The scale tipped, then it teetered, then it shattered.
“Piss and blast,” said Richard unhappily. “That was the last one in the house.”
“And the most expensive, begging sir’s pardon,” said Manfred, his manservant, already hard at work gingerly prising Richard’s feet free from the scale’s rubble.
“Obviously not worth the price if it’s so flimsy,” frowned Richard. “Well! If I am to be beset by such inconvenience and nonsense, there’s nothing to be done but fix the matter.”
“Howso, sir?”
“I shall go on a diet.”
“Which one, sir?”
“The very best one,” said Richard. “One I shall create myself.”
“Hasn’t sir often remarked – as a matter of pride – that he has never created anything of value in his entire existence?” inquired Manfred, the question rising up from the depths of his soul and brushing aside his tact and training like insubstantial insects.
“Oh Manfred, Manfred, Manfred,” chided Richard. “That just means I’ve saved it all up for this moment. Forty-eight years is enough preparation for anyone, don’t you think?”
***
The most difficult part lay ahead.
“All the good ideas are taken,” mourned Richard as Manfred used his mouse for him. “All-meat?”
“Already done, sir.”
“Loads of olive oil and such?”
“’Mediterranean,’ sir.”
“Caveman-style?”
“They call it ‘paleo,’ sir.”
“Rot and drivel,” growled Richard, “how can they possibly find mammoth to consume?”
“They do their best, sir.”
“Fat lot of use the museum was when I asked them for some; I can’t see their best being better than that. See if I ever donate to that waste of bricks again.”
“It would be a shock, sir.”
“Sylvia!” called Richard in his most piercing voice. “More popcorn!”
The maid in question was already holding a bowl next to him, but Richard was a respecter of Tradition and so wasn’t about to acknowledge someone when he could summon them instead.
“Needs more salt,” mused Richard. “Oh! That’s it!”
“Sir?” inquired Manfred.
“I shall create the world’s first salt-based diet. Nothing but salt, with salt, and salt.”
“That’s nuts, sir,” interjected Manfred’s sanity without the approval of his brain.
“Oh quite a lot of them, yes, but only if they’re roasted and seasoned, and there’ll be plenty more to round out the menus. Sylvia! Get down to the kitchen and set things up with the chefs, or do I have to do everything myself?!”
***
“I should’ve made this menu myself,” complained Richard.
“I could summon the chefs to sir’s presence for a proper dictation of-”
“Are you MAD?” inquired Richard with all the agog incredulity he could fit on his face. “Honestly Manfred, if I go concerning myself with coming up with little things like menus how will I have the creativity left over to come up with this diet? Salt demands my ABSOLUTE attention!”
“Quite so, sir. My apologies, sir.”
“Of course, of course, of course. Now get started on redeeming yourself and send back this jerky to be deep-fried and triple-salted again. He didn’t get enough breading on it.” Richard sighed and shook his head.
“Would sir like a beverage with his meal?”
“No,” said Richard thoughtfully. He scratched at his wrist and admired the shower of skin particles. “Look, see how I’m already starting to shed weight now that I’m sweating less? That’s the salt at work, that surely is. I can’t go dissolving the salt when it’s just getting started! No drink, no. None.”
***
“I need a drink,” moaned Richard, as he roiled in bed with the faint crunching sounds that his skin made these days, leaving a trail of almost-translucent fragments through his sheets. “God, Christ, god’s piss, christ’s piss, jesus’s piss in a pitcher, I need a drink so badly oh god Sylvia why do I not have a drink?”
Sylvia gently raised a glass to his hand, which he inspected, raised to his lips, and hurled across the bedroom through the window.
“Are you MAD?” he demanded. “There’s WATER in that! No, get me a drink of SALT, damn you and your mother and your mother’s mother!”
“There is salt in sir’s drink,” said Manfred, who’d just come through the door with a plate of twice-smoked duck breast.
“Yes, but there’s also water,” said Richard darkly. “New rule: no water. Not even salt water. Salt is the diet; water is the weakness. After all, isn’t fat mostly water? No wonder this is working so well!”
“Sir,” interjected Manfred, with the discreet and quiet cough of someone being paid not to say this sort of thing, “you have gained sixty-nine pounds four ounces, mostly as a result of the strange brittle structures sir is producing instead of sweat.”
“That’s temporary, Manfred,” chuckled Richard. “God, no wonder you’re a butler – not an ounce of imagination or education in you. Soon it’ll all fall away like water off a duck’s back.” Then his eyes alit upon the plate and he frowned once more. “Speaking of, send that back. Just bring me the seasoning next time.”
“There was no seasoning at sir’s request due to his suspicion of ‘watery-tasting’ spices, sir.”
“Oh, it was nothing but salt? Good. Just bring me the salt then.”
“Very good sir, I’ll send for the shaker.”
“A bag, I think.”
***
“Must you make such a RACKET?” complained Richard.
“Apologies, sir, but that is the nature of a hammer.”
“Still there’s no need to go hammering at it like that.”
“I am truly contrite, sir. Almost done.”
“Would be done already if you put some backbone into it.”
“Indeed sir.” Manfred wiped free the sweat from his brow and drove the last nail into the windowsill. “It is done, sir.”
Richard eyed him with greater distaste than was typical, as far as could be detected when his face had sunken into a sort of parched rictus. “Do you really have to do that sort of thing?” he asked.
“Pardon, sir?”
“Secreting liquids,” sneered Richard. He shuddered, producing a funny sort of noise somewhere between a windchime and a rattlesnake. “Like some kind of filthy amphibian. Honestly Manfred, I thought better of you.”
“I am ashamed of my weaknesses and frailties, sir.”
“You’d better be,” said Richard. “Why, imagine if your filthy liquid laid itself against a surface and evaporated, and if that evaporation should later cool and condense itself against my skin? It might break free my precious salt, and the diet would be ruined! A whole lifetime’s-worth of prepared and banked inspiration and creativity, flushed away by a lack of antiperspirant and the slovenly habits of a member of the labouring class! Whose fault would THAT be, Manfred?”
“My own entirely, sir.”
“Correct. Now that the windows are sealed, get to work on installing those dehumidifiers next. My dorsal spires are beginning to flute and bifurcate, but I don’t know if they’ll get above sixteen inches in height if the air doesn’t stop being so damned muggy.”
“It is January, sir, which is traditionally one of the dryer months.”
“Are you MAD?” burst out Richard incredulously. “The ground outside is covered in snow, which is, of course, frozen WATER. My god Manfred, read a fucking book for once. After your shift, on your own time.”
“I shall, sir.”
“In the here and now, fetch me more salt.”
“Sir? May I suggest a funnel? Sir’s mouth is increasingly obstructed by sir’s growths.”
“Those are crystals, Manfred. And your suggestion is considered and discarded: a funnel lacks dignity. Simply pour the salt onto my stomach and it’ll do the rest on its own.”
***
Manfred pulled the switch, examined the readout, confirmed item four through fifteen on the checklist, exchanged a complicated series of hand signs and codes through the airlock porthole, then heaved down on the lever that would initiation the dehydration process.
“I’m hungry,” rumbled Richard. Manfred heard him through vibrations in solid matter these days rather than air, tremors that travelled from body to floor to the surface of his full-body HAZMAT suit, which reminded him of something important.
“Lunch is nearly here, sir. In the meantime, a troubling matter has arisen since last night: sir appears to have become fully embedded into the floorboards. Perhaps we should consult a doctor? Or at least an architect, to ensure sir’s weight doesn’t cause instability in the –”
“Are you MAD?! You want to involve ‘experts’ in this? What do they know about value, about inspiration, about clarity, about the power of forging one’s own path? All of that gets drowned out of them in school, replaced with indolent slopping sloshing gurgling wet thoughts of tepid tedium and damp mediocrity.” A discordant… sound? Feeling? Both?… filled the air, like the running of a titanic fork over a plate. “Ugh. The thought makes me feel sick, and the idea of feeling sick makes me even MORE sick. How do you stand it, Manfred, being so full of…juices? Just walking around pumping and digesting and oozing them all day, all night? How do you not just up and end yourself on the spot?”
“My duty to sir keeps me going.”
“As it should,” said Richard grudgingly. “As it should. But in the meantime can you at least try not to perspire like that? I can feel it congealing on the interior of your faceplate. Uggggh.” The great crystalline salt mass that had consumed Richard’s skull and torso clicked and shrank inwards on itself, presenting an interlocking shield of blades against a perceived threat.
“I shall do my best as always to serve sir.”
“You’d better,” hummed Richard. The air grew that extra step dryer, the airlock hummed open, and Sylvia entered with a wheelbarrow of shining silver particles. “You’d better.”
***
“Sir?” asked Manfred. “Sir? SIR?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Nothing doing. I yelled right in his ear and you know he flips his lid if he so much as hears me whisper in the room next door. ‘Wasting time with feminine gossip.’”
“Fuck. Do you think he’s actually gone?”
“He’s a seven-ton mass of salt crystals and cannibalized fragments of calcium that wasn’t very sane to begin with.”
“Well,” said Manfred, and the rest of that thought was cut off by the explosion of Richard down the center, sending a hail of brittle fragments pelting against the both of them and raising bruises even through HAZMAT. Through the dusty haze a pair of wings stretched; lacy and webbed, like a dragonfly that had fucked a pterosaur three generations back. A head raised, skeletal and elegant, and song flowered that came from vibration of a dozen legs against each other, piercing and harsh and high.
Then it tensed and leapt, and in a blur it was off and through the window in a second shower of much sharper shards.
“There’s one real shock from all this,” said Manfred.
“Oh?” said Sylvia, who was quietly staring down the barrel of her first half-shift in three years.
“Richard actually created something of value.”
Sylvia looked at the distant shining speck on the horizon, then back to her phone. She brought up the weather forecast: afternoon showers followed by heavy rain.
“Well… I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”