What was important for Natalie in all this was that Emilie would receive the help she needed and that other children would also benefit from the new campaign. She was hopeful that she was finally able to help.
After this, when the whole of France had witnessed the President’s promises, she would finally end the affair with Armand. He couldn’t go back on his promises then. To do so would be political suicide. And even he was smarter than that. Last night, she and Jean-Claude had finally dared to make plans for the future.
She would not see the President before the launch. Yesterday, when she had left him at noon, he was excited about the political effect the campaign would have and that put him in exactly the right frame of mind.
Wrapping up the final preparations, she greeted the television crew and showed them where to set up in the President’s office. He was absent at the moment, so they could go ahead and get everything up and running.
She then greeted the parents of the children, smiling at how fidgety Jean-Claude was. He was so nervous. Understandable, since he was about to meet the President of France. They had discussed how he would put aside any feelings he had about the abuse the President had brought down on Natalie. He had to; the focus was now on getting the treatment for Emilie.
It was finally eleven o’clock. Everything was ready. They awaited the arrival of the President.
He entered the office a few minutes later. His smile was pasted on. Natalie noticed this immediately, anxious what the catalyst had been for the mood that she could see he was in. He disguised it well for the rest, but the abuse that she had endured at the hands of this man made her sensitive to his temperament. She felt a moment of panic. Especially when his gaze locked on to her. She could see the anger. It was obviously directed at something he blamed her for.
‘In three,’ the producer broke the contact between the President and Natalie.
‘Three…Two…One.’ Everyone was in their designated place. The circus was about to begin.
‘Good morning,’ the presenter said to the camera. ‘Today we are the guests of President Armand Duval.’ The camera turned to the President who was seated behind the desk. He smiled his best promotional smile at the people of France.
The presenter thanked the President profusely and started to introduce the campaign. The story had been crafted to the letter. It was propaganda of a high standard. Natalie relaxed a bit — the President was following the script.
He was introduced to the parents of the boy with the life-threatening illness. Announcing the treatment that the child would receive, he shook the father’s hand and consoled the weeping mother. The photo of the child was prominently in sight.
The second case was Emilie. The presenter introduced the case, showed the picture of the beautiful but very ill child. The President showed the correct emotions, his whole demeanour one of concern and empathy.
Then the presenter introduced the father, Jean-Claude Pelletier.
The name registered, and the impact was enormous. That was the name from the report. This was Natalie’s lover. The bastard she was cheating on him with. He turned his gaze to the man who stood up when the presenter called his name. It was the man from the photos. How had he missed him? How had he not seen him in the room? He had been concentrating only on the television crew and the presenter.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Armand exploded.
Natalie shrunk perceptively under his anger.
She looked around apprehensively, trying to gain some kind of strength from the other people in the room. Jean-Claude was no help. He was as indecisive as she was. The priest was silent, almost a statue.
What had happened? Why was the President acting like this?
‘You bring your lover to my office?’ he screamed at her, answering her question. Her courage deserted her. He knew.
‘How could you even contemplate that I would help the man who’s fucking you?’ he stood and moved around the desk, advancing on Natalie. ‘You are mine. No one else’s.’
From my position, I could see the vein in Armand’s temple starting to pulsate. He was livid.
‘Your Excellence, please forgive the young lady her enthusiasm.’ I poured a bit more gasoline on the fire. He turned to me, incredulous that I had deemed it fit to address him. That I was even in the room. He was completely out of it by now.
‘Enthusiasm?’ he screamed. Turning back to Natalie, he fixed his killing stare on the poor woman. She flinched perceptively. Jean-Claude tried to come to her rescue.
‘Mon President. It was not Natalie, but me. I insisted that she bring me here. That we try to help my daughter.’
Flabbergasted, France’s main man regarded the diminutive man who had placed himself in front of Natalie. This was the man that Natalie was cheating on him with? The focus of her love and attention? Who she deemed better than him? You could see his outrage and jealousy so clearly. His body language shouted out his anger.
Jean-Claude was trembling, as he should be. The wrath of the President of the greatest country in the world was about to come crashing down on top of him.
‘Who the fuck do you think are you?’ His voice resonated off the walls. Jean-Claude cringed. But give the man his due. He stayed where he was. Between the President and Natalie. A barrier to protect the woman he loved.
However, it was a frail attempt. He was no match for the violence and anger of the President.
I melted into the background. A fly on the wall. No longer needed as an active participant in the drama that was unfolding. No one else dared to intervene. They were paralysed by the change in the atmosphere and the President’s demeanour
Armand grabbed the smaller man by the lapels and forcefully threw him to the side. Tumbling over the Louis XIV chair, Jean-Claude fell to the floor, narrowly missing the table. Armand continued his momentum towards the terrified object of his wrath.
Natalie cringed, stepped back, but couldn’t go any further when her back met the wall. She was cornered.
‘Please,’ she mumbled, bringing her arms up to protect herself. She knew what he was capable of. She had suffered the brunt of his anger before and had the bruises to prove it.
He hit her.
His flat hand struck her squarely on the cheek, snapping her head to the side, pushing her sideways. Following up with another strike to the abdomen, he grabbed her by the hair. His head close to hers, he whispered. ‘Did you really think that you could just do as you please? Fuck whoever you want? You are mine. You hear? To do with as I please.’ He hit her again.
Everyone in the room was deathly silent, unable to comprehend what was going on. The cameraman continued to film, the images streamed real-time to the major French television channels. The whole of France was witnessing the brutal assault on Natalie and the complete meltdown of the President.
Jean-Claude recovered first and launched himself at the President, trying to dislodge the man from Natalie. Enraged even more, President Armand let go of Natalie and swung around with Jean-Claude on his back, trying to free himself.
Finally running backwards into the desk, he managed to hurt Jean-Claude so much that he let go. Turning, he kicked the downed man.
‘You dare to touch what is mine?’ he screamed. ‘Mine alone.’ Another kick. Jean-Claude cringed.
Suddenly remembering something, the President moved to the other side of the desk, opened a drawer and reached in.
Standing up, he brandished the ancient Smith & Wesson and pointed it at Jean-Claude.
‘You will never touch her again,’ he screamed cocking the pistol.
Jean-Claude tried to raise his hands up to protect himself, to scuttle backwards out of the range of the massive weapon. Natalie screamed. Others cried out for the President to please stop. To no avail, he kept the gun pointed on Jean-Claude
President Armand looked at Natalie once. He saw the anguish in her face, her begging falling on deaf ears.
‘You are mine. Mine alone,’ he said, a crooked smile on his
lips, and pulled the trigger.
Watch it Burn.
The fallout was enormous. As was to be expected.
The whole drama had been televised live. Millions of French people had seen their democratically chosen President kill the demure unarmed man. The killing blow came when he turned his gun on the cameraman, demanding that he hand over the film, that it not be aired, and then subsequently shot the man when he wouldn’t stop filming.
The murders shocked those present and all who watched the live stream.
Finally, the secret service people disarmed the President and rushed him out of the office to places unknown. No one noticed the barely perceptible smile on my face as I stood in the corner of the office. Almost blending in with the surroundings, I had inconspicuously followed the unfolding drama that I had initiated so convincingly.
Stretching the President’s inviolability beyond its constitutional limits, Armand announced he would stay in office, which effectively started the civil war. He had surpassed even my expectations in megalomania and narcissism.
The rich closed ranks, the poor rebelled.
Natalie broke with her family and became the spokeswoman for the revolution: She and small Emilie, who were inseparable from that tragic day onwards. Natalie sold her apartment. The money paid for Emilie’s treatment and slowly she recovered. Together they fanned the flame.
Jean-Claude and the cameraman became national heroes. The small unassuming selfless teacher who just wanted to save his ailing little girl, and the cameraman, who, in the face of death, had continued to film the injustice and betrayal by the President.
They were buried in an internationally televised service, preceded by the friendly Father Benedict, which became the monumental statement of rebellion.
The civil war escalated, additionally fuelled by the influx of new refugees, now from the stricken United Kingdom. Pestilence and the resulting famine drove the exodus from across the channel and further inflamed the already volatile situation in France.
My work is done.
The flames climb ever higher.
It is time to focus my attention on the next candidate.
I think the Americas.
Trouble is brewing there.
Insufficient energy resources, unrest in the lower classes, mass poverty.
All the ingredients of a major struggle.
I’m optimistic about the opportunities.
Should be fun.
The end… …. Or just the beginning?
###
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Thanks!
Monique Singleton.
About the author:
Monique Singleton was born on a British army base in Hosterd, Germany in 1958. Growing up in many different countries she gained a broad perspective on the world. Settling down in the Netherlands where she continued her education, Monique received a B.A. in Social studies from the Social Academy in Driebergen, The Netherlands in 1978. She then worked as a social worker for seven years, went into business for four years, owned a successful Art Studio that specialised in sport and fantasy paintings, and then completely changed course in 1998 when she entered the challenging world of IT. Starting as a programmer, she worked herself up to management and consultancy.
Creativity, however, will not be denied its due and in 2010 she found her true passion in writing. Her first book, Primal Nature was six years in the making: one year of writing and five years of getting up the courage to publish. Primal Nature is the first novel in the Primal series.
Though she definitely is a contemporary writer, Monique expertly plays with timelines in her stories. She is a writer who doesn’t shun the confrontation between her reader and herself. In her stories, she weaves probing plotlines in the overriding and compelling themes of this era. In doing so, she not only writes intriguing and exciting Urban Fantasy, but she also constantly confronts the reader with his or her own vision of the times we live in.
The reader identifies fully with the unique stories because of Monique’s contemporary approach to Urban Fantasy. She offers a form of exciting fantasy that is well rooted in today’s reality with believable and emphatic characters that leave a mark.
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Primal Nature
Published by Monique Singleton.
Copyright 2016 Monique Singleton
I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve tried to kill me.
Hundreds maybe even thousands. And not only in the course of the two global wars that so characterise the past two centuries.
When will you get it through your thick heads that you cannot succeed? I’m here for as long as I want to be. You do not decide my fate. That prerogative is mine, and mine alone.
I’m here to stay: I’m here for eternity. But still you try and every time you fail.
You can’t kill me. But man, it hurts.
Every time you shoot me, cut me, try to blow me up, whatever: it hurts, causing the pain and anger within me to build exponentially. Clouding my judgement, clouding my reserves and morals, with the expected result—I kill you.
I am no stranger to pain. In the two hundred and fifty-eight years that I have lived up till now, pain has been the one constant factor.
That and death. Yours not mine.
I started off human, or at least had no reason to think otherwise. I was born, grew older, got sick and then better again, nothing unusual or even remotely interesting. All the human traits.
Until it stopped. All of it. I stopped growing old. I never got sick again. And life definitely got a lot more interesting.
I’m cynical. Eternity does that to you. I’ve seen so much evil in humans that it eclipses any goodness that might lie dormant.
As you will have guessed, I’m not a fan.
But that’s mutual. You don’t like me. Not after you really get to know me.
It’s not that you think I’m malicious, or inherently evil or anything superficial like that. Just different, and that terrifies you. That, and jealousy, colours any relationship between you and me.
Why?
Well it’s too simple to exile all myth and folklore to the realms of fantasy. True, the majority of them are ninety-nine percent fantasy. But somewhere, deep down, there is the origin, the reason for the myth: a small wafer of truth.
And that’s the really scary part.
The enormous technological advancements that characterise the last few hundred years lulled you into a sense of control. You think you can rationalise everything.
Well you can’t. There are still things in this world that defy reason: that your scientists or politicians can’t explain. There are still things that you can’t control. And it terrifies you.
I’m not human anymore. That implies that I once was. For the first fourty odd years, my life was quite normal by your standards. Nothing really strange or out of the ordinary.
I still don´t have a definite reason why I am what I am. There was no poisonous spider, or mythical animal bite, no radiation from a meteoroid as the catalyst or anything dramatic like that: nothing that I can label “The Reason.”
In my early forties, my scars and wrinkles stared to fade. I welcomed this and thought I’d started some kind of second youth due to better eating habits. Who wouldn’t? At that age, you begin to understand that nobody, not even you, has eternal youth and that you start to look remarkably like your parents did twenty-five years earlier. How’s that for a nightmare? Wrinkles? Sagging figures? Cosmetic surgery comes to mind.
Well anyway. I didn’t need surgery. I was becoming younger, or at the very least not ageing. Everyone around me of course was growing older. My husband started off younger than me. I buried him looking like his granddaughter.
People stalked me for an explanation. How did I do it?
Surprise quickly made way for resentment. I could at least share my secret. Let other people benefit from my “fount
ain of youth”. I wanted to, but how could I if I didn´t know myself?
I tried to find out. One of the perks of longevity is that you have ample time to learn.
I studied: biology, chemistry, anything that could help me understand what was going on. But the answers eluded me.
It’s funny how friends and family turn to enemies because you have something they covet. Especially something so elementary as longevity. But be careful what you wish for. Immortality is not the eternal dream that it is portrayed to be: more of an eternal nightmare.
The resentment and jealousy finally drove me away from everything and everyone I knew. That, and the fact that I was the subject of countless medical experiments and tests. Everyone wanted to know what stopped me from ageing. Everyone wanted a piece of me. I was sick of it and so I left. Besides, everyone I really loved, every family member or friend was already dead, even the ones that were born long after me. I had said so many goodbyes, there was nothing left.
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