wall-mounted screen for somewhere to plug it in.

“Mike, how’s the little girl getting on?”

“Level three, two upgrades and a bonus. She drank juice.”

“Shut it down at the end of the next level and save all her progress, please.”

Who doesn’t love a good powerpoint? But I was sure he had a lot of preparation for Sofia tomorrow.

At the door, I asked him how many of our accelerator teams had received seed funding.

We had some interest from some major VCs.

“Interest enough to put capital on the table?”

He nodded heartily, “Not yet.”

I wished him a safe trip.

“And Yiannis. Look after that little girl.” She took his hand and lead him out.

I closed the door behind me and wandered down the hall into the secretary’s office. Her head sprung up. She asked me who the little girl was. The screen where she had been sitting was still flashing an animation of Kim Kardashian saying “You are a STAR!” I answered without thought, “A business partner.”

I asked her to arrange some coffee and sandwiches. And, some tea for the Brits. With milk!

Back in the conference room, Jude was tapping away and Roni was reviewing her footage.

“See, investment in the youth is the answer. A new generation of entrepreneurs to bring this country into the twenty-first century.” They each looked up and smiled agreement. “Can’t argue with powerpoint!” I added. They both swung their heads over their laptops.

When the refreshments arrived, Roni peeled back the bread and recoiled. “Anything without meat?”

I picked up the phone and called the secretary. She apologised and promised immediate rectification. I passed this on and she smiled, stirring a third teaspoon of sugar into a liquid milked to a pale ecru. “I need you to get someone on the line and patch them through to my mobile.

“Of course, Sir. Who?”

“Panayiotis Karaletsos.”

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Episode 39: A Fear of Success

You know me. You followed me around the country. You loved me on the TV when I had you in stitches with jokes about my penis. You followed me in the tabloids, you supported my charitable works. Then you didn't. I don't know why. You just stopped. Now, I have people who love me again. So much that they made me their mayor. This is my new story, From Under Dark Clouds.

My face felt like an over-full shopping bag, fit to bursting. My morning coffee dribbled down my face due to a can of baked beans making its escape through my bottom lip. A packet of spaghetti had broken through my brow but it was the toilet cleaner in my eye that was causing the most pain. A shape moved in front of me that caste a soothing shadow. It was Jude.

“Christ, man you took a proper pasting!”

My reply was the composition of broken clockwork stumbling over a paralysed tongue.

He shushed me and placed his hand on my chest. The toilet cleaner was a camera light behind him in the corner of the room.

“This is the girl I told you about, Veronica. She’s gonna document your campaign.” Jude pointed to the light.

I pursed my eyes but that hurt more than the light. I raised my hand to guard my eyes and she waved from behind the camera.

“Must have got a few in there, big guy, your knuckles are shredded.” How could I tell him it was from Ares’s studded belt buckle.

I waved my hand against the light. She got the message, shrugged and turned it off. “So you really mean to do this, eh?”

The camerawoman opened the curtains.

I spat a word that began with F but simply ended in blooded spit.

“Hey, Roni. The light is bothering him!”

I huffed exasperation.

I had been in the emergency ward most of the night with Socrates screaming about legal action and campaign funding. Nothing was broken but getting the crap kicked out of you on prime-time fractures deeper than bones.

Socrates burst through the door, still yelling, his arms windmilling the way only Mediterraneans can.

“They are going to fucking pay!”

I looked up but Jude said what I was thinking. “You’re going to sue the Golden Dawn?”

“Are you fucking mad? We won’t get a drachma from them!” He raised his hands, palms slightly apart as to explain something to a child. “We’re going to sue the channel.”

The camera was rolling again on Socrates, at least the light was out of my eyes.

“The fucking security didn’t raise a finger—” He paused in thought. “Private security contractor— we’ll sue them too!” He turned to me and started waving again. “Get yourself out of that bed and into the shower, you smell like you shit yourself!”

The channel had laid on a private plane to get us back up north but we’d need to hurry.

The shower of shards left me fresh but sore.

The Lear-jet, or whatever, was well furnished but like riding a limo down a farm track. Every shudder and bump made my features bounce around my face.

Jude pulled out an iPad. “Manic Street Preachers, eh?” He swiped and tapped until a video began. It was last night’s scene dramatically slowed with If you tolerate this your children will be next dubbed over it. “A mate of mine knows James Dean Bradfield, he’d be stoked that you used his words. Might be able to get him on-board.” He scribbled some notes in his moleskin.

I replayed the video, the warped power chord at the beginning was the glass on its trajectory, the drums came in as it smashed across my face. I watched his arm swing the glass of water, maybe just intending to soak me, then his sneer snapped into something else and he released it. The whole motion had been a flinch of time but like this it contained moments. Moments that you only see when adrenaline is coursing through your veins.

Roni handed Jude a bag of ice from the mini-bar. I put it to half my face so I could watch the video again. She resumed filming. When I stood at the end, staring into the lens you couldn’t see how much I was shaking. My words came in English, under pressure I was more common Essex than New Greek.

The wife was waiting at the airport. She looked at me and drew breath to ball me out then just threw her arms around me, it hurt but it was worth it.

“You stupid bastard, now you’ve made another enemy.” She huffed. “Don’t know who’s worse, the Vatican or the fascists.”

“Ain’t much in it, love.” I managed.

Socrates walked ahead, the yelling and flashing started before we entered arrivals. He drew their fire as we slipped out to the waiting car. I couldn’t answer their questions if I wanted, all that came out was spit and bile. Jude and Roni with her camera soaking up every moment followed, she tried to get into the front passenger seat but Socrates pulled her out and pointed to the taxi rank before slipping in himself. He instructed the driver to drop the wife at home but she insisted on coming with us to the town hall. He still couldn’t argue with her.

The familiarity of the scenery calmed me. The wife held my hand, I was safe again. She kept asking me how I felt and if this hurt or that. I just squeezed her hand in reply.

“This is bad. These bastards don’t wear suits! What are we going to do now, where can we go?”

“The boys?”

She hadn’t sent them to school, they were safe with her sister.

I lifted her hand to my knee and turned, slowly. “We are not running!”

We pulled right up to the entrance of the town hall, there were more press waiting for us. Socrates told the driver to get out and help with crowd control, which he seemed to relish.

Two suits and the well-assembled secretary were waiting for us in the main conference room. She crossed the room and ran her fingertips around my face.

“Brave, brave Sir.” It wasn’t often she spoke to me in English. Her hand recoiled as the wife entered the room.

Mike’s juddering avatar was on the main screen on the wall. “I’ve taken all Golden Dawn and sympathisers sites down. They have no channels of communication. The only narrative is ours.” I waved to the screen. “Please don’t ask him to come down” the avatar said.

I didn’t.

The suits were lawyers. They began hitting me with questions before I had even sat down. They had established the studio’s culpability and were working on the exact wording of the complaint, adding a list of laws and liabilities. Socrates added the security firm’s liability and another list began. A photographer came in to take pictures of the damage. I overheard Roni ask for copies. I didn’t notice them arrive until the wife swatted her away.

Socrates even called for a doctor to come and examine me. He winced as he poked me, shook his head as he shined a torch in my eyes and hmm’d when he asked me what I remembered. We had a copy of the hospital report but he felt that they had understated the extent of the damage and suggested some much better symptoms. The lawyers asked him some questions and another list began, titled with the name at the bottom of the medical report.

By the time the police arrived to take my statement, I felt like a bargain bag of ground beef. They noted all my answers along with a few from Socrates and the lawyers. One looked over the officer’s shoulder insisting that all the answers were written as mine. I signed all the sheets and initialled every correction. One of the lawyers scanned a copy with his phone and they were gone.

The door closed and finally it was just me, the wife and Socrates. And the journalists.

“There’s something bothering me.”

Socrates raised his hand and told me everything was under control.

“No, something else.”

He patted his chest and repeated himself adding that those fascists wouldn’t get close again.

“No!” I said.

He was losing his patience.

“That economist—”

“Karaletsos?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him, the fucking neo-liberal!” He stood to leave. “Want me to order some food?” He looked from me to Jude and Roni who smiled enthusiastically.

“He said we had no economic strategy, no viable manifesto.”

“Fuck him! After last night we are on every channel across the globe. You’ve gone viral.”

“BUT! Socrates. If we do get elected, what are we going to do?”

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Also, we are working on a Podcast which you will get before anyone else.

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