What happens to The Ferret? Will justice be served?
DRAMATIS PERSONAE NON GRATAE – Ha! And I bet you didn’t see THAT one coming!!!:
Same as in the previous two parts, but here The Ferret finally speaks
Pros: And so, Sundance, getting back to the question of several hours ago: Were you sure why you fired Saint Stephan?
Sun: Stephan wasn’t writing the editorials.
Pros: Well, Sundance, where is it written that the chief editor has to write the editorials if he can delegate that task to someone who can do them better? Isn’t that what a chief editor is supposed to do – manage the newsroom and divide up the work as he sees fit in the best interests of the paper? Where does this come from, this idea that the chief editor has to write the editorials, or edit everything, for that matter, if that’s what he’s got a staff for, and all he has to really do is keep an eye on everything and oversee the works. After all, what difference does it make – if he wrote the editorials or not, came in late or not, came in drunk or not – as long as the paper was making money?
Sun: It was a fluke. Stephan was a drunk who got lucky. He never should have been chief editor. It was a mistake on my part to have given him the job. The market was up and that money would have been made anyway, whether he was there or not. Anyone else would have done better. Even a monkey would have made more money.
Pros: Oh, really, Sundance? Is that so? Well, then, what about Zippy Zamazda – the one you replaced Stephan with?
Sun: Ah, wrong monkey.
Courtroom Crowd: Ha ha ha ha ha… etc… Publowsky bangs his gavel; silence resumes.
Pros: Okay, then, Sundance. And what about Bret Boner, the monkey you hired to replace Zamazda, and the last monkey, in fact, you ever hired?
Sun: It’s hard to say. I was putting money into the expansion of the Kyiv Poster and the company. We were making money, but part of it was going toward the expansion.
Pros: Okay, Sundance, fair enough. So what you’re saying is, it’s difficult for you to derive at an objective assessment of whether the paper, while you still owned it, was doing better financially under Boner than it had done under Stephan.
Sundance: Yes.
Pros: And then the global financial crisis hit and you sold off most of your publications, including the Kyiv Poster, eventually getting out of the business. That was 2009. Today, it’s well into 2013. How would you say the Kyiv Poster’s doing, still under the same newsroom monkey, albeit with its new owner?
Sun: Well, it was hit by the crisis, and –
Pros: Oh, come off it, Sundance! It’s six years later, for crying out loud! I can’t believe that you, of all people, would buy into that cock and bull story about how the world financial crisis, which started in 2008, is still having a negative effect on the Kyiv Poster! Judging by the rest of the industry worldwide, don’t you think six years is long enough for the Poster to finally shake off the effects of the crisis and start earning a profit again?
DC Losser: Objection! Conjecture, baseless supposition, leading, badgering… Your Dishonor has given the Prosecution outrageous leeway and latitude in –
Pub: Yes, I have – haven’t I? Go on, Sundance, answer the question!
Sun: Ah…
Pros: Well…?!?
Sun: Yes, yes, yes!!!
Courtroom Crowd: Gasp, aaaaahhh…
Pros: So why did you fire Saint Stephan?!
Sun: It wasn’t – I mean, I didn’t really, it was… I mean, but then The Fer –
Just then, a seething, tormented, loud, HEEEH, HEEEH, HEEEH, HEEEH, HEEEEEHHH… is heard from the defendant’s cage holding The Ferret, from which a thunderous rattling fills the chamber. Then, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, a black light goes on that, for a split second, blinds everyone before an explosion of tremendous force bursts open the cage’s bars. People rub their eyes to get their sight back. Still half-blinded, their collective organism is shocked into an automatic nauseating sensation of The Ferret prancing somewhere high above their heads, maneuvering deftly upon his clicky-clacking cloven hooves.
A blinded Publowsky feels his judge’s gown whisked off his body, and when vision returns, he is standing behind his bench in a pair of polka-dot boxer shorts with the words, “I Don’t Pay For Sex” written across their backside.
As vision returns to everyone, they look up, following the vicious seething HEEEH, HEEEH, HEEEEEHHH, and see The Ferret upside-down on the ceiling, attached to it by nothing but the claws of his hands and cloven hooves of his feet. A foul odor is emitted and mucousy gooey noises from the center of the line of fur going down the middle of The Ferret’s tortoise-shell back precede the eruption of Ferret Light out of The Ferret’s dorsum.
Going, heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh-heh-heh, Ferret Light falls to the floor and scurries down the aisle and under the courtroom’s closed door.
Meanwhile, The Ferret proper, wearing Publowsky’s black gown around his neck redone as a cape, rasps: Heh, heh, heh-heh-heh, you can’t catch me, heh-heh-heh… It’s none of your business what I did with Welsh Losser on Trukhaniv Island, even if he’s ineffective as my defense counsel at this stupid trial. Welsh Losser’s my friend. I like him. Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh. Other than that, everything about me’s a secret! Heh-heh-heh…
And with that, lunging upside-down, The Ferret throws his humped form at a window, crashing through it, and into the free air of the ancient Eastern Slavic capital.
Not the end…
Filed by Jack Step, April 22, 2013