Saturday 14 March 2015

Sneaky Peaks...

Who would like a little sneaky peak from Veto Volume 2?

Anyone?

Well, be like that then! I'm going to post one anyway!

So there!


(This may or may not change dramatically from the final version depending on how lazy my rewriting will be...)


Ember sat in a luxurious chair in front of an enormous and even more luxurious carved wooden desk. Dwarfed behind the mammoth piece of highly polished furniture was a man of quite diminutive proportions.
Completely bald, apart from a startling ‘horn’ of hair sticking dramatically upward from the centre of his head, Dr. Hickory Emmental regarded Ember in silence. The unmoving, penetrating stare emanating from his glowing red eyes was rather disconcerting.
Ember smiled and did her best to appear relaxed under his intense scrutinising gaze but before long she found herself fidgeting, wishing he would say or do something.
“Is he all right?” Veto whispered loudly, beginning to feel a tad concerned and worrying that he may be accused of inadvertently being in the same room as an undiscovered dead body again.
“I’m perfectly well, thank you, Lark.” The man’s gravelly voice wheezed.
“Splendid! Rather relieved to hear that,” Veto said honestly.
Again there followed a cold, empty silence.
Emmental threw his three and a quarter foot tall body out of his chair and walked slowly around Ember.
“Hmmmmm…”
“Hmmmmm?” Ember hmmmed.
“Hmmmmmmm.” Emmental stopped in front of her. “Show me what you have chosen.” He demanded brusquely.
“I thought this one was quite nice…” she began, holding out the catalogue.
“They are ALL nice!” Emmental shouted.
“Of course they are all nice!” Ember hurriedly agreed. “I meant I thought this one would be nice for me.”
“In fact NONE of them are nice! Each one is far, far beyond ‘nice’! Every single item is a perfectly unique work of art! The word ‘nice’ insults me! The words 'quite nice' insults me doubly so, sir!”
“I didn’t mean to offend!” Ember said hurriedly, quaking a little at the man’s rage. “May I point out that I’m not actually a ‘sir’?”
“No you may not, sir!” He had clambered onto his desk and was pacing upon it in quivering fury. “The Civilised Galaxy’s elite do not come to me for ‘NICE!”
“Well no, of course not…” 
“They come to me for perfection! And perfection is what they get when they pay for Doctor Hickory Emmental’s unrivalled expertise!”
He leapt from the desk towards a sculpture and waved his hands at it.
“This is a Vertigo Von Grout original piece! It is one of the most highly respected works of the last three centuries. Made from the last of the finest Serendipity Marble known to exist, it is considered to be one of the most exquisite forms of art ever to have been worked, yet it pales in comparison to my surgical creations which are on a parallel with the Divine Itself!”
Ember considered the sculpture with its fine gentle curves and remarkable yet slightly unnerving resemblance to a rather personal part of the Human female anatomy.
“Yes… It is rather… Nice.”
In a fit of self-preservation, Veto backed quickly out of the room.
Emmental shuddered but kept himself under control as he studied Ember’s choice.
“No no no no no no NO!” He grabbed the catalogue, clucked and strutted around the room. “This is not right for you at all! Not in the slightest! Are you so deranged to think this would suit you?!”
“I rather liked it,” Ember said.
The doctor fixed her with a piercing flame red eye and stood stock still for several moments until Ember began to feel rather uncomfortable.
“I am going to ask you to do something that is most likely not in your nature to do…” He whispered.
“Are you?” Ember felt decidedly uneasy. Looking around for Veto she noticed him badly concealed in the waiting room beyond.
“Yes. I am.” Emmental declared. He attempted to melodramatically tear the catalogue into little pieces with despise, however it defiantly thwarted his best efforts. After a few seconds of struggle he instead threw it to the floor in a huff of contempt. “Nothing in here will be good enough for you! NOTHING!”
“Oh… It won’t?” Ember said rather disappointedly.
“No!” Emmental continued his pacing of the room. Using his chair as a step, he pounced back onto his desk.
 “Instead, I shall create something just for you! There will be nothing like it in existence and it shall be one of my finest creations! Nay! My FINEST creation!” He struck a noble pose, holding an arm as high as he could into the air, his index finger pointing upwards to the heavens above.

Watching from the comparative safety of the waiting room behind a plinth on which a large aspidistra flailed around trying unsuccessfully to swat him, Veto felt the doctor’s speech should really have climaxed with a fanfare and perhaps an indoor firework or two.