A Widely Broadcasted Event

(I do realize this story is longer than most things posted on here so uh... hope that doesn't dissuade you from reading.)

            “A tendency to kill is not as bad as you may think, Mr. Rushmore,” said Mr. Yellowstone, his wet, gleaming eyes staring at the looming mass of a man seated directly across from him. They were separated at the ends of a long marble table by a multitude of white plates and chinas filled to the brim with steaming foods and soups. This was always the circumstance in which Mr. Yellowstone and Mr. Rushmore had their meetings, or discussions, as Yellowstone insisted they be called.

“It is a useful trait,” he continued, his hands fidgeting in their sweaty grip, “especially for the sorts of things you like to orchestrate in the darkness.” He leaned across his plate, his eyes darting up and down upon Mr. Rushmore’s stoic face as he waited for a response.

Mr. Rushmore looked up from his dinner, seemingly annoyed by the short man speaking to him. He said nothing.

“I mean, I know that there’s been some peculiar activities going on lately that have not exactly pleased you, to say the least, and you want some way to get rid of them. This man can do that, whether it be by peaceful or by more violent means.”

Silence.

“I really need an answer here, sir.”

Once again Mr. Rushmore remained quiet. It was only when Mr. Yellowstone decided to try yet another attempt to elicit an answer out of Mr. Rushmore that he finally spoke.

“I do not know what you are blabbering about Mr. Yellowstone, and it certainly doesn’t interest me,” he replied, dismissively. Mr. Yellowstone ignored this statement, got up on the top of the table, laid down on his belly and kicked himself across the cold surface at Mr. Rushmore, strewing plates and pieces of food about the floor.

“So you’re interested?” he said quickly, his face directly below Rushmore’s.

“Certainly not.”

“So you’re accepting the offer?”

“By no means.”

“So you’re sure you want me to hire him?”

“I have made no such indication.”

“Great, I’ll be back next week to collect my pay-,” he stopped, catching himself suddenly, “...phones.” He got up off the table, wiping small pieces of food off of his suit, and began to exit the ornate room in which Mr. Rushmore dined nightly. “Oh, and before I go! I have a little erm... morsel of information to tell you. You want to hear it?”

“No.” He stabbed a piece of steak with his fork.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic, I’ll be back in a couple seconds.” Mr. Yellowstone ran out of the room, and true to his word, within a few seconds, he was back in front of Rushmore, holding a large spherical object about the size of a bowling ball. Mr. Rushmore examined it intently.

It was, in fact, a bowling ball.

“Mr. Washington says he wants to go bowling after today’s pancake social at six, he even sent your old lucky bowling ball,” he said, with a slight tinge of excitement. He loved bowling, and was attempting to hide this from Mr. Rushmore. He placed the bowling ball in Rushmore’s lap. Mr. Rushmore’s name was etched onto the surface of the bowling ball in ornate gold lettering that curled away at the edges into nothingness, like the spin of a whirlpool or the turning of the Milky Way Galaxy. Mr. Rushmore liked swirly things. It reminded him of the way everyone seemed to gravitate around him, slowly being sucked closer into his cosmic grasp.
           “Tell him I’ll be there, looking good in the eyes of the employees can’t be bad for my image,” he replied in an unusually upbeat manner, his face, for the first time Mr. Yellowstone could remember, actually looking alive.
 

Mr. Yellowstone was hurt and shocked by this tremendously.

“I’ll tell him to call it off immediately.” Mr. Yellowstone began to rush out of the room, not unlike the way a frightened gazelle might flee from a lion. Mr. Rushmore sighed and palmed his face with his hand, realizing what Mr. Yellowstone thought he meant.

“Mr. Yellowstone,” he said despondently.

“Yes?” he turned around.

“I actually want to go. I want to.”

Mr. Yellowstone stared at him blankly, confused. “Huh? You mean you actually want to go?” Mr. Rushmore nodded slowly, like one might nod at a small child, trying to make his intentions as clear as possible.

“Uh, okay... that’s unusual,” there was a long pause, Mr. Yellowstone still unsure of what he was supposed to do next. Mr. Rushmore always said the opposite of what he meant whilst being filmed during their “conversations”, which was almost all of the time, so that the media couldn’t quote him to prove any allegations against him. Why would he mean what he said now?

“I’ll tell Mr. Washington you accepted gladly, uh, then.” Mr. Yellowstone pulled out his tablet, and began to inform Mr. Washington of Rushmore’s reply.

“That’s horrible, absolutely atrocious,” said Mr. Rushmore after a short period of time, with apparent fervent anger.

“Huh?” Mr. Yellowstone looked up.

“I mean, that’s great.” Mr. Rushmore’s face took on a strange, almost repulsive shape, seemingly directed at Mr. Yellowstone

“Uhhh, please... don’t do that sir, it’s a little bit disturbing.”

“What?”

“Smile.”

***

Ecstatic with the hiring of his first job in three months, Joel smiled, his heart finally beginning to slow from the frantic pace it kept only minutes ago. He was no longer, as his ex had said when she left three months ago, an unorganized, selfish, working man (at the time), too lazy to follow updates from the biggest pop artists and actors. She had been a devoted follower of numerous, as she called them, high-class people, and found it as a major fault in Joel that he did not participate in such activities. Joel found it ridiculous she thought that of him and in the end didn’t even know why he had dated her anyway. Therefore, he took a specially large amount of solace in the fact that the job required literally following a famous person, Daniel Rushmore, president of Monumental Industries, a company that advises and counsoles celebrities. A position which he recieved after he was made famous when his five daughters became stars of the hit show "Sisters Gone Serial" he created.

Joel also knew he would be on camera. That was a no brainer.

Nearly anyone remotely famous is filmed nearly all day nearly every day, Joel figured, and considering Daniel Rushmore is one of the most famous people in the United States it was pretty much a guaranteed fact that in some shape or form, he would be filmed. And, most importantly, that meant his ex would surely see him. And Joel would get some much needed satisfaction out of that.

Joel stepped out of the elevator he had been standing in and onto the lobby of Monumental Industries’ Public Relations Building, a modern, sleek place filled with all sorts of unnecessary architecture such as gleaming chrome pillars and pictures of galaxies and whirlpools and giant spiral metal sculptures, which, Joel thought, seemed more suitable for some sort of place like NASA devoted to scientific research than a public relations building.

He strolled out past the numerous shops and stores, (on top of being a public relations building it was also a commercial shopping center of sorts, as according to Daniel Rushmore, it did promote “public relations,”) and walked up to the stall where tram tickets could be purchased, and bought a ticket for the ride back to his apartment. It was only three in the afternoon, but he needed to be home earlier than usual today, as he thought that he could use some time preparing for his first day of work tomorrow. Usually he would stay out until the curfew at one in the morning, as that was when the celebrities typically went out to do their shopping, and fall asleep a few hours later, but tomorrow was going to be a big day with big work for a very big man, and he couldn’t afford to mess up.

***

Mr. Yellowstone ran to Mr. Rushmore’s office in a panic, stumbling over his own feet as if a couple of weights were tied to his shoes and were tripping him occasionally, causing him to lose balance and bump into things along the way, similar to which the manner a severely intoxicated man may run.

As it turns out, Mr. Yellowstone was intoxicated, very, very intoxicated.

God, that better not be some sort of Chekhov’s Gun or something.

Mr. Yellowstone took another corner, he was only two more hall lengths away from the elevator that lead up to Mr. Rushmore’s offices, and began to sprint just a little bit faster. This, from the get-go, Mr. Yellowstone realized, was a mistake, for the next turn he went to go about navigating, there did happen to be someone there. If he had been going only a bit slower, Mr. Yellowstone, even in his drunkenness, may have been able to do something about avoiding the man he would run into. But he was not going only a little bit slower, so logically, there was nothing he could do about it, though he did try. Though, if anything, this attempt would only make the situation worse.

He saw the scrawny, pathetic man only a few feet in front of him taking the corner. He was to the far left of the hallway, and naturally, to try to avoid hitting him, he moved a bit further right. Unfortunately, a bit further right, there stood a white brick wall. Due to his intoxication, Mr. Yellowstone did not realize this, and continued to plow straight forward with all his speed.

Mr. Yellowstone’s head hit the wall with a sound similar to that of a bowling ball being dropped on a wooden floor, a sort of empty, hollow, plunk, and he sprawled against his back on the floor.

Still too immersed in his newfound pride to make the connection between the camera and Mr. Yellowstone, he was used to them flying around from time to time anyway, Joel continued on walking up to Mr. Rushmore’s offices. It was not long before he reached the elevator, an elevator similar to many others of its kind in that it served the purpose of transporting people between the floors of buildings, but different in every other way, as it was about five times the size of a normal elevator and had giant sliding doors made out of what appeared to be pure gold, or at least some alloy very close to it. Joel was unfazed by this and strolled right up to the button used to call the elevator and pressed it. He immediately heard the elevator travel down the shaft, and before he knew it the doors slid open accompanied with a satisfying little ding, revealing walls lined with deep, red cloth, quite similar to that of velvet, and Joel stepped in. It was not until the doors had slid shut and he had begun his ascent to the top floor that he noticed two pairs of eyes in the golden reflection of the doors.

“Huagh!”, he exclaimed and turned around, violently swinging the large suitcase he had been carrying at one of the pairs of the eyes. It flew across the room and smacked the man to which the pairs of eyes belonged to right in the forehead, and he fell to the ground.

“MMMPPHTH!” he shouted in muffled agony, clutching his face. Joel noticed he was wearing a red bodysuit the exact same shade as the walls around him. It stuck to him so tight that at first glance someone might actually think it was his skin.

“Oh crap I’m sorry! I swear I didn’t mean to do that! You just startled me and I couldn’t help it!” Joel went over to the man squirming on the ground, the other man in the red bodysuit, his apparent partner, did nothing.

“MMMMPTPTH!” the man shouted again.

“Uh... okay... then-”

Ding!

The doors opened.

Joel continued to stare at the writhing red mass of a man for a few more seconds, decided there was nothing he could really do, and got back up awkwardly, grabbed his suitcase, and left the elevator. During this, the man who was still standing glared at him with strong conviction, like he was trying to make Joel’s head explode by simply willing it to.

Joel decided, from this point on, until his untimely death, he would forever watch his back for a man in a velvet red bodysuit.

The golden doors shut behind him, sealing away the strange events that occurred within it, and Joel stood, mouth agape, as he saw what laid before him. He had seen it before on television, and at that time he wasn’t too impressed by it, but in person, his opinion of the room changed dramatically.

The architecture was similar to that of the Victorian age in origin, but was also distinctly different in that instead of having many complicated decals and structures focused around sharp angles, everything in the room was designed with curves and spirals in mind. Simply looking up at the ceiling could induce nausea, for one would see spirals formed out of many hanging pieces of wood, all arranged so that no matter what angle one looked at the ceiling, the wood would form a great multitude of spirals.

Also awe inducing was the centerpiece of the dining room, a large, and what seemed impossibly long table. It was made of marble, and stretched nearly the entire length of the room, which Joel thought looked maybe half the size of a football field. On top of this table there laid a multiplicity of beautifully crafted chinas and cups and plates, a collection that would have taken a normal person many lifetimes to accumulate, though Joel knew it would have taken Mr. Rushmore a much more insignificant amount of time.

“Ah, I see you passed my test, Mr. Matanzas,” said an imposing voice.

“Huh?” Joel glanced around the room. He saw no one.

“I see you passed my test.”

“Are you talking to me?” The voice sounded like it was coming from the other end of the table, behind all of the chinas. Joel leaned to the side, and there, at the end of the table, was a person. Joel wasn’t quite sure if he was a man. He looked like one, a very powerfully built and tall one, but there was a feeling about him that made him appear unnatural, like he was never exactly meant to be a man.

“Yes, I am, Mr. Matanzas,” he stood up, and Joel immediately recognized him as Mr. Rushmore,“and I am telling you that you have passed my test.”

“What test?”

“The one in the elevator,” he waved Joel over to him and shook his hand. “You must have shown some superb self-defense skills in there.”

Joel placed his hand on Mr. Rushmore’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

He looked up, swore at himself for his absolute failure at protecting Mr. Rushmore, and then saw the killer.

They both stood still for a few seconds, not sure of what to do about each other, the killer knowing Joel had a suitcase and was not afraid to use it, and Joel knowing that if he really got into a fight with this guy he would mostly likely lose and die a horrible, slow, and painful death probably involving sharp things. Joel decided it was best to not risk it and run, but not before the killer decided the same, and sprinted off towards the end of the room towards the elevator.

And then, up in a small television screen in the hall, Joel saw a newscaster speaking of Mr. Rushmore’s recent demise, a video of the incident playing in a small box to the top right of the screen. She sounded saddened by the news, and reported on it like it was a morose, but simple truth. Though, Joel thought, anyone who was truly looking, could've seen she hid a little smirk behind her words.