I've just finished reading
Hard Times as a set text on the booklist at school, and felt compelled to give the tedious, boring, predictable and incredibly annoying character Mr Bounderby the death he deserved...
And so it was that Mr Bounderby found himself bound, as the pun would have it, with a piece of rough rope, to a rather old table which he had inherited with his house (for, as he was at pains to remind all his acquaintances, he would never have been able to afford it himself, with his far from genteel upbringing).
The young gentlemen who had tied him there was unfamiliar to him, and dressed in strange clothes, almost as if he were a student from the future who was sick to fucking death of Mr Bounderby as a character in the novel Hard Times, which he had been forced to read as it was on the Year 12 list. But indeed, Bounderby would scarcely have been able to tell that, more than he could tell if the young gentlemen were a postman or, Fact forbid, a man of the circus.
“Mr Bounderby,” began the young man, after securing all the ropes tightly. “I’m afraid I have a bit of a bone to pick with you.”
“Indeed, picking bones was just one of the many ways in which I was forced to find some form of nutrition when I was a young street urchin. No venison and turtle soup off gold spoons for old Bounderby, no sir! No, my life was always-”
“Shut up. Please. Now.” The young man paused between each sentence, and his voice was quivering with anger. Bounderby, unable to quantify this peculiar change in his tone in columns or numbers (an allusion made suBtly throughout Hard Times – so suBtly that some readers just wanted to strangle Dickens each time the same message was spewed forth), continued to speak.
“...but with the Hands now, the things they would have from you! Why, just the other day it was that Blackpool. Now he was one of ‘em. He was the sort that would have himself eating venison and turtle soup with golden spoons! If ever I saw one!”
As Mr Bounderby had been gabbling away, the young man turned his back, and began to fumble with a backpack sitting on the plain boards of the living room. He turned back around, with a long, and extremely sharp, knife in his hand. And now, at last, a slight smile curved the corners of his lips.
“If you don’t shut up,” he began, stepping closer, “I will fillet you right now, from head to toe.” Bounderby paused for a moment to glance at him and the knife, before launching into another diatribe.
“Oh well, there might be some who would be offended by such a threat, but I am not one of them. I, who have no claim to high birth or status, I who worked from the age of two on the streets to escape my alcoholic grandmother, I who-AAARGH!!!” His spiel ended in an unexpected yowl as the young man brought the knife down swiftly over his right arm, lopping off his forearm at the elbow. It dropped to the floor with a thud, where it began to ooze blood over the boards. This, however, only halted Bounderby for a moment.
“Oh, there would be some who may be shocked, perhaps even insulted, to have their limbs hacked off! But not me, oh no, not me sir! I would like to say this shocks me, but the truth is that this is naught compared to the brawls and street fighting I was engaged in when I was four years old, and a menace to society. Though perhaps you had best think of Loo, who is standing in the doorway, and of much higher breeding, lest you insult her with your behaviour. No, it is not for me that I ask you stop, for this cannot offend me, who came from the gutters and ditches of the world. But it is for Louisa, who was born into the lap of luxury, that I beseech you to stay your hand.”
The young man turned to Louisa Gradgrind, who was indeed standing in the doorway.
“Do you mind?” he asked her.
“May I?” she asked shyly, reaching for the knife.
“By all means,” invited the young man graciously. But what happened next surprised even him. She strode forward, snatched up the knife, and began to stab with an intensity and energy that was truly impressive.
“You BASTARD!” she yelled, as she brought the knife down in his stomach, spraying her face with a mist of blood. “You fucking, stupid, idiotic, repetitive, 2D piece of shit!” she roared, punctuating each comma with another downward thrust. “Why, didn’t, you, get, the, death, you, deserved!” By now she was quite covered in blood, her face ablaze with fury, as she licked specks of blood from her mouth and turned to the young man.
“....ok....,” said the young man, glancing at Bounderby, who seemed to be thoroughly dead. But suddenly his eyes opened and he began to speak rapidly again.
“Oh this is merely a trifle when compared to the abuse my grandmother used to put me through. Some gentlemen may complain of having their internal organs mangled by a butcher knife, but not me. No, I have never claimed to be a gentlemen-”
He was interrupted as Louisa gave one final stab, and he finally fell silent.
“Thank you...” said the young man.
Above: High Acolyte Stephen Mortis finds some downtime - of course, still garbed in his Snuggie.
Above: A crowd gathers at a druid convention.
