NEW FICTION

Allison had been his personal assistant for two months. As long as anyone had lasted in the position, she’d been told by one of the security men, part of a phalanx of security men. The job was wearing. Simply being in the Advisor’s presence was exhausting. The man had a draining personality– a combination of brilliance and admitted quirkiness. He was always “on.” Like an actor on stage, but the stage never left him. Which was how he’d achieved so much– owning seven highly valued companies and now Chief Advisor to the President– who he treated as one more necessary human appendage. The Advisor, via an enormous campaign contribution, had in effect bought the Office: its occupant and the political party attached to him.

“What’s next?” the Advisor asked Allison in his unusually accented voice, eyes boring in on her. Strange eyes, dilated, never resting, always focused like a high-speed camera on some object, idea, or person.

They drove along in one of his cars, she sitting to the right of him in the rear seat. “His.” He owned the automobile company, had given it its prominence. Not the truck. They never rode in the company’s highly touted truck, which resembled a spaceship and like his spaceships had been spontaneously combusting of late, like out of a Dickens novel. “The workers,” he’d told Allison privately. “They’re sabotaging me.” In his peculiar ultra-Randian philosophy, everything was the fault of “the workers.” Flipside to the opposite philosophy, which stated all achievements were due to “the workers.” 

Allison had no philosophy herself, though she found herself imbibing more and more of his. Her main concern in this tumultuous time was staying employed.

They sped along in the most advanced model of the sedan. XJVC3. Or something. Which she often confused with the legal name of his youngest son, who she, like the rest of the staff, referred to as Sparky, under the care of a variety of nurses and assistants.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!