Batman screamed in agony. The scream of pure, unadulterated misery is a sound most people are not likely to so often hear. In fact, unless one is an infantryman or a dental technician, it is improbable that the raw wails of human anguish have ever vibrated into one’s eardrum. It is not a pleasant sound to behold, at least relative to the meow of a kitten or the guffaw of an inebriated comrade.
It however, was precisely this awful sound that was emitted from the masked crusader as he was repeatedly shocked with Dr. Parvanov’s cattle prod. It was the fate that had befallen many intruders found sneaking around in the Cameco Einsteinium Processing Facility.
“What the fuck were you doing here Batman?”
Batman spat some blood onto the floor and responded.
“Let me go Parvanov!”
“Shut up! I let you down once you’ve answered my question. Who sent you here and what were you doing?”
“Fuck you.”
He sunk the shocking end of the cattle prod into Batman’s chest. Again, he let out a high-pitched cry of pain.
“Cough, cough! Damn you Parvanov, you know the radiation your company is infecting the soil with is extremely dangerous. You won’t get away with this treachery!”
Dr. Parvanov reached into the breast pocket of his overcoat and revealed a large calibre handgun. He aimed it at Batman’s face.
“Tell me who sent you!”
“Fuck you Parvanov!”
He was flecked his gore as the projectile pulverized his skull and terminated the intricate function of the tender grey matter residing within.
“Hilda, send the cleaning staff over to room 404. Tell them to bring lots of extra-absorbent towels.”
A distorted female voice responded into the receiver of his walkie-talkie.
“Yes boss. Oh, and there are two people at the front desk here to see you doctor. They say they are potato farmers.”
“But I’m not expecting an appointment with any potato farmers. Tell them to go away.”
“They seem very insistent on speaking with the conductor of operations here Dr. Parvanov. It’s something about the horns that are attached to their heads.”
There was a pause.
“Dr. Parvanov?”
“Send them up to my office.”
Dr. Parvanov poured himself a glass of scotch. He looked at her in a perplexed expression as to demand a justification for their presence in his domain. He was a cold, malevolent nuance, pacing nonchalantly within the sun’s projection of its magnificent rays through the grand window, casting a long black shadow upon her and Merzbow.
“Why did you buy that farm?”
“It belonged to my grandparents! I would have been crestfallen to see it in the possession of anyone outside my family.”
He took a sip of scotch.
“You bad man you! Take nuclear house go away!” a stammering Merzbow spewed out.
Parvanov shifted his owl-like gaze upon him.
“What’s your problem?”
“He has autism. Leave him alone.”
Parvanov snorted. An ironic smirk peeled across his face behind the translucent obstruction of the glassware he held to his lips.
“Neither of you are in any position to be giving orders. I could have you both killed for trespassing upon highly classified government operations. I take my orders from the most powerful man in all of Canada—Steven Harper, and I know for a fact that in my current position, he would not have hesitated to put your throats to the mameluke’s edge!”
Merzbow’s mood degenerated from bold and confrontational to remorseful, and not without good reason. They had no purpose meddling with the government’s affairs in synthetic actiniums. Her brother had the same consternated expression he bore when she had found him passed out in the agglomeration of oestrogen supplement scattered upon the bathroom floor on that fateful evening.
“You two know what a grave situation this is, don’t you?”
They both hung their heads.
“This of course is Canada’s preliminary laboratory of Einsteinium research. Its existence is not mentioned in any Wikipedia articles of Facebook pages, and as such, Mr. Harper and I wish to maintain the secrecy of this clandestine operation.”
“But what does that have to do with us?”
Parvanov took another sip of his scotch and seated himself.
“You are to undergo chemotherapy in order to remove the malignant protrusions on your heads. No mention of what transpires here shall be discussed by either of you in any form or context from here thereafter. Do I make myself clear?”
She grabbed with both hands the horns atop her head.
“You mean to tell me these are tumours?!”
There was an overtone of general disgust in her vocal projection, perhaps more likely to have been used while wading through a labyrinthine septic tank or in the city of Winnipeg. Parvanov lit a cigar. Being an expert on cigars herself, she recognized from the label that it was an authentic Canadian cigar. He coughed a little as he spoke.
“No. Not quite. The politically correct term would be Einsteinites. They share many properties with the behaviour of skin cancer. They form as a result of eating potatoes grown with einsteinium-contaminated soil. You foolish humans—that is why the government took that farm away from your grandparents! I have no idea how the two of you managed to sneak back onto that farm without our detection.”
“We are sorry.”
Parvanov’s office was large and imposing like a bouncer from one of the nightclubs she used to frequent when she lived in Fredericton. It consisted of many sharp angles and vertical lines. The sun’s light shone through the grand pane behind the desk and whispered the breath of life into his room of inhumanity. Parvanov’s office reeked of a cold, systematic inhumanity such as that of bureaucratic ostentation or of the holocaust.
He poured himself a third glass of scotch.
“I have noticed you are wearing a Merzbow t-shirt. Surely anyone who claims to be a fan of Merzbow’s so-called music cannot possibly have the self-respect sufficient not to be a prostitute.”
“Indeed, this is my brother’s shirt, but I am a proud prostitute, until recently that these horns have forced me to give up the profession.”
He stroked his beard contemplatively.
“My dream was to open the very first brothel/potato farm in Canada. However, since the otherwise luscious russet potatoes I have been cultivating are radioactive, my dream, sadly, will never come to fruition.”
Parvanov took another sip of scotch. It was apparent to the two agriculturists that his behaviour betrayed elevated blood-alcohol content surely sufficient to have impaired his operation of an automobile or some kind of heavy machinery. It may have been his state of intoxication, or his affinity for sarcasm, but she had noticed him to be slightly more empathetic to her plight than when they had first met him.
“I shall have my doctor visit your estate in a few weeks to commence your treatment.” He said with the semblance of a smile.
“Now be gone from here! You have already seen more of this operation than Mr. Harper would have been comfortable with.”
She and Merzbow left his office with the feeling that nothing of importance had neither been communicated nor accomplished by their meeting with this drunken bureaucrat. Farming and prostitution are surely best left in the hands of trained professionals.
Parvanov picked up his walkie-talkie.
“Hilda, please get Mr. Akita on the phone. I must speak with him at once.”
