Victims

by Dan

“Yes, you are doing quite well this month, just a few things to iron out before we can consider you for promotion. Overall, we are quite encouraged by your progress…..however…..”

The Chief Executive looked at the Office Junior and Handyman in his usual superior way.

They had started at Werbisher’s on the same day, 17 years earlier and on the same grade. The regularity with which Flute-Berryman introduced this fact into conversation as if it were a coincidence rather than a reminder od status got right on Douglas’s wick.

Nothing that bastard said was ever unintentional.

Douglas had come to understand that every throwaway phrase, while disguised as polite, positive and supportive, was actually a malevolent and undermining insult.

Upon the honeyed tongue of Fluyte-Berryman simple sentences became unexploded landmines, brimming with danger as Douglas stumbled haplessly through the oleaginous terrain. It felt like he’d known him longer than just 17 years. It felt like he’d known him forever.

“You are most welcome.”

“It really is no trouble at all.”

“You most certainly could do that,….yes?”

“You might think about an uhmm …alternative approach”

“My door is always open to your ideas.”

“These stewed plums are delicious”

Each barb was designed to plunge him further into this sticky pool from which he could never extricate himself. He had spent most Friday nights for the last 17 years sitting at desks piled high with files or fixing toilets. Fluyte-Berryman meanwhile, attended parties in Soho, Paris and Juan-Les-Pins.

“Would you like a chocolate?” said Fluyte-Berryman offering Douglas a delicious looking soft centre.

Douglas declined. This was no orange cream but a great big piece of fly-paper from which he would soon be hanging if he could not break the cycle of control. If only he could even work out why it was his chief exec still bothered with him rather than leaving him to be managed by minions. He sometimes felt that the tyrant who had destroyed him was seeking some sign from Douglas and secretly wanted the misery to stop too. But Douglas could not think what this could possibly be.

Sadly, William watched Douglas depart, laden down as usual, his weekend ruined. It was pitiable to see how broken he’d become. With anyone else he’d have relented long ago. But not Douglas. If he’d had the decency to remember, it could all be over but the dopey idiot still seemed as bewildered as ever at why he was being punished and so, tediously, the lesson must continue.

William hoped that one day for both their sakes, Douglas might remember prep school, the daily beatings in the showers, the “purple-nurples” administered after lights out. The wanton thuggery of a boy with a bigger body. William couldn’t forget his years of bed-wetting, nightly tears and nursed bruises.

Most of all he resented the way it had changed him, the way he’d had to become manipulative as a result. Right down to the removal of glasses, the change of name and the body-building course. He was still amazed that his former tormentor never seemed to remember.

He was disappointed that year after year, their relationship must continue along its brutal course and felt resentful that he himself was a victim of sorts, locked as he was within this impasse of continuing revenge.

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