have any idea what your stupid paragraph has done to my reputation? I asked you to EXERCISE CAUTION when writing about me, observing the proper parliamentary protocols, and you couldn’t even find it in your feeble scribbler’s fingers to take one single instruction due to the LUMP OF LINT BETWEEN YOUR EARS. Those twats at the
ScotCall Sun
are going to disassemble me tomorrow and it’s ALL OVER. You are being sued. I am going to sue you. You are being taken to the cleaners by me. I am suing you. Clear?
To: Derek Haffman
From: James L. Horton
Dear Mr. Derek Haffman MSP
I cannot even begin to apologise for the events that have occurred. When I wrote that paragraph I had no idea of the serious repercussions this would cause for your reputation. I had no idea it would fall into the hands of evildoers. I am utterly appalled. I have been close to suicide over the last few hours, turning this over and over in my head in perpetual torment. I have written this response over a hundred times trying to convey exactly the extent of the pain churning inside me, the wrenching agony I have felt knowing I have impacted you in such a devastating way and destroyed your life. I understood fully your intention to sue me, and please rest assured, you have my blessing to do so, and I will help you in any way with the procedure. I do not have many possessions, but if you would like the few trinkets I have and the clothes I am wearing, I will happily give them to you. I also suggest that I be flogged hard in public or set upon by dogs as part of the penance I will be paying you for the rest of my life. I beg you to be merciful with me, as I
never never never
intended to do you any harm when I wrote you that paragraph. I am crying all over the keyboard and my heart is split in two.
Yours miserably,
James Leonard Horton
Mhairi
2
W HEN I first met “General Manager” Marilyn Volt, I was impressed by her stamina and dedication. Two full marathons a day, muscles like tarmacadam, those tugged features. I soon twigged that she had serious mental health issues. She had convinced herself that invisible sponsors were backing her runs and that she was helping to raise funds to liberate people from the Scot-Call stranglehold or earning enough to help keep The House from falling apart. This is neither true nor amusing. The House was, when I arrived, in the process of sundering from the bottom up and atilt at a disconcerting angle. I set up a drug ring in the basement and advertised its whereabouts using my contacts. I called my dealer Mikkel in Denmark and asked him to smuggle over sacks of middling gear that I could sell at twice the price. This worked until I ran out of desperados willing to pay extra for middling. I hit upon an ingenious solution that saved The House from destruction. I paid the printers to “weave” powdered heroin into the paper of the books we printed. Whenever readers turned the pages of each book, heroin particles would waft up their noses, convincing them that each page was riveting due to the aesthetic merits of the literature at hand. I couldn’t do this with all the books—sometimes the H supplies dwindled and books went to print missing the vital ingredient—this led to disgruntled readers refusing to pay for their writers’ latest books due to a dip in their “artistry.”
Several writers (ex-smackheads) noticed and I had to deal with begging requests from those hoping to have their pages sprinkled with extra helpings of Big H—to turn them into instant bestsellers. After taking a few hundred backhanders, I decided to put a stop to this abuse of the scheme. I could only wrangle so much heroin from my Danish cartels at a time, and I had to be fair to each department. (Excessive H abuse had wiped out the experimental fiction department and precipitated their exile from the building—I didn’t have the heart to tell them this). I had saved The House from going under, taxing the writers’ profits to conduct
ScotCall Sun
are going to disassemble me tomorrow and it’s ALL OVER. You are being sued. I am going to sue you. You are being taken to the cleaners by me. I am suing you. Clear?
To: Derek Haffman
From: James L. Horton
Dear Mr. Derek Haffman MSP
I cannot even begin to apologise for the events that have occurred. When I wrote that paragraph I had no idea of the serious repercussions this would cause for your reputation. I had no idea it would fall into the hands of evildoers. I am utterly appalled. I have been close to suicide over the last few hours, turning this over and over in my head in perpetual torment. I have written this response over a hundred times trying to convey exactly the extent of the pain churning inside me, the wrenching agony I have felt knowing I have impacted you in such a devastating way and destroyed your life. I understood fully your intention to sue me, and please rest assured, you have my blessing to do so, and I will help you in any way with the procedure. I do not have many possessions, but if you would like the few trinkets I have and the clothes I am wearing, I will happily give them to you. I also suggest that I be flogged hard in public or set upon by dogs as part of the penance I will be paying you for the rest of my life. I beg you to be merciful with me, as I
never never never
intended to do you any harm when I wrote you that paragraph. I am crying all over the keyboard and my heart is split in two.
Yours miserably,
James Leonard Horton
Mhairi
2
W HEN I first met “General Manager” Marilyn Volt, I was impressed by her stamina and dedication. Two full marathons a day, muscles like tarmacadam, those tugged features. I soon twigged that she had serious mental health issues. She had convinced herself that invisible sponsors were backing her runs and that she was helping to raise funds to liberate people from the Scot-Call stranglehold or earning enough to help keep The House from falling apart. This is neither true nor amusing. The House was, when I arrived, in the process of sundering from the bottom up and atilt at a disconcerting angle. I set up a drug ring in the basement and advertised its whereabouts using my contacts. I called my dealer Mikkel in Denmark and asked him to smuggle over sacks of middling gear that I could sell at twice the price. This worked until I ran out of desperados willing to pay extra for middling. I hit upon an ingenious solution that saved The House from destruction. I paid the printers to “weave” powdered heroin into the paper of the books we printed. Whenever readers turned the pages of each book, heroin particles would waft up their noses, convincing them that each page was riveting due to the aesthetic merits of the literature at hand. I couldn’t do this with all the books—sometimes the H supplies dwindled and books went to print missing the vital ingredient—this led to disgruntled readers refusing to pay for their writers’ latest books due to a dip in their “artistry.”
Several writers (ex-smackheads) noticed and I had to deal with begging requests from those hoping to have their pages sprinkled with extra helpings of Big H—to turn them into instant bestsellers. After taking a few hundred backhanders, I decided to put a stop to this abuse of the scheme. I could only wrangle so much heroin from my Danish cartels at a time, and I had to be fair to each department. (Excessive H abuse had wiped out the experimental fiction department and precipitated their exile from the building—I didn’t have the heart to tell them this). I had saved The House from going under, taxing the writers’ profits to conduct
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