The locals of East Hardwick made a habit of not burning a certain Catholic terrorist come the fifth of November as expected, but instead set alight whomever they disliked.
Mrs. Monks burnt a copy of her cheating husband, Charlie Lanker burnt a dummy modelled after his schoolteacher, who in turn set alight a many headed hydrae, bearing the faces of her worst students.
On this Guy Fawks night, Kevin Warick had built, a perfect likeness of the dreadful Mr. Samuel Linklater, down to that self-impressed, almost snarling smile.
To throw this doppelganger upon a burning pyre would be justice, in no small part because the real Linklater passed away in his sleep aged ninety-five. Only this dummy wasn’t stuffed with straw, it was stuffed full of Warick.
*
Strolling into the late Linklater’s company had been a childhood dream for Warick, but as he spent time inside of the business, he learnt a few disturbing details.
Linklater loved to be adored, loved speaking to college crowds or being interviewed by Rolling Stone and Playboy. Since he made so many public appearances, you began to wonder how he found the time to actually invent stuff. Then you’d hear the story of the destitute Jacob Katz who spent most of his career doing all the work.
The self-driving taxi, the automatic dental flosser, all existed thanks to a marvellous method: Mr. Linklater would poke his head around the lab’s door and say, “Hey Jake, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a car that could fly, whip it up, will ya?”
That was the extent of Mr. Linklater’s contribution to those famed inventions, but since he wrote the contracts and signed the pay cheques, he made sure he got the credit.
An offended Warick soon stormed out, taking with him a few loyal colleagues, ready to strike it big without the brutal grasp of Linklater Enterprises.
“I shall never succumb to the same sins,” he promised.
*
The smell of smoke was in the air, as the sharp whistle of rockets firing into the sky and the hiss of spinning Catherine wheels sounded around Warick as he peered out of his mask.
And he saw the men gathered around his wooden heap.
Dan, Danny, and Daniel, perhaps his greatest collaborators, working alongside him on a host of devices, along with his assistants Marty and Paul. Men who had joined him on his exodus from the gangster corporation, who were also wretched fuckers whom he had made it perfectly plain he had never wanted to see again.
“Linklater had ego” Marty explained “always talked shit about people behind their backs, acted so full of himself that his colleagues despised him. Christ, you’re more like him then you’ll ever admit! But hey, his big bad company treated us better then you ever did. At least it gave us a pension!”
And with that the fuckers set alight his pyre as they chanted “No more, no more!”
