The Political Warlock

A Story by Jeheto

A short urban fantasy story focused upon Ruford Namsey, a politician and warlock.

The Political Warlock

Mr. Ruford Namsey respectfully entered the lair of one of his patron demons. The entrance presented was a pleasant lobby, complete with office plants, furniture and a receptionist. Others, some minions and lesser warlocks, milled about whilst awaiting their deigned appointment time. Mr. Namsey fearlessly approached the receptionist.

She was attractive and pleasant in much the same way as the lobby: professional and superficial. Susan (as read her nametag) was readjusting her long auburn hair when Ruford reached the desk. He stood tall in his battle attire; a steel grey suit, a brilliant blue tie, and a pair of polished black shoes. She sat in an ergonomically built chair, wearing a no-sleeve black blouse and skirt.

He took the initiative by launching his first attack, a confident, understanding smile that conveyed empathy. It said, “Don’t worry, I have time. Go ahead and finish pinning up your hair.”

She smiled back with a bobby pin in her mouth. Hers said “Thank you, I apologize.” A direct hit, enemy set at the disadvantage. Susan finished her hair, and resumed professional composure.

“Sorry about that. My name is Susan, how may I help you?” said the receptionist. Her voice made it apparent that she was eager to make up for her delay.

“No worries at all Susan! My name is Ruford Namsey, I have an appointment with the board.” His words were spoken rapidly, with enough familiarity to identify him as someone of importance.

“Ah, Mr. Namsey, right this way!”

Susan led Ruford through a maze of corridors. Ruford passed his gaze over the hundreds of bland cubicles on this floor. Each one had a man or a woman diligently selling their life away to the company in exchange for a pittance of money. These were unlucky, the cursed, and the unmotivated. Here sat those people who hadn’t quite hit the right notes in life. Ruford could see it in each of their eyes. Seeing was one of the defining skills of a warlock.

In this cubicle sat a man who had been a C student his whole life. Now he worked to pay for child support and a pathetic apartment. He lived his life waiting for the weekend, when he could watch football and drink beer to drown his misery. In the next cubicle over was a talented woman that lacked the self-confidence to move out of obscurity. She had always been top of her class, but never held ambition. She was always too worried about what others thought, and that social anxiety continued to hold her back ten years after she had finished school.

While Ruford and Susan were walking they passed another man. He was young, and had the look of a dreamer. He had big plans for his life. He had business ideas and new methods, just waiting to revolutionize. But Ruford could also see the spiritual chains latched about his body. Those ideas would be leeched from him and given to the company. He would wind up shriveled, a pathetic ruin of a man who had spent sixty years of his life making money for people above him. A truly dedicated and useful employee. Ruford looked away before he could become ill. He never enjoyed visiting an office. It’s one thing to know about a situation, and a whole different thing to watch it happen.

Susan and Ruford stepped into an elevator and hit the button for the seventieth floor. Together they sped hundreds of feet into the air in a little box that played bad music. The twin steel doors opened and revealed a luxurious waiting room. Unlike the lobby, this room had leather furniture and real plants. There were current magazines, two flatscreen T.V.s, and a mini-fridge. Susan led Ruford across the room and stopped in front of two large, prestigious, black-varnished wooden doors.

“One moment please, Mr. Namsey.” Said the modern succubus as she slipped through the gates of hell. Ruford went ahead and sat down in one of the less plush leather chairs.

Centuries ago, demons used to prefer dark, dank caverns, thought Ruford. Power was measured by how far down in the cavern you were, with the leaders at the very lowest pit. The more estranged the fiends were from the surface, the mightier and more fiendish they proved to be. Now though, demons sought higher altitudes. And why shouldn’t they, in this modern day and age?

Susan reentered the room. “The board will see you now Mr. Namsey.”

Ruford smiled and thanked her, then walked up to the threshold.

Here he was once again, standing in front of those two dark doors. Behind them were the heads of the hydra, the fell masters of this place. Ruford could feel the energy being pulled into those doors. Thousands upon thousands of man hours from sixty-nine floors below his feet, all extracted and sucked upwards into a funnel that stood before him. The last time Ruford had been here he had made a sinister pact for power. Now here he was again, ready to do it a second time, ready to up the ante. Ruford reached up and pulled the door open.

He entered and evaluated his surroundings. They were just as he recalled in his nightmares. The room was massive, taking up most of the seventieth floor. In the back of the room was a wall of glass that overlooked a sprawling metropolis. In the center there was an ancient circular oak table. Around the table were fourteen recliners, twelve of which were turned towards him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Namsey.” Said the C.E.O, with his back turned to Ruford. “Go ahead and take a seat.”

Ruford did as he was told.

“What brings you here today?”

A dozen pairs of eyes watched him passively, and somehow that was more frightening than a dozen pairs of eyes watching him hungrily. The owners of the aforementioned gazes were diversely varied, but all wore the same black suit with the same red tie. As his gaze passed over them, Ruford could sense their stories. He saw ambition, competency, and confidence. These were the elite. These were men (and two women) who knew what they were doing and reveled in it. They had climbed the ladders and stepped on those below with willful determination.

Ruford dared not show weakness. He set up his mental wards and replied lightheartedly, “Oh you know, just dropping in for a little chat.”

Ruford could’ve sworn he felt a grin through the back of that luxurious chair.

“So I hear you’re running for a seat in the senate this year? Going into the big league eh?”

“I most certainly am. I’ve got a great shot this year.”

“Yes, yes you do Ruford.”

That “shot” had only come about because one of the current holder of the position had been exposed in a terrible scandal involving two young boys. Oddly enough, the boys’ mothers both worked for the company that Ruford was standing in right now.

“Well then,” the C.E.O. swiveled so his face was turned to Ruford. “Let’s get down to business.”

The C.E.O. shared traits with the other members of the board, but held those traits much more prominently. He reeked of power and power hunger, so much so that the very sight of him put a strain on Ruford’s wards. His capability and charisma bent the air about him to his will.

And yet, for all of that, the average Joe wouldn’t notice the difference.

Sure, Joe might say that this man looked purposeful or professional, but he certainly wouldn’t describe him as power hungry. That was the primary difference between a man like Joe and a warlock like Ruford. Ruford searched for the truth, while Joe merely looked at what was presented.

The man presently looking into Ruford’s soul was undeniably a demon, but not in an arcane way. His anatomy was that of a human being. His psyche however, was assuredly infernal in nature. This was a man who ruled as a career. He did not build this company; he was hired to keep it churning out power, to make its decisions for the sake of ever greater power. He was the mercenary incarnation of the one of the most powerful demons in the city, the corporation itself. He felt its needs, its wants, its urges, like they were his own. He was drunk on power and made a living being so.

It was reasonable, then, that Ruford be the slightest bit nervous at the sight of a modern day monster. Nonetheless, Ruford spoke with ease.

“The thing is, I’m in a bit of a spot for advertisement funds.” Ruford used a purposefully awkward smile.

The C.E.O. nodded and smiled a fraction wider, “Understandably, what with how the economy’s doing these days. I’m sure we can work something out. Why don’t you go take a seat out in the waiting room while we brainstorm a bit on the specifics. We’ll call you in when we get something tangible.”

Ruford nodded and left, relieved to be leaving the room.

“Oh, and Ruford.”

Ruford froze.

“Make sure you think real hard about why you’re doing this.” The C.E.O. turned his head to the side slightly. “Entering a campaign is a risky business. Lots of foul play and mudslinging, you know?”

“Don’t you worry sir, I’ve done plenty. Entered campaigns, that is.” Ruford hastily added.

Out in the waiting room Ruford sat anxiously and once again did as he was told, remembering why he chose this path.

His mind danced back to those cubicles on the ground floor. His parents had once lived their life that way, spending day after day selling themselves to put food on the table. His mother had been like that eerily boy, and she had spent herself on her company for a good thirty years. Ruford had watched this happen for years, gradually coming to understand what was happening.

He had tried to stop her, he had warned her and pleaded with her, but she would just smile sadly and continue on. She did so till the day the company killed her.

His mother had been replaced by a pretty blond with a college degree, who did her job half as well as her predecessor. She had been hired for her looks, that much was apparent. Meanwhile Ruford’s mother had in her time at the company revolutionized their methods for clerical work. Over the course of thirty years, she had established and refined a set of procedures for filing paperwork, her Opus Magnus. It had saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in labor and confusion. Yet even with all this, she wasn’t valuable enough.

Two weeks after they fired her, she died. It was as though she had lost her reason for being. She refused to eat, to move, to do much of anything really. Ruford’s father had been killed a couple years early in a car accident and Robert had moved out years ago, so there was little to hold her here.

The day she died was the day Ruford decided that if he must sell his soul, his life, his time on this Earth, he would ask a damn high price for it. Ruford plotted to take hold of that fell power, and use it as a weapon against those demons. He was not, however, going through this entire matter for simple vengeance. That would be an empty goal, to merely throw the blade once acquired at his foe. He became a warlock, a politician, in order to use that blade like a surgeon’s scalpel. Ruford was going to change things; he was going to warp the system until situations like his mother’s became illegal. No more petty office politics where the not-so-pretty are obsolete. His patron demon agreed with this stance, because such acts promoted inefficiency and bad PR.

That was why Ruford chose his path, to provide some measure of justice and sense in a world ruled by chaos and whims. He would do so even if it cost his soul.

One of the businessmen from in the room opened the door a small measure, the hydra peaking out one of its thirteen heads.

“Mr. Namsey, we’re ready to see you.”

“Yes sir.”

With renewed determination, Ruford walked back into the meeting room.

“Okay,” said the C.E.O. “We have established some terms of agreement.”

“Right-o, let’s have a look at them.”

The nearest suit handed him a pencil written bulletin list of expected contributions and other associated “perks”.

“How does that look Robert?”

The deal was sweeter than expected, which meant that the costs would be all the more bitter.

“Looks good to me. Now that business is taken care of, let’s talk a bit about politics. I’d like to hear what you think of this year’s hot topics.”

Business had only just began.

“You know what really gets my goat Robert? All those eco-environmentalist hippies. Can’t they see we’re doing our best to kick start this economy? We probably provide jobs to most of their family members, and yet all they do every day is complain that our products aren’t organic or some nonsense. Really now, can’t they understand that that sort of stuff costs a lot of money? Think about it Robert, if you’ve got a sleek new stapler on your desk what does it matter if it’s made of ABS plastic or eco-friendly corn husk compound? It’s blatant excess I tell you.”

“I agree completely. Those tree huggers have no right to be demanding this and that of businesses. They don’t contribute to the economy; they go around selling weed and dragging down the rest of the respectable workforce. Why, that they even have the nerve to go about telling productive members of society what to do irks me! You know what else…”

Ruford continued on for another good half hour, anticipating the desires of his ravenous master. Together they plotted and schemed, until the true terms were set.

“Always a pleasure Ruford.” The demon bared his fangs into a facsimile of a smile.

“To you as well, sir. I’ll catch you around.” Ruford closed shut the gate, and felt relief as the burning gaze slid off of him.

Ruford escorted himself out of the building, careful not to make eye contact with any of the employees. When he arrived at his exquisitely furnished apartment, he collapsed.

“Quest complete.” He mumbled into a couch pillow. He knew, though, that many more awaited him.