Five Hundred and One

The office was in a building that

You wouldn’t have looked at twice,

In truth, it stood in a part of town

That wasn’t very nice,

The blinds forever were drawn down tight

And were thick with stains and dust,

I wouldn’t have sought a job in there

But I felt that I really must.

 

I was over a year on welfare, and

I knew that it had to end,

I’d lost all my self-respect, my car,

And I hadn’t a single friend,

When this came up in a tiny ad

On the supermarket board:

‘Be one of the Movers and Shakers,

Then put the Takers to the sword.’

 

My curiosity peaked, and I

Marched into the office grim,

An insipid girl was behind the desk,

‘You’ll have to talk to him!’

A man in an inner office sat

In a cloak and black cravat,

‘We’re needing another numbers man,

Do you think you’re up to that?’

 

I said I was up to anything

For I didn’t really see,

That there would be ramifications

And they would apply to me,

He showed me into an office with

A desk and a swivel chair,

Then pulling a ledger off the shelf

He set it before me, there.

 

‘Your job is to add up the columns

Putting a total to each name,

Remember, you’re only the numbers man

So you’re really not to blame.

Then when you get to five hundred, tear

The page from out of the book,

A man will be round to collect it,

Let’s just say, he’s Dr. Hook.’

 

I didn’t meet this mysterious man

‘Til I tallied up more than three,

A Johnson, Sands, and an Adamson,

And a man called Jacoby,

They’d totalled just five hundred each

When I tore their pages out,

And Dr. Hook slid them into a book,

I said, ‘What’s it all about?’

 

‘Never you mind, my lad,’ he said,

‘It’s better you didn’t know,

There are things that shouldn’t bother your head

Until it’s your time to go.’

But those names remained in my mind until

On watching the nightly news,

An Adamson died in a mighty wreck

And a Sands, from a faulty fuse.

 

I thought it might be a coincidence

And I put my mind at rest,

When the girl from work came visiting,

And she seemed to be distressed,

I’d thought that she was insipid, but

There was fire in her belly too,

‘You know that the guy whose place you took

Is dead…  So I’m warning you!’

 

She said that I had a page as well

In a book, kept under her desk,

‘If you saw your column, adding up,

I think you’d get little rest.

For every page you give Dr. Hook

I add ten each to your name,

With that score of ten, you’ll be just like Ben,

He lasted a year in the game!’

 

‘He’d started fudging the figures when

His number was creeping up,

I’d warned him, like I am warning you,

But it wasn’t ever enough,

An audit pushed him over the top

By adding a hundred points,

And the ten he’d skimmed then died with him

In that fire at the Pizza joint.’

 

My column is stuck, four-eighty-nine

At this moment, as I write,

I still believe I can fend it off

If I’m careful, keep it tight,

I sweat, while adding the figures up

Of a certain Dr. Hook,

His column tops five hundred and one

As I tear his page from the book.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[A Soap Mess Stories]

Great tale as always...DLP...

[Colorado Brian]

Poems are like a song, interpreted many different ways as you can see from the comments. I visualized Dr. Hook as the Grim Reaper. . The Grim Reaper who had the tables turned on him.
Fantastic as usual Mr. Paget.

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

The man behind the mask of humanity, always a tantalizing figure, well done, good read.

[R Smith]

i'm thinking Dr. Hook is Satan gathering his souls in some weird mathmatical game, a very dark and dingy tale, i can feel the dirt in this office maybe bodies are buried under the floor, its a mighty strange story David, you got some imagination :)

[Marie]

I'm assuming his Dr. Hook is some kind of cosmic hit man. Like MomzillaNC I'm not sure about the tallying, but I believe Dr. Hook is meant to find himself on the list.

[MomzillaNC]

Well this is some kind of commentary… I'm just not sure of what. And, who's adding up the girl's tally? How is the tally figured for the man in charge and who keeps up with it? This one is definitely creepily cringeworthy!