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This Week's TheInkWell challenge prompt: Retribution:
Skill focus; dialogue
(And let me be honest, I hate using dialogue, I feel like it can quite easily detract from the story and take away from the 'show', not 'tell'. Wish me luck!)
The Harbinger of Retribution: He never looked so silly, despite his serious intention.
On first appearance, Travis did not inspire in others the thought that he was, indeed, a serious man. Instead, their initial impression imagined him as somewhat of a trivial character who engaged in all manner of delights. They would consider his plaid cardigan a hint at an eccentricity, which his twirl-able moustache seemed to want to draw further attention to. They would take notice of his green socks and find delight in the suede patches which covered his knees. He was almost the quintessentially quirky young man, and they wanted to believe his aura was strong enough to pull them into his idiosyncratic world.
They were wrong, he was an accountant, and rather litigious. He liked the sound of his own silence, and was rather indifferent to people. He could always be relied on to wear a necktie, and they were always rather plain – not to deliberately contrast his cardigan, but rather, that he couldn’t imagine a floral adornment on anything so mundane as a necktie.
As his phone begun to ring, he begun to smile. He figured whoever was on the other end of the line would allow him the opportunity to smugly assert his mental prowess over them. With a gesture of his wrist and a throwing back of his head, unseen to all, but an essential part of his routine, Travis answered the phone.
“Travis Cook Accountants. Travis speaking”.
“Oh hello, is Travis there?” wondered an older voice, with a slight crackle in her pronunciation of the long vowels.
“Yes, Travis speaking. Can I help you?” the young man retorted, his indifference to people coming to the tone in his voice.
“Yes, it is Marlene speaking, I was just ringing up to speak to Travis about my taxes. There seems to be some sort of mistake, and –“, the slow pause allowing Marlene to be cut off mid-sentence.
“There is no mistake ma’am. You are mistaken, and thus concludes our exchange”, spat Travis in a dismissive tone which implied that offered the conversation was not going to be recovered.
Travis shook his head from side to side, made another flourish of his hand for an unseen audience and went back to his final account balance to audit for the day. It had been a productive day, and he had felt satisfied. He had been satisfied with the volume of accounts he had completed today, and he had been satisfied with the cheese sandwich he had fastidiously packed the night before. It had been a good day, until… that accusation. A number of minutes had passed since Marlene had been dismissed aloofly, but her words had pierced his skin and were beginning to fester!
“That woman! How dare she! I will come to her in the black of the terrible night, and bring a pointy reckoning that will leave her shuddering!”. Travis was standing, breathlessly, as a harbinger of retribution. How dare he be accused of a mistake? How does the insinuation be put forth of some sort of incompetence? How dare even the thought be contemplated that he had bordered on some sort of malpractice? Travis’ mind was racing, and the veins running his neck were throbbing.
Travis strode from his meticulously organised home workstation, taking deliberate steps which were evenly paced and which would allow him to arrive at the end of his hallway at an appropriate speed to continue into his spare bedroom without slowing down. He crouched down with intent in front of an old set of drawers, which had been painted a deep navy blue, to match his serious bedspread. If any guest was to use this room, he had no intention of allowing them the opportunity to find any sense of warmth in the furnishings. He opened the bottom drawer, and, from a small, but well labelled shoebox, pulled out an orange cape and a strip of purple fabric with two eye holes cut out. Both from a time long ago, when he imagined himself as the superhero accountant who would save the world by finding every pensioner every cent they were owed. That passion had now been lost, instead replaced with growing annoyance at grey haired biddies who cannot manage to save each receipt and place them into separate envelopes based on the purpose of the deduction!!
As his alter-ego, Travis strode with intention back into the hallway. His antagonistic tendencies building, and with a guilty pleasure he knew he would get Marlene! He would get her good! Get her, like she, had attempted to get him! He was of course too serious to cackle as a madman, but the intention for his reckoning was brewing. And then, the lights in his hallway flickered… an ominous sign… He would log into Marlene’s tax records, change some of her claims, and report her to the Tax Department for attempting to de-fraud the government!
His plan was infallible! He would move the decimal point one space over on one of the old woman’s deductions, and Marlene in turn would receive a warning letter. It would declare her records did not match, and she had mis-claimed up to $30 in tax credits she was not entitled to. An innocent mistake? Let her complain to him again! A-Ha! The doorbell rang.
Travis, standing in the hallway, only had to reach out to open the solid mahogany door with brass knobs, and delighting visitors with a knocker in the form of a lion’s head.
‘Yes, How can I help you?’ inquired the accountant.
‘Oh hello young man, my name is Marlene, I rang up earlier and-‘, and again she was cut off.
‘It seems that you, ma’am, are the one who is mistaken’ interjected Travis.
Undeterred, Marlene continued, ‘You forgot to give me your invoice’, said the older woman, ‘and after you did such a wonderful job sorting out the mess of this old duck’.
Travis felt silly, it seemed that his work had been impeccable. The only thing sillier than his feelings were his appearance, as the serious man in green socks, knee patches and plaid cardigan, who was wearing a flamboyant orange cape and a purple mask muttered an apology, and went to get his invoice pad.
‘You’re a quirky young fellow, aren’t you, young man?’ wondered Marlene, who felt herself being sucked into his peculiar world.
An irrelevant side note: Have you ever seen Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’? The character Abigail, when the girls threaten to disclose their dancing and witchcraft in the forest, threatens: ‘I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you’.