The tape of the only remaining interview with evil supervillain Fitzpatrick Zloty; taken just before his cell roof collapsed on him with the aid of some strategic door slamming around the prison complex.
INT: A clean, modern interrogation room. On one wall hangs a picture of Blofeld’s cat. Our villain is slouching decorously on a plastic chair, one leg crossed over the other, his foot jiggling. He is fidgeting with his lapels. Our intrepid interviewer enters the room, crosses the distance to her own seat and sits down. Her movements are deliberate and unselfconscious, though the door’s prolonged creaking as it closes makes her flinch slightly. She seems determined not to be intimidated by the stare being levelled at her by FITZPATRICK ZLOTY: half Irish, half Polish evil genius recently captured by a certain super-spy who, for copyright reasons will remain nameless. Also, if I named him, I would be expected to justify such a bold step into the parody/tribute genre by demonstrating a certain level of expertise about said super-spy’s cinematic oeuvre. I have only seen five of the films and my favourite was ‘You Only Live Twice’ and I don’t give a crap so go ponder that whilst taking a leisurely one and leave me the hell alone.
I: Mr. Zloty. Let me just say to start with that I’m here as a nerd and a fan of your work as much as I’m here to interview you.
Z: Would you like me to sign your virginity? I assume it’s still in its box…
I: You can’t possibly be so jaded after only 7 of the 24 years you are expected to serve in this fine establishment?
Z: Scuffed is closer to the correct term, my good woman. Before I turned to evil at a level any higher than the adolescent amateurism we all indulge in, I was a proud, ambitious military man. I like a nice, high shine.
(Interviewer notes with approval and a slightly condescending wariness that every other inch of Zloty’s apparel gleams with buttons, medals and monocles)
Z: Certain standards have to be maintained even in prison man! I may have compromised my individuality, impartiality and heterosexuality during the past 7 years but as long as my brass is polished; I’ll still be able to look at myself in the eye during my morning shave.
I: Quite. Certainly then, a man as splendidly turned out as yourself has no reason to become defensive and passive-aggressive so early on in the dialogue? It might serve to establish an irascibly eccentric personality which, in turn could foster in me a reluctant fondness, consequently humanising you in the eyes of an otherwise less-than-sympathetic audience but it also….is mean. Are you going to smile for the photograph?
Z: Not if you sucked my Roger Moore and called it depleted uranium.
I: Well fine; doesn’t matter to me if you look all worn out and saggy on our homepage. All those teen goth girls who think they invented the submissive role will just have to find some other cruel young buck to fantasise about in their flaking chambers.
(Z peels back thin lips to reveal teeth in an approximation of a smile; underscoring dead, expressionless eyes. Interviewer takes a quick snap and the flash makes him start and grimace)
I: Lovely. Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you.
Z: Oh, God, not another Freudster. Some experts actually ADVOCATE toddler breastfeeding you know. And I’m sick of being made to feel guilty for something I don’t even remember doing, let alone have dreams about…
I:…If I could stop you RIGHT there Mr. Zloty, and turn your attention to more phallic matters…what ever did happen to that bomb in the end?
Z: I sold it of course; and those bastards smelled a desperate seller a mile off: which, oddly enough is the range over which the target can be accurately determined; any further away and you get a slight drift: no more than a few degrees but quite enough to piss on the wring bonfire if you know what I mean (he chuckles)
I: Evasive action at no extra cost. I get it. Who’d you sell it to?
Z: I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with gorge thrush…
I: (knocks over her coffee cup) You stupid….bastard!
Z: I’m evil, remember? It’s not just a meaningless epithet like ‘investigative’ tacked onto your dubiously earned moniker of ‘journalist’ you know. Not only did I sell to that daft prick, I also took down payments from four plucky little Eastern European countries and a piggy bank full of change from a small boy in Zaire.
I: What happens when the proverbial hits the fan then? You think you’ll be safe in this concrete pigsty? The guard nearly shat himself when I slammed the door on the way in. Some plaster fell from the ceiling and landed right in his mug of tea. The government aren’t interested in protecting you people.
Z: What do I care? I’ve been waiting for someone or something to come down on me like a ton of bricks my entire life. The only one to come close is Bubba from the next cell and most of that weight came from momentum.
(I takes a big gulp of coffee and closes her eyes as though experiencing heartburn)
Z: If I’d had a stable authority figure besides my home economics teacher as a child, I might be sitting in YOUR chair right now with an asshole slightly tighter than my belt.
I: (brightening) So your path was diverted from a life of nurturing and sustaining others by unsympathetic educators?
Z: No, it was insomnia. My body sort of naturally falls into a nocturnal rhythm if I’m left to my own devices. The hours are all wrong for most catering and secretarial work. Plus, my sauces were always turning out lumpy and over a long period of time, that can really chip away at your self-confidence.
I: So you decided to retrain as an evil genius?
Z: My Home Ec teacher, Mr. de Souffle gently hinted to me on a number of occasions that my culinary ineptitude might transfer rather well to the chemistry department. Apart from the girls’ changing rooms, it was the only room that the headmaster left unlocked overnight. It was either the cheeky effervescence of a freshly minted lithium disc skinny dipping in saline solutions or taking swabs from the plugholes and cloning myself a girlfriend.
I: I’ve often suspected that the world would be a safer place if more young men got laid sooner and more frequently. Could the right woman have saved you and consequently, saved the future of civilisation as we know it?
Z: Paradoxically, my dear, whilst temporarily negating my desires to destroy the world, the ‘right’ woman would have aroused other impulses in me: impulses which, once acted upon, would result in offspring. Strapping, male offspring! Imagine the nihilistic vigour of a son of mine eh? Warped diligently from birth by my at best, unorthodox, at worst, traumatic approach to parenting! Even as we speak, we would be probing our cavities for burgeoning tumours…
I: (lights a cigarette and takes a long, desperate drag) It doesn’t bear thinking about. What if you’d ever had a daughter? Do you consider world domination to be exclusively the province of the male?
Z: Ah, just like a woman to fail to mark the distinction between the domination and the destruction of the earth. You were doing so well: you’d got me talking, engaged despite myself by your inane questioning. The breasts help too, though. I’m not made of stone.
(I crosses her arms self-consciously: her first indication of real discomfort)
Z: I myself never harboured any ambitions of world domination during my fated career as an evil genius. Destruction was always my treasured ideal; my defining motivation in everything I did (begins to soliloquize, a faraway look in his eyes) I risk making myself unpopular here but I think that a grasping concept like world domination would appeal to a woman far more than it would to a man: entire populations to manipulate, cosset and clean up after. Imagine the world’s wife: with her implacable apron strings of tempered metal tied like vices about the hands of the world leaders…
I: Whereas your vision of the future was a waste land: a nuclear sandpit full of silly little boys with sacks of malignant cells quaking between their legs, swollen with Mother Nature’s ripening spiders’ eggs of deformity.
Z: In this way, the evil genius bent on destroying the world embodies one of the Four Noble Truths of Zen Buddhism: he seeks to end the spiritual suffering that comes from attachments to things which are impermanent and must, therefore be lost. The attachment between man and woman, man and bank balance, man and legs…The list goes on.
(Zloty reaches over and helps himself to a cigarette. The interviewer, stunned, lights the cigarette with her own lighter from inside her jacket pocket)
Z: However, the evil genius goes one step further than the great Zen masters. Not only does he relinquish his attachments to the material world, he actively seeks to destroy the things he treasures most. Like tearing off a plaster all in one go and ripping all those teeny tiny (mimes teent tiny with his fingers) little hairs away with it, he takes the plunge and faces the inevitable on his OWN terms. In a way, he beats Time itself at its own game.
I: (still aghast) Perhaps the world actually NEEDS people like you…
Z: Indeed. For the preciousness of conscious existence itself lies in its inherent transience and vulnerability. Consider the ice-sculpture; consider the poignancy of the falling leaves in autumn: a funereal confetti of decay flushed with the hue of a thousand dying fires… (parklife)
I: No, no. I meant that the world needs people like you so that people like me and the boys back at notaltogetherirrelevant.com feel a little better about laying their youth at the cold, thankless altar of geekdom. I’ve been trying to convince Ed that there’s always a sadder sack than you wandering around somewhere out there and now I have a photograph to prove it.
(waves the camera at Zloty who grabs for it and misses)
Z: Hmmm, well, at least I dared to dream. Although I admit that washing the sheets myself at 4am. before anyone else was awake was a bit spineless.
(the tape gives out here with a sound like someone flossing the inside of their skull with cooked spaghetti)
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