Antipathy

Loretta considered him cadaverous at best. At worst, whatever remained to be coughed from the primordial ooze of a gene pool his particular “fine” family secreted could not possibly have been more horrifying than the frankly spectral man before her. The thin light seeping sluggishly from between slatted blinds carved out a silhouette faintly aquiline, but in profile Loretta plainly and painfully identified the rarely seen toucan-human crossbreed known as The Lesser Spotted Nasally Well Endowed. Across the table, a similarly unflattering analysis was taking place. Signalled by a slight twitching in the man’s left nostril where it blended with his upper lip, Loretta watched fascinated as the two adversarial body parts battled their natural reflexive sneer. Eventually a truce was declared and Fortnum Gregory Saint-Claire was left indelicately lumbered with an indecisive twist of expression common to most born snobs, that of the superior individual sucking on a lemon whilst simultaneously endeavouring to perform dental surgery with one’s own tongue. A brief silence ensued during which they both waited for the other to speak.

In the absence of their master’s avid attention, sparse dust motes gleefully flung themselves across the barren desk like tumble weed. Loretta, locked in a stare-down worthy of the most ridiculous of westerns fought the urge to shout “DRAW!” in a last ditch attempt to release herself from the grip of the suppurating orbs of perambulating gristle which represented the windows into Saint-Claire’s turgid soul. Eventually she admitted defeat. A spasm of ridiculous, pathetic triumph wriggled its way across the victors face and he began.

“There his little point in me informing you of this for the eighteenth time, I believe, Miss Carr, but I feel it is my duty to remind you that…”

And the flat, nasal voice bored into Loretta’s skull, peevishly overemphasising every word which Saint-Claire believed gave him some meagre advantage. “Miss Carr” indeed. Loretta lazily transferred her attention to the bland potted cactus that she considered to be (excepting herself) the most sentient being in the room. A weak “bloop.” from an aged laminator in the corner of the dismally bleak room renewed her attention to its owner. Apart from the skeletal physique wreathed in gratuitous flaps of grey clothing, there was little to distinguish Saint-Claire from the conservatively retrograde machine. Or even the interior of his office. Loretta speculated that years of searching had finally led him to his natural habitat in which he was capable of camouflaging himself against any predator, merely through the merit of being almost entirely grey. His skin, tautly stretched between each angular bone, had seemingly absorbed the colour of an over-washed sheet- a sort of yellowish grey at best.

Light flecks of spittle were beginning to emerge from Saint-Claire’s thin lips as he realised that she was no longer listening; the muffled flutter of clothing could be heard as he trembled with righteous agitation. Loretta watched with a kind of detached horror as his ears emerged from the furrows of his neatly combed (and grey) hair as angry distress beacons, flaring red in the insipid light.

“And it is at this juncture that I believe that I will show you the door, Miss Carr. Do not return.”

by Kirsty Judge