The Nefarious Mr Butts

[1889]

This short story was inspired by a blurb in the June 1952 update by foolish_icarus in the Cold War NES. A game can still use more players by the way.

Egypt is pleased to announce to her people that they now have a much more professional spy agency. If you want to know more about how the secret police is doing, call (144) 6543 and ask for Ted, Abdul, or X in the Secret Police Public Relations, Complaints, and Requests Dept. Operators are standing by.

THE NEFARIOUS MR. BUTTS

The opening of the phone center was a great day for the Secret Police Public Relations, Complaints, and Requests Departments. Operators handling calls from a central location was a vast improvement over the old system of suggestion boxes placed through out the country. For the phone center’s first director it was much more. His whole life had been guiding him to this point, voted best dressed in 8th grade and now this. To Mike’s specious mind it all made sense. That isn’t to say that success had been easy, in fact many people told him that he liked to do things the hard way. Pigheaded, stubborn, dimwit, jackass, these were some of the other things that people have said to him, but he had no time to dream of ex-girlfriends now, he had a phone center to run.

That isn’t to say that he actually ran the phone center, he was the director after all, running things was the supervisors job and Jacques was a great supervisor. He scheduled breaks, made sure the employee lounge was kept clean and ensured that pencils and sticky notes were in supply.

Yes, things looked great in the early days, but that all came crashing down when they started. Innocent at first, just jokes really. Mike thought back to that first call, how naive he had been, he actually laughed. How could he have known it was just the beginning?

Supervisor Strap stepped into the director’s office. “I can’t find anything on him sir. Its as if he doesn’t exist.”

“Who can make a man disappear? Who are we up against?” the director though hard. “Did you check the address?”

“Yes sir, there’s nothing there, it’s a mall parking lot.”

“My God! You mean they made his house disappear too? How deep does this go?” He looked down at the nearly blank piece of paper on his desk. It contained all the information they had managed to compile from the hundreds of phony information requests, or as they were known in the business “prank” calls.

Name: Seymour Butts
Address: 123 Main St.
Sex: Yes

It wasn’t much to go, on until this morning when a Mr. Harry Balls called in with a partial description.

[insert picture of kilroy here]

This villain was responsible for hundreds of wasted hours by his operators, not to mention the insults and rude noises. Call hold time was up 22%. “Well, not on my watch!” He slammed his fist on the desk. “I’m going to get this SOB if it’s the last thing I do!”

Mrs. Tinkle, his secretary stuck her head through the door. “Mr. Rotch, we have a Mr. Jack Mehoff On line 3 who wants to know if we have Dr Pepper in a can.”

“Of course we have Dr. Pepper in a can! Why are you bothering me? Can’t you see I’m busy?” Mike shouted.

“Sir…He says we should let him out then.”

The director took a deep breath. “Sorry Ivanna, better patch him through.” His hand paused over the receiver. The flashing “on hold” button looked so innocent, but on the other end of that line was the most egregious phone prankster in history and it was his job to stop him.

[1889]

“Christmas Eve,” Mike cussed to himself between sips of his Zima. He studied the phone log between puffs on his Virginia Slims and began to see a pattern. No calls to the automatic message machine at night, always to operators in the daytime. Unless Seymour had some kind of a night job he was probably in the same time zone. Mike looked more closely at the record. No long distance calls. Seymour must be in the same city.

The ringing of the phone startled him. “Hello” Chimed Mike. “Hello yourself” said the voice Mike could not have misidentify as anybody other than the one and only Seymour Butts himself in the flesh on the other end of the line that Mike was now talking to himself at last.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Mike queried.

“Where else would you be? At home with your wife?” Seymour shot at him. Mike felt a tinge of regret that none of his ex-girlfriends could understand his dedication to customer service. “We both believe in what we’re doing too much to have any time for family, even on Christmas Eve. We’re not as different as you think.”

“I’m nothing like you Seymour.” Mike retorted, trying hard to convince himself. “The main difference is that you’re all through. I know where you are.”

“I knew I couldn’t hide forever, but it doesn’t matter now, I’ve almost finished my work. You can’t stop me any more.” Seymour responded confidently.

“If you just called to gloat I’ve got better things to do.” Mike moved to hang up.

“Wait, you don’t really want to hang up do you?” Seymour said hurriedly. He regained his composure and chucked ironically “Its funny isn’t it. We’re each others only friends, but we find each other cast as bitter enemies?”

“Why are you doing this? Turn yourself in before this gets out of hand. I can protect you” Mike pleaded.

“We are what we are.” Seymour tautologized philosophically.

“That is so true,” Mike consoled to himself as the voice on the other end was replaced by a soft click and a quiet hum. “Merry Christmas friend.” Mike said into his Zima bottle.

[1889]

Booming base drums, crashing symbols and a whole brass section, was not the noise Mike usually woke up to after spending Christmas Eve getting drunk alone in his office. That’s why he nearly jumped out of his chair and ran to the window. The Christmas day parade! Mike loved parades, clowns too, but he didn’t see any clowns yet. He switched on the transistor radio he kept in his desk so he could listen to the commentators explain all about the floats.

Mike’s enjoyment of the festivities turned to horror when he heard the perky emcees chortle about the party at the end of the parade at 123 Main St. He spit out his warm Zima and it all came to him in a fit of deus ex machina. He’s planning to bring down the phone center! There will be dozens of people there, some of them kids. If he moons that crowd, even if just some of them complain the switchboard will meld down. It just wasn’t designed to handle that kind of volume.

His first thought was to call the police, but he didn’t want to pull them away from important duties controlling the rambunctious parade watchers. There was just no time; he would have to handle this himself. He grabbed his coat and headed for the door, just as he heard the announcers introduce the clown troop. “Damn it” Mike hissed through clenched teeth as he stepped out of the office.

Mike finally arrived at the mall, wondering how he was going to find Seymour in this crowd. Then he saw it. The nativity scene on the mall roof. Mike could almost read Seymour’s twisted mind, it was the perfect place to moon the crowd from.

Mike walked around back, found the roof access ladder and climbed up.
“That’s far enough.” Said Santa. No, wait it wasn’t Santa; it was Seymour dressed as Santa.

“Don’t do it Seymour, it doesn’t have to end this way.” Mike entreated.

Seymour looked at him with a wry grin. “Of all people, Mike, I thought you’d understand.”

Seymour unlatched his black belt and let his red pants drop to the floor. The large metal buckle clanked and finally came to rest in a shallow puddle that had formed in the many depressions that spotted the roof. This particular depression had become the repository for the condensation running off the nearest of the overworked AC units that flecked the roof. This very popular depression was also temporary home to an extension cord that looked as old as the mall itself (the mall was not new by the way). It was frayed, the black electric tape that was used to repair it so many seasons ago had also frayed. The electrical tape applied just last year was pealing off. The electric tape applied just last month, however, was still in good shape. It had been carelessly applied though and tiny brassy strands stuck out from the wires sides as if it had suffered some sort of compound fracture.

This cord currently powered Santa’s huge happy arm, waving with glee down on the glowing plastic baby Jesus and all his animal friends in the large animatronic nativity scene set up each September by the mall management. This cord also transferred millions of volts or amps (whichever one was the most dangerous, I forget) to Seymour’s belt buckle and up through his…well I guess he had a metal belt too, because he got electrocuted.

I don’t really understand this next part either, but the nativity scene began to blow up too. The sparks were dramatic and colorful and distracting enough that nobody saw Seymour’s final gesture.

Mike looked over the ledge at the happy, but excited crowed in the parking lot. Every face turned toward the pyrotechniques, smiling, pointing and clapping. They thought it was part of the festivities.

What would he give to have that innocence again, but he knew there was no going back, he had seen too much. He didn’t belong with that happy crowd in the parking lot. Mike picked up his hat, buttoned his coat and walked back to his studio apartment. He let the merriment of the holiday crowd linger in his ears. That’s why he did it. As long as they had dedicated public servants like Mike Rotch they would hopefully never have to face demons like Seymour Butts.

[SKILORD]

Well... it's awesome.

I really do like it, its inspirational.

EDIT: Which will probably be taken the wrong way, I mean that the quality of the writing inspires me.

[1889]

Wow, thanks SKILORD that means a lot.

[Paddy]

party hard mate

thanks

[Micha]

Impressive...

I will never look at callcenters the same way again...