23rd July – Pretty girl, beware of his heart of gold. This heart is cold.

The Golden Fleecer

a reworking of Ovid’s Golden Touch, by guest columnist, Hans Loë.

The Stray

It had been but a month since King Donald had declared himself Formidable King Donald by Executive Order. But it had done nothing to lift him from his malaise. His subjects on pain of being sent to the Ice Tower somewhere in Greenland, Scandinavia, well close to the North Pole —whatever, had adopted his royal decree with alacrity, and soon, there was hardly a person in the land who hadn’t adopted the popular abbreviated form of his new title to refer to him as F-King Donald.

“If only I could make my subjects see how I’m so good at everything I turn my hand to, especially business, they’d respect me, and they’d realise how lucky they were to live under the rule of someone so gifted.”

He thought about hospitals for a moment, then dogs, of which he was scared, and that time he didn’t get a hole-in-one but everyone said that in a way he did, because it would have gone in had it not been so windy, so it counted anyway. Then he thought about giving himself a new plaque to commemorate the first hole-in-one on that course (by a senior board member). Then he thought about being F-king Donald again, and how some people didn’t understand that F was a curse word, and thought that it stood for fat. He wanted the newspapers under his command to run an editorial telling everyone that F did not mean fat, but that would have meant that the whole F-king thing started over again.

“Perhaps I’m not rich enough,” he thought. “If I were really rich, and had proper creases in my trousers and all that, they’d realise how great I was.”

How long had they been mining for stable coins now? And how many had they found? God, they must be like finding diamonds in a desert, or your golf ball when it goes in that long grass in the graveyard section. And there was his own, personal gold mining project, and those nuggets he’d inherited that still hadn’t turned up.

“Who could love a poor king?” he said to his reflection. It stared back at him, without an answer, pale yet tanned; flabby yet thinning. And those trousers! One minute flapping about like Charleston Bags, the next bulging like bean bags, unable to contain the light industrial waste that sloshed around his system.

What was that thing his doctor had said? It was something about a stable, or stabilisers. Was it? Yes, that was it, that he’d become more stable. Stabler. A stable king. They’d like that. A stable coin could have a picture of his head on them. That would work. Were they stable coins? What coins weren’t stable coins?

“I have been mining little bitty stable coins,” he said, rehearsing himself for his weekly radio address, to see how it sounded. He’d save it up and ask Natalie. Ask her if it sounded like he was doing it for the good of everyone. Then he said, “There is no coin more stable than me in the whole Treasury,” just in case he needed to reinforce the point, should they make him use one of those broken teleprompters, and he lost his thread.

It sounded good. An authoritative statement of fact. Grounded, strong and truthful. I am stable. A stable ruler is a source of comfort to his people.

He circled his bedroom again, switching off some of the televisions as he did. He had barely convinced himself, though that was difficult, because he was one of the smartest people he knew. He exhaled a long sigh and went back to the window.

“Stable? I like it, but it’s not the same as saying, He is rich. Nor does it prove, which was actually the case, that he was God’s anointed ruler.”

In fact, he was closer to God than that. Related, some say. His father did. He often heard him shouting at his mother when he went in to kiss her goodnight, “Who exactly is he? Jesus fucking Christ?”

Why couldn’t his subjects see that too? If only he could find the gold. The gold that was given to him at his baby shower. That would prove it all. And then, all that stable stuff, the stable coins, what the doctor had said —it would all kick in. Once the nugget was found, they’d all start to interpret his words differently. 4-D chess they’d say, and they’d have to get that fucking nut job in, who zoned out into that Hillbilly Swahili schtick she did when she was preaching, to translate his words for the masses.

No wonder he was so fixated on stables, they’d say. He’s been fucking with us all along. Trying to tell us who he really was. Opening up his church, and his heart, and his ministries, to anyone who’d listen. And now, see, he’s so rich. It’s all proved beyond doubt. Who could gainsay that?

“If I could just see them, I am sure I’d have golden bollocks,” he said to himself.

The thinking wearied him. He sat alone high in his tower of white stone, peering out over the lawns where golf chariots rolled. Then suddenly, through the fence just behind the green on the sixth hole, where he had hidden himself away for twelve hours, emerged a strange creature. It had the air of an athlete like him, but not as good. He didn’t know him yet, but it would be Tater, the Satyr: a scary, hairless creature who had fallen from a helicopter and swum to safety, washing up on the shores of F-King Donald’s summer retreat.

Donald called for the strange creature to be captured, and sent to him. And soon, Tater was brought before him, not to his bedroom, where he’d first spotted him from the window, no one was allowed in there, but from an ante room, which served as a sort of wash-down unit where Donald spent much of his downtime. When that other oily creature, who now works in Homeland Security first came into Donald’s service, he worked the stink room with him, as it was called back then, as Donald’s personal assistant. But since moving him on, this new clerk embraced the job in a way that pleased Donald very much. For one, he brought with him his own clack-stick, unbidden. And unlike the previous incumbent, he had never once required Donald to look at his own discharge, whatever the season. He put it to one side, then did his research on it later, when Donald had vacated the place.

“This thing’s nowhere near as ugly as he looks,” thought Donald as he crouched to allow his man servant access to the inner ledges and caves of what, in the few times they’d exchanged words, they most often referred to as the chute.

He invited Tater to tell his story, which he did, lisping even better than that weirdo in Homeland Security, and so he told Donald of a faraway domain, surrounded by seas, where his master, a god he said, allowed him to do as he pleased, provided that he first served his master’s needs. This delighted Donald, especially when he told him about the cells, and cellars, and dungeons, where every good person he found was kept until they came to learn how kind he was. “He’s just like me,” thought Donald, but he wasn’t sure whether he was thinking about Tater, or Tater’s master.

“Does he know actual God?” asked Donald, “because He and I are pretty close, and actually…”
“He knows all the gods. They sometimes meet on our mountain paradise,” said Tater, preventing Donald from completing his sentence.
“I love the way you speak,” said Donald, trying to make it sound like he was still in charge of the conversation. “That sort of sideways lisp thing. Are you a cigar smoker by any chance? Or have you had a stroke. My doctor has been telling me about strokes. Says I’m very stable. The most stable monarch he’s ever treated. And I don’t need any treatment because of it.”
“No,” said Tater. “That’s where my cellmate used to shove his cock.”
“And what of your name?” asked Donald. “Tater? That’s pretty strange for a satyr. Most satyrs I’ve met have got a ‘the’ in the middle. I used to have a “the” but I changed it to Fabulous instead.”
Tater flashed a pimply grin. “Alas, my name is another legacy of my confinement. The others used to take it in turns to kick me in the bollocks as hard as they could.”
“Ooh, nasty,” said Donald. “That only happened to me once, when I was at military academy, but mine are still up there.”
“Mine have been the making of me,” said Tater. “Great big swollen tatties, I’ve got. Women love them. Especially when they’re all smooth and bald, which mine are, obviously. And moisturized,” he added.
“Evidentially,” said Donald. “Those parts always work better if they’ve got a bit of give in them.”

A moment passed. Donald was dried off by his waterman, then bound up and swaddled in luxurious soft towels. Then Natalie arrived to apply the ointment. When she’d left, Donald looked at Tater again, and said, “Women love them?”

“They do,” said Tater. “And once they knew of my power over women, I gained a great reputation amongst the good men of the earth —it turns out there are about two dozen or so of them —my master’s written them all down in a book, you know, those diaries that you get from stationers, and TK Maxx with a plastic padlock? And that explains how I was taken in by my god, who has a special interest in those sorts of things. I’d kind of like to get back there if you were up for helping. I’m sure my master would reward you for your efforts.”
“Is that right?” said Donald, “I could do with him putting a call in for me, actually. But tell us more about the trade first. I love women, me. Do you want a Diet Coke by the way?”

Tater shook his head like he was some sort of shaman monk preparing for an enormous undertaking with a period of asceticism, though he really did it because it made him look tough, and Donald had already homed in on his weak spot —the slack gob, with its speech impediment and surfeit of saliva.

“Where I come from —the land surrounded by seas.” He only half-hissed now, because the sales pitch part of the session was almost over, and Donald was locked in already. “We lock up the women and trade them for gold.”

He noticed Donald’s expression, then added, “I could see, when your guards brought me up here, that you like a bit of bling yourself. And the old tomfoolery,” he added. Then just as Donald’s cogs ground into action, and a sort of rusty stain akin to industrial waste began to leak from him into the fresh towels, Tater added, “This Mar-a-Lago is some gaff for a harem,” he said. “You could keep them warm, and sell them from here. Me and our kid could do it for you, we’ve got an app.”

Donald listened intently, nodding his heavy head thick with the hair of someone else’s favourite horse. He loved every word the satyr said.
“I get gold for letting rooms to hoes, which are empty bar Mother’s Day weekend, and August? That’s what they used to call a no-brainer when I was a Prince living in Queens —this mug’s giving it to me on a plate,” he thought.
“Control them!” he cried. “That’s a wonderful trick! Teach me your ways and we’ll make it stick!” trying his best to sound like he was in a fairytale, because Tater looked like he’d respond positively to that sort of thing.

When Tater didn’t reply, he pointed at him with his least worst hand, and said, “You are not a loser, like me.” Then he realised that he should have used a verbal exclamation mark —at least a full stop; the sentence had come out different to the way he meant to say it, so he added, “Obviously I meant what I said, because words just come out of me, whether I’ve thought of them or not. God puts them on my tongue because I’m a bit like him, and he likes me. Likes me a lot actually. Yeah, I’m not a loser type of person and you’re just the same, but not exactly the same, because there’s no one else like me. There’s no one who knows more about being no one else, than me.”

Tater smiled a sly smile —the type that Donald had been trying to master as it goes, and when Natalie printed out a message and gave it to Donald to congratulate him on finding a new good friend in the palace grounds, Tater suddenly became sure that Donald would keep him safe until he could find his way back to the land surrounded by seas. And while they waited for that day to arrive, he told him, he’d work with Donald to assist him in acquiring the quantities of gold that he coveted.

But satyrs always did that. They knew the true depth of their muse’s hunger; and Donald, he wasn’t insatiable, like many others Tater had met. He was different. Donald was a black hole of want that could never be filled.

Donald formally welcomed Tater to stay —at friends and family rates too! To be invoiced once Tater had started making money again, or if he were to be returned home, from where he could send some gold bars back by helicopter.

“I thank you for your great kindness,” said Tater, “but I think you should come with me, and help yourself to the best of what we’ve got. My master would like it that way.”
“Has your country got any important mineral deposits, or anything?” asked Donald. “We’re good at mining, we could maybe help you get them out and share them, or go mining on computers —we do that too, and with sticks of course, if they’re stuck.”
“My master is a man of great riches, and can provide all earthly delights,” was all that Tater would say.

He intrigued Donald, not least because he reminded him of that odd thing in Homeland Security, or was it the FBI? With Tater there were the testicles, obviously —they really were a pair of beauties when you came to have a proper look at them. Those aside, though he bore so many similarities to the man whose name he couldn’t recall, of the two of them, Tater seemed far less likely to morph into a dangerous animal and suck your eyes out. Even though he actually was one.

There was something a bit oily about them both, and though they deployed their attributes to different ends, it was perhaps that both of them in their different ways seemed to leave their true agendas unrevealed.

When Natalie arrived with the Diet Coke and biscuits, at the end of the afternoon, Donald asked her to make up the room next door to his, for Tater for the rest of his stay.

“Hey Nat, you know that really creepy nasty guy in security?” he asked her, as she was leaving.
“Which one?” she replied.
“You know that greasy bald one,” he said.
“The one whose eyes are always swiveling about as if he’s a Bot and his eyes are view-holes for his remote user?”
“No,” said Donald, “The no-hair thing who got a computer program to draw him a wig that time. He’s got a sort of head that looks like it’s made out of a box…”

Natalie shook her head.

“He’s either about to flip out and murder someone, or he shits his pants if you ask him what time it is.”
“I’ve got it narrowed down to about six,” said Natalie, “South African?”
“Six’ll do,” said Donald, “Do any of them remind you of Tater?”
“Oh! The one who sacked all the environment inspectors? Yeah, a bit.”
“Do you trust Tater?” asked Donald.
“Compared with K-hole Bokx, too right. He only wants to go home, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, he does,” said Donald, and we’ll get to know him a bit better over the next few days, I suppose.”

While they waited for the transport to be arranged back to his home which was surrounded by the sea, the two new friends played happily together. They spent ten whole days gossiping and sharing secrets. Some days Tater took Donald to the gym, but as much as he wanted to expose him to manospheric delights, it never really got beyond eating their breakfast in a jacuzzi; on another day, Donald returned the compliment, and took Tater for a day out at his golf course. Well, the patrons-only picnic area of the course, where they were brought enormous cheeseburgers like you see in the movies, on big paper plates.

“I eat this with righteous indignation,” said Tater before tucking into the big juicy burger, careful to shove it into the side of his mouth with the large slack opening.

“I know my bible, and that’s not Tarantino,” thought Donald, but just in case the conversation developed into what Tater should have said, Donald said, “I eat mine with ketchup, but I do sometimes get indigestion, especially if I don’t take enough Diet Coke with it.”
“You gotta be careful, bro,” said Tater, “too much of that Diet Coke, and you might disappear. It does what it says on the tin, you know.”
“I know,” said Donald. “I’m getting thinner on the inside with that, and the clack-valve operator,” which was his official title, “but it’s all moving to the outside, instead of getting flushed out into the sewers. There’s no fairity in it, is there?”

 Tater agreed that there definitely wasn’t any sort of fairity in that, at all. “Is it worth putting yourself through it all?” he asked, “I mean, a minion down there, doing intimate work like that every day?”

“That’s the point,” said Donald, laughing, he was a crazy kid this new friend, “I’m not going to deal with it, am I? It’s disgusting all that stuff.”
“If that’s the case,” said Tater, “why don’t you try letting a woman do it, instead. It’s more their thing, and you know, you could make a fun game out of it.”

Donald shook his head. “I like your angle kid, but we’ve got a project on, and he’s the man for it. He comes from nuclear, he’s the guy who used to drill the clinker out of missile tubes.”
“A project?” Tater looked puzzled, so Donald told him about the gold nugget he’d swallowed as a baby, and how they’d been stable coin mining, and how he was going to lay a golden egg.

“You should have said, man,” said Tater.
“Why?” asked Donald?
“You see these plates,” said Tater, picking one up and throwing it like a frisby straight into the bin by the 18^th green —the one where Donald usually dropped all the spare balls he carried when he was playing. “If we were having this meal where I live, beautiful women would deliver these burgers to us on golden plates.”
Donald’s jaw dropped. “You got that much gold?”
“And then,” said Tater, “the most beautiful of them would be selected, to take you back to your stink room to extract the golden egg with her fine and delicate fingers.”
“I like it, and I want to talk more about this, but my man’s got a stick, with a light on the end,” he said. “And it’s got a switch.”

The Island of Secrets

On the eleventh day, Donald flew Tater back to his master on the plane that the United Federal Commonwealth of North Korea had given him as a special present for all his war solving. His staff had at first admired the ingenuity with which his benefactors had replicated Donald’s own personal aroma inside the main cabin, but after a while, the top notes of rancid offal, overpowered the beefy base notes that had so drawn them to the gift, and soon it became his second-best plane, to be used for guests only. Donald followed on the good plane.

They arrived at an island, which was indeed surrounded by sea, as Donald observed on landing. It meant that Tater had been telling the truth. This really must be the special kingdom which he had talked about —the home of the ancient deity Epsteinious.

“I was right to have trusted him,” said Donald to himself.

Tater led King Donald to the private cabins of his master, and keeper. “They look more like those caravans that nobody calls caravans just because they’ve got a wooden balcony on the front, like you get at Eurocamp sites in the South of France,” thought Donald, even though he’d never been. “And not unlike my executive 7-star retreats at Mar-a-Lago, I suppose.”

Epsteinious sat in one of those wicker chairs hanging down from the ceiling that you can only get from charity shops, and props departments. As usual, he wore a silk dressing gown, reminding Donald of his old pal Hugh Hefner, and as he approached closer, he noticed that Epsteinious allowed his withered pecker to hang loose through the gap, just the way Hugh used to. But whereas Hugh’s resembled a small pencil with a disproportionately long, but chafed, rubber on the end, Epsteinious’s looked more like one of those toys that are given to children when they are teething.

“You too?” asked Epsteinious.
“A thought conversation?” thought Donald, “Just like the hanging chair —another one of those tropes that you only saw in 1960s movies. This god-guy’s a bit special,” he thought. “I like the way he can set the mood. I want someone to do that to my people.”
“Yes,” said Donald, he was going to add, “Far out,” but thought better of it, in case it looked too much like sycophancy. But he did want to acknowledge that they were in a thought conversation with each other, so he said, “I guess you’ve done a lot of great work with close ups of vaginas and all that, whilst also advancing the cause of feminism?”

Epsteinious swallowed a laugh, and subvocalised, “Too right, pal.” Then he said, “You brought back my satyr! For this, I shall grant you your ultimate wish. You are a good and noble king; I can see that.” Though when he said it, it sounded more like nobbily, than noble. “What would you have me give you? What would your subjects want most? I can offer you a house made of white for you to remodel exactly as you like. Perhaps you’d like that? It can stand as a monument to your grace and innocence and it’d go quite well with all that civic bling you’ve got going on in your capital too. Tone it down a bit maybe.”

But Donald had a different desire. “My people need to see a successful king and leader. They feel safe in my success.”
“How would that work?” asked Epsteinious.

Donald began to tell the story of his birth, how it had been in a stable, and that kings from faraway had arrived a bit too late, and shouldn’t really appear on Christmas cards, but they’d brought gifts with them, that had been put in his cradle. “The thing is,” said Donald, “one of the gifts was a gold nugget. I can’t find it anywhere, and figure I must have swallowed it. I’ve had a clack man in for years, but we haven’t found it yet. My public would love me if I could lay a golden egg, could we work on that, maybe?”

“Is that all?” asked Epsteinious.
“Well,” said Donald, “it would be even better if you could make everything I touch turn into pure gold!”
Epsteinious smirked. “If that’s all you want,” he said, “it’s already done.”
“But you haven’t done anything, or banged that gong or nothing,” said Donald.
“Chill,” said Epsteinious, “Me people have done it for me. Would you like a confirming email?”

Within moments, Natalie sent a WhatsApp to Donald, to confirm that a badly spelled email had just arrived.

Suddenly Donald wondered whether he should trust this god. A god who can’t spell? What would be next? Monarchs that couldn’t read and write? No, Epsteinious was behaving more like a creep than a god to tell himself the truth, which he did. Perhaps he’d be better off if he ended their relationship now while it was at its peak, so that it was on the record, in case anything else went wrong in the future? Then perhaps just see him now and again, say like when it was half-day closing at Mar-a-Lago, and no one was about. That sort of thing? He held up his phone, and said, “What’s this?”

Epsteinious shrugged, “It’s me signature style so that my great rival gods’ AI-Bot warriors can’t understand a fucking word I’m saying,” he said.
“No not that. My phone. It’s not turned to gold. Your deal is bullshit. I’ve been stiffed before it’s started. That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to default once I’ve gone back home and can’t do anything about it.”
“I told you to chill,” said Epsteinious. “The golden spell won’t work until you’ve left my kingdom.”
“OK, that’s all right, then” said Donald, “I thought you were going to shaft me there for a minute.”
“No, but it puts me in the mood for shafting, now that you’ve put that thought in my head,” said Epsteinious.

“Man, he’s good,” thought Donald. “The chicks he must pull talking in that slinky Jason King, I know the future cos I’ve been there, style,” thought Donald. “I can’t decide whether to be jealous of him, or admire him.”

 Epsteinious clicked his fingers for Tater to come and take down his order for afternoon-T.

Donald couldn’t decide whether he just got fried in the 60s and was stuck there, or whether he was the greatest fanny magnet he’d ever met. He watched it all, in awestruck admiration.

Then, as soon as Tater approached, another message pinged on Donald’s phone and snapped him out of the trance. It was an ungrammatical text on Signal —and it wasn’t from Hegseth!  Epsteinious winked at him. The cosmic deal was struck.

The Fallen Arches

King Donald flew home in triumph. And as soon as he landed, he tried a little experiment, and sure enough, he turned the object to gold. He went straight to his Mar-a-Lago golf course where he would have a relaxing round of golf alone, so that he could plan how he was going to put his new powers into action. For years, he had boasted of his golden touch on the greens —he could sink putts faster than young Pete could sink bottles of liquor, especially when no one was looking! He took out his favorite putter, but the moment his fingers brushed the grip it transformed into solid gold, turning so heavy it nearly broke his wrist, and left him with difficult to explain bruising on his tiny hands.

Worse was to come. Starving from his journey, he called for his favorite feast. The moment he touched the burger, it hardened into a heavy bar, the fries stiff needles of iron pyrites; his Diet Coke, molten liquid gold that he dare not touch. He was surrounded by wealth, yet starving in a kingdom of useless metal. He sat at the edge of the putting green, alone in his cold golden cage.

Minutes passed. Was that a golden tear that lay on the apron to the putting green between his massive legs that looked even more like balloons in jogging pants from this angle. He took off his golden golf shoes to rub his aching feet, and immediately felt the weight of his arches as they fell. Now he would have to swing his legs in wide circles just to be able to walk, like those gimpy dropouts on fentanyl you saw under the bridges in Washington, and the guys in his regular fourball at the Fabulous Donald National Golf Club, Bedminster. His gilded bone spurs, no longer the emblem of a knight errant, returned from adventures overseas, as he’d imagined them when he first tried out his new powers, were now nothing more than odd-looking callouses that blended into the flat heavy feet of a golden Ozymandias. In fact, they blended so well into this new body, you’d hardly know he had them. This body, now a horrible heavy orange and white temple to avarice. A body that no man would wish for.

The Gilded Companion

It was then that Natalie came out to meet him. She was holding a fresh stack of printed tweets on a tray. His old favourites. She began to read them to him, but not in the way she used to, the way he liked, like that girl out of the Little House on the Prairie, all nervous, but hopeful and innocent. Or was that The Waltons? No, the dark shadow of Tater tainted her. He had run his conversion programme on her. “All good pimps make their clients fall in love with them first,” he’d told Donald, and now those words echoed back at him, and for the first time he heard the lisping malevolence in them. Tater had her under his spell. If Donald didn’t act, Natalie would be taken from him and put into slavery on Epsteinious’s Island and forced to serve lardy entitled fascists with ugly faces, and smelly neglected peckers. Men who’d never had their clack valves power-washed!

“I’ll save you from that satyr!” he cried. But the moment his hand touched her shoulder, she froze. A stiff, metallic statue stood before him. He’d seen stiffs before —a few stiffies too, but this? Five and a half feet of pure gold! He felt an erection rising. “Entirely unmedicated!” he shouted. “It’s mine. I did it. I got my pecker working again, just like Hugh’s!” In his joy, dementia, and general lack of intellectual ability, particularly that of holding a thought in your mind whilst processing, albeit unchallenging, another, he entirely forgot for an instant about his golden touch. He was about to drop his pants, and if Natalie wasn’t up for it, if she could only hold that pose for a moment, he could take care of business himself. Then a thought struck him. As his erection reached its peak, he thought of Vladimir, and from there, golden showers, and at the last minute, stopped himself from turning his favourite asset into a Golden Cock. “One of us is enough,” he cried, abandoning Natalie where she stood, to run off terrified into the wild lands beyond Mar-a-Lago to find a cure.  

The Call to Epsteinious

Donald texted the island, careful to use the stink room probe to dial the numbers. “Epsteinious, help me!” it said. “My feet are like lead, my burgers are dead, and I am starving!”

From his dark cave, Epsteinious laughed. He messaged back. “Their is only won kwewer. U must go to the capitol n plunje your handz into the Washingdon Reflexion Pool. It will save Ur skin, but carefull cos what U wash off will leave ongoing forever enviro-mental disaster.”

Donald didn’t care. “As long as my burgers are juicy, I don’t care if the pool turns to rotten meat!” he shouted.

The Fêted State

King Donald did that swinging walk thing at a slow amble past the Lincoln Memorial, then standing on the edge of the pool, allowed himself to topple into the water like a statue of a cancelled slave trader. The moment his mass broke the surface, so the curse broke. All that he’d touched turned back to what it once was. The heavy metal that had become his new clothes, melted away; his feet and hands returned to the useless tiny familiar objects that he was used to, flopping about at the end of his flabby limbs. He sat drying on the putrid banks of the pool, and in no time at all returned to F-King Donald, the fetid and soiled heap of flesh that he loved so much.

“It would be good,” he thought, “if I could get rid of these excrement-stained clothes, and get someone to convince my subjects that I was wearing exquisite clothes, so fine that only the stable geniuses like the people in my court could see them. That way, I could be hosed down by my waterman whenever I needed it, full colonic and all that —on Fifth Avenue if I wanted, outside Bergdorf Goodman where you can just pop in and do what you want if you need anything. Somewhere where none of my adoring followers would say a word about it. I’m definitely going to do that on my next adventure.”

The curse had left his body, but it had not disappeared. The Reflecting Pool had transformed in Donald’s effluent to a stagnant chemical sludge. A blinding toxic glare shone from what was recently water. It seemed to have already begun its new role of choking wildlife. A lasting stain upon America, it would leave a legacy that only an alchemist or a conspiracy theorist could support and pursue.

“Let it be so,” he said. “It still reflects, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t look back at the ecological ruin he had triggered, “Let it be the Confederacy’s last breath,” he said, wiping his soiled hands on the grass verge. “What do I care? They didn’t love me enough anyway.”

.He pulled out his mobile and called Natalie.
“Get me a Diet Pepsi, and a double bacon cheese XL whopper from Burger King,” he said.
His manner shocked her, “Nothing from the Golden Arches?” she asked.
“There’s going to be some changes round here, Natalie,” he said. “Gold is for losers. From now on, the only things that matter are kings. Come over here to the Reflecting Pool, I want you to take a look at my new robe.”