Fiction: Tycoon!

AFP photo

 

By

Tom Roth

 

 

Tycoon!

 

 

 

I’m Marlon T. Pudd.

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The “T” stands for Tycoon.

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A Tycoon is someone who acquires so much wealth that he becomes very powerful.

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The following is the truest account of my successful rise to power.

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There’s a little hint about my rise to power.

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Here’s the hint: even a monkey can do it if he plays his cards right.

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And I played my cards very well.

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So don’t be so upset about it.

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I hated fakeness.

 

Fake people gave the greatest smiles with the worst intents. Bluffers out for your money and your reputation. Tricking you to fold your Ace. Their dirty hands gathering all that you owned right in front of your face to build ivory towers off everything you earned. I never let that happen to me though. Believe it, I knew the tricks. I only had to stay careful about it and see how the rest would play out before making my final move.

I couldn’t believe we dragged ourselves this far across the crooked floor and half of people didn’t even realize it was happening to them. That we let ourselves be lied to about the picture of my ass.

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DON’T EVER LET THEM FOOL YOU.

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I was in the lobby of my grand, golden tower. The sham reporters kept asking about my recent books and if I was going to run for president. They were like dressed up wolves, waiting to show their teeth to me the moment I made a move.

They questioned everything I said and this actually made things a lot easier for me once I got my dick swinging like the giant chandelier in the lobby. I could tell them anything, do anything, and they wouldn’t believe it. They said they wanted truth even though I knew they were just bluffers like all the rest.

They said they had the right for the truth.

So I told them my truth and let them work it out themselves. I showed my Ace and my ass.

I turned around and dropped my pants to show them the tattoo on my ass. It had puckered, juicy lips (like my wife’s) and this was written next to it: Kiss me, I’m rich!

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That was how I got their attention.

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This was how they got my attention.

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The next day I stared at a picture of my ass taken by National Cable News Network. I was with my wife, drinking coffee in our penthouse.

“Now look at this!” I said, handing her the iPad.

She stared at it for some moments, looking sort of confused.

“What is it, Marlon?” she said.

“Don’t you notice anything strange about this picture, hun?” I said. I got up and retied my morning robe. I walked over to the big window and looked at all the skyscrapers. My hands caressed my butt-cheeks. Flabby, sort of gelatin, too. “Look hard, hun.” I heard nothing. I turned around and found her holding the iPad above her head. “My God, look at what they did to my ass! Look at that thing!”

“Marlon,” she said still looking at the screen, “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

I turned around and dropped my robe. I threw my head back and looked at her from behind my right butt-cheek, where the tattoo was. “Look at my ass now and look at the ass you see in the picture. What do you see?”

“I see nothing, Marlon!” she shouted. “What is it that you want me to see?”

I walked over to her, naked. I tapped the screen to zoom in on my ass. “Look at what they did to my ass, babe! My ass isn’t that fat! Those fucking bastards made my ass look fat! The American people can’t have a president with a fat ass!”

“Those bastards did make your ass look fat,” she complied now, tilting her head one way as if to finally realize the difference. “They did make your ass look more fat than usual! Those bastards, Marlon, those lying bastards! Why, Marlon, why?”

“It’s just a little bluff,” I said, making my way back over to the window. “They got nothing in their hands and they know it, too. They’re hoping that I fold my Ace and that the bluffers will keep on with the dragging, the stealing, the killing, the lying, the bluffing. But I’ve seen enough. And this picture is the last I’ll take of it.”

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Don’t feel sorry for me. I got a lot of shit, but I knew I was right. If anything, feel sorry for the truth about America.

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My media posted a correct picture of my ass on the campaign website. We had a statement below that explained the blatant crap NCNN tried to pull, along with other facts about their bullshit and Lonny Chitarl, who was going to inject Fix Filters in every American’s brain.

A Fix Filter was a silver, small funnel placed in the center of the brain. It was designed to filter out “bad thoughts.” Three times a day, before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, one would have to empty out their Fix Filter by turning upside down to let out the “bad thoughts” that dribbled like foamy drool.

Chitarl even wanted to put a Fix Filter at the center of Earth, but none of his hot shots could figure out how to turn the Earth upside down. And a lot of people were scared about what kinds of bad things would funnel out every day.

I wasn’t scared though. I knew how bad it all was and that was why I showed my ass to the world in the first place. We deserved to know the truth about Chitarl’s Fix Filters and bullshit news and that we were seesawing with Democracy and Fascism for the past years.

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The world won’t end with a bang nor a whimper. It’ll end with a fat cigar in its mouth and a stack of chips behind a pair of Jokers, waiting for me to fold my Ace.

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If I wanted to, I could write poetry a lot better than T.S. Eliot. He doesn’t even make sense half the time anyway.

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Tom Hanks has just endorsed my campaign

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Lonny Chitarl was the biggest bluffer I ever squared up. He had silver hair slicked back behind his warped ears. The wrinkles on his face made his eyes look like they were always about to collapse. He had an eloquent, bitchy tone that made me feel like I was in after school detention.

“Mr. Pudd’s politics are unsound,” Chitarl said. The television made him looked skinnier. I’ll have to send that information out soon. “His fallacious reasoning will lead to severe consequences for our country and the rest of the world. His insensitive disregard for struggling Americans proves his bias and his desire to keep the general wealth in the hands of his millionaire buddies. Marlon T. Pudd needs to be filtered out! We will not stand for his ideologies of hate, luxury, and selfishness!”

Look at them clapping. Fooled by a guy with a nice suit and a pair of Jokers behind his effortless smile. Me, the bad guy? I’m not the bluffer trying to ruin everyone’s brain with a Fix Filter.

“I will now have my Fix Filter injected into my brain,” Chitarl said. “This is our first step toward a better America. Let us not be fooled by fat asses.”

Son of a bitch.

He put his hand to his mouth and gave a wry, guilty glance at the howling crowd. Not funny. He was acting like me and he didn’t even know it. It’s strange how people get so upset by a nice asshole like me that they start saying things I’d say. Bunch of wanna-bes.

A doctor with skimpy glasses came up to the podium and shook Chitarl’s hand. Chitarl sat in a chair and the doctor injected the Fix Filter like he was tightening a loose bolt.

It was all over in an instant. Lonny Chitarl was fixed.

“And that’s that,” the doctor said, rubbing his knuckles together as Chitarl turned himself upside down, smiling.

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LONNY CHITARL REFUSES TO GIVE ANYONE HIS PASSWORD TO HIS PHONE. What are you hiding, Chitarl?! We deserve to know!

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My ass is lovely. Ask my wife.

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Lyle Wackonenay was the CEO of WackoShades, a company that designs virtual reality Ray-Ban sunglasses.

Chitarl’s Fix Filters were killing me. Everyone got one when Meryl Streep and Stephen Colbert posted a picture of them upside down on a wall, dribbling out all the bad juices in their brains. They captioned it Drain Game. It didn’t take long for the rest of America to join in the fun. That’s what politics is all about. Come to my party, it’ll be a blast! You’d be perfect for this game we play together!

So I had to find something that could become a game for my supporters, too. That’s where Lyle came in.

The guy was old as shit, like me, but certainly not as good looking. He was a squat guy with brown hair that tangled upon itself, save for the bald spot in the middle of his head. He always had on a short sleeve suit and khaki shorts. His bowtie was polka dot, red and blue.

I was in his office. There were WackoShades all over the walls and pictures of Marylin Monroe, Mae West, Madonna, and Anne Bancroft.

His desk was pathetic. Stacks of papers and piles of WackoShades next to towers of McDonald’s large pop cups. His trashcan brimmed with yellow cheeseburger wrappings. The place smelled like a urinal. He had on WackoShades and was looking up at the ceiling, his hand through the tangles of hair, when I asked him how they work.

“Everything I see,” he said gaily, “is virtually manipulated by my own thoughts. Right now, as you sit across from me, Anne Bancroft’s pantyhose leg is stretching over my head just like in The Graduate.”

I looked up at the still fan. A lot of people said Wackonenay lost his mind ten years ago, when his brother died shortly after designing the sunglasses. It was a jet skiing accident. He had on WackoShades and thought every boat was a giant pair of nice ass cheeks. He was an ass man, I take it. Got the best of him, I guess. Since the death, WackoShades were only legal in homes or secured buildings.

“Nice,” I said, imagining Bancroft’s long leg over me. “Lyle, I want your WackoShades as the primary attire for my campaign.”

“Really?” he said, turning to me now. “You know something?” he said with a wonderful smile.

“What’s that, Lyle?” I asked sweetly.

“You look like a president right now,” he said, gleaming. “Your hair is as bright as a sunny beach. And your smile reminds me of Jimmy. I’ve never seen him with WackoShades until now. God, Jim where the hell have you been the past ten years? My God, you look great! Jim, how are you getting along nowadays?”

“Quite smoothly, Lyle,” I said. “Things are getting along just as I planned.”

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WackoShades are the REAL future of America. I got mine in red!

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I wasn’t worried at all. I had a hunch Chitarl and his news puppets would bring something out about me that wasn’t true. It happened right before one of the silly debates that I indefinitely won.

It was a video of me talking with some joke from Hollywood Access about getting rim jobs by any women I wanted. I told him my rich ass was irresistible to any women and that any women would let me do whatever I wanted with her because of my success.

It got the reaction they were after. Opponents claimed I was a misogynistic monster, waiting to pounce on any girl I saw. One news anchor requested that I’d be injected with a Fix Filter.

And the most pathetic part of it all was that Chitarl thought he had me. He had this grin on his face during the debate like he had just knocked me out of the election for good.

“Marlon T. Pudd,” Chitarl said during the debate, “is making an ass of himself. It’s as simple as that, America. He will only make America an ass of itself if he is given the opportunity to lead this country. It’s up to you, America. It’s up to you.”

I was given an opportunity to respond. This was it. Chitarl with his bluff and me with my Ace. I showed it.

“You see,” I said, gesturing to Chitarl. “All this nonsense about me, the fiction Chitarl and sham reporters have conjured up to distort your facts, the blatant lies they shove down your throats, are mere distractions of the realities haunting this country. I am their scapegoat of those realities. I am the one they claim that makes an ass of himself, but look around you. Americans have been making asses of themselves ever since the Declaration of Independence, but we just call it ‘Politics.’ All they want to see is their party leader whooping another party leader’s ass in the façade of ‘Politics.’ America, I don’t play games. I don’t have time for games and neither does the rest of America. I show things how they are, not try to bluff my way around reality. The real reason I’m here is that I believe America is more than just a game of who can make an ass of themselves. It’s an idea that is only true if we believe it can be made into reality.”

When it was over, I met my wife and Lyle Wackonenay. They both had on WackoShades.

“Marlon,” my wife said, “oh, Marlon, I, I’m speechless.”

She was thrilled with tears.

“Mr. Pudd,” Lyle said, “you’re taking this country back to its roots again and I’m on board with you.”

We shook hands as the cameras flashed like blue fireworks.

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With WackoShades, I see a safer, stronger, and greater America than ever!

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Denzel Washington said he’s on my side. Good for him!

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It’s good to see so many Americans coming to their senses. Now if only Chitarl and the rest of the fakers would do the same!

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The accusations about me are FALSE. When will people stop lying to themselves and realize their realities?

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The election is RIGGED. Terrible time for Americans.

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N.C.N.N. spends more time on witch hunts than on reporting real news. FAKE NEWS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM AGAINST AMERICA.

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When you focus too much on one thing, you miss a lot. That was how I ended up winning.

Chitarl and his gang thought they had me in the end, but I knew not to worry about it too much. The more they focused on me, the more they lost track of themselves. And that gave me more to work with. All I had to do was to keep being the way I was from the get-go.

When I stood above millions and millions of Americans with WackoShades, I thought about the first time I broke a promise. I was eight and I was playing fetch with my golden retriever, Clark. Clark was like most dogs, always happy no matter how dimwitted he was. We were at the top of the stairs and I had his favorite tennis ball in my innocent hands. I waved the ball in front of his fat, cold nose very slowly, watching his rapt eyes follow it as if he saw a tiny angel or fairy flying just above his nose. And then I pretended to throw it over his head as he raced down the steps in search of the ball. I laughed, watching his nose cover the floor like a metal detector. When he looked up at me sitting on the top stair, I held up the ball and he came racing back up, trusting I’d throw his favorite tennis ball this time.

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Roth

Tom Roth works as a tutor at a middle school in Magnolia, Ohio. He usually writes fiction about religion, atheism, and illusions people form about their beliefs and disbeliefs. His fiction has appeared on Flash Fiction Press and Literally Stories.