Story by Emmjay

Mr D’arcy wore the concern of a man in denial on his face like  a poodle suppressing a fart on the steps of Parliament. This was his moment.  His unlosable election strung out in front of him like a python with an impossibly large pig stuck in its gullet.  Despite his profound ignorance, his minders regularly had recourse to remind him that unless he continued to shut the fuck up, more people than they, would know the depth of his incapacity.  So D’arcy had good cause to worry, because if he actually failed to swallow the pig, there was a cadre of mining magnates who would drive one so far up him his eyes would water.

D’arcy knew he had the stuff of a lesser man and that the electorate saw him as unworthy of a position of great office; not worthy of the front bench in the Leichhardt Wanderers change room, let alone the front bench of the government.  An inquiring mind might have asked its owner why it was that such a statesman as he, was so loathed by the population that they would prefer to vote for a complete dickwad like Mr Bumble.

But it was precisely because D’arcy lacked an inquiring mind that he was oblivious to the fact that even the reddest necks in the borough were convinced that he was a not only a fraud, but undoubtedly a blue ribbon shithead.  But to be fair, his party was a legendary band of criminals, dunces and pants-wetters who believed implicitly in their divine right to rule, and D’arcy believed in his diviner right to rule them and by extension, to rule the whole borough – and nothing but the borough, so help him God.

And he was convinced that he had that special relationship with the deity that would see him triumph by sheer dint of persistence.  His was a God who took no prisoners, who brooked no backchat from soft-cock do-gooders, who set women in their place – swooning in crinolines with the kind of amnesia that women D’arcy had shagged or king hit or both (not necessarily in that order) could reasonably expect to experience.

If D’arcy had had a clue, he would have known that not a single person on his own back bench would pee on him if he caught fire – which, according to the bulletin posted in the men’s toilet and the long train of various “hear, hears”,  was quite a popular aspiration.

In truth he was massively unpopular.  But that wasn’t why he wore his worried look.  D’arcy hadn’t punched a grogan in almost three weeks.  He had forgotten the number immediately after 1.  And strain as well he might, he could not, in effect, give a shit, any more than he could articulate a policy.

The pressure was on.  He had to table a policy and liberate a brown trout (not necessarily in that order either).  He was stuck.  D’arcy decided to consult his numbers man.  “I’m having trouble getting past one, Mr Ham”, he said.

Ham, a rotund barrel of a man had given up wearing the traditional pinstripe of a true numbers man because the stripes staunchly refused to run in parallel, giving him the look of a three dimensional model of a landless planet.  He was a man well endowed in latitude, but longitude, like pinstripes, was not his strong suit.

“I’d give prune juice a run” said Mr Ham, with the knowing wink of a man rich in the experience of being up that particular creek.  D’arcy took him at his word and dispatched Miss Mirrorball to fetch for him a gallon of the finest prune juice, sparing no horse and at great haste.

Miss Mirrorball returned the very next day, breathless, with a flagon of vintage prune juice.  D’arcy, as was his usual state, was in no mood for pleasantries.  He took the vessel, thanklessly from Miss M and allowing no time for savoring the fine vintage, he downed the gallon without drawing breath.  Moments passed.

D’arcy’s colour reddened.  His front bench looked on expectantly and the Shadow Minister for death stares broke cover first.  “Anything developing, Darse ?” she inquired.

“Geeeeeezzzzzzuuuussss!” shouted D’arcy and sped off in the direction of the porcelain plateau.  A few more moments passed.

D’arcy staggered out of the disabled convenience door, looking haggard and wan.  He paused, steadying himself and adjusting his trakky dax.  “It nearly killed” me he said.  I felt this blinding pain and in a flash, there it was, staring up at me, steaming, defiant, a fully-formed policy in the shape of Mr Morrison.

Ham pushed his way into the cubicle and stared downer, he squirted some Pyne O’clean into the bowl and pressed the flush and returned to the front bench.

“Impressed, Ham ?” said D’arcy.

“No, the paperwork wasn’t right.  I had to turn that one around and send it back, D’arcy.”