‘I hope you enjoyed yourself,’ said Prime, standing facing the door. She turned, her floor-length goth dress skimming the polished tiles and barely covering the chunky platform boots she was wearing.
‘Ah. Darling,’ said Donnie, trying to lighten the mood.
‘Take the mask off. It looks silly,’ she added over her shoulder.
Donnie unzipped the mask and dropped it into a nearby waste bin. He spent a couple of moments rubbing the life back into his face. Slowly the smell of latex and Harold’s sweat dissipated to a point where he felt a little more like himself.
‘We have a situation,’ said Elvis, standing by a large oval table in the middle of the room. He wearing a subtle outfit of white suit and black tie; dark mirror-finish glasses were on his nose in deference to the fact that it was nearly dark in the room.
The table had a map of the world displayed on it, together with little multicoloured lights dotted around on the surface.
Places as far away as Grasse, France and Cronulla, New South Wales were flashing madly in a lovely bright yellow, while other hot-spots flashed green or pink.
In the background shadows, Donnie made out another figure. The voice was familiar.
‘Really,’ said Marcus, speaking into a telephone. ‘Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?’
‘Very festive,’ said Donnie. ‘So which one of you is the High Priest?’
‘He is of course,’ said Marcus stepping out of the shadows. He put a hand over the receiver of his mobile telephone and nodded in Elvis’s direction.
Marcus was dressed in a black pin-stripe suit, contrasting white braces over a black shirt and two-tone shoes.
Marcus removed his hand from the receiver and continued speaking to whomever was at the other end of the line, ‘Look, I don’t care if you are the Prime Minister–.’
Donnie tilted his head to Prime in query and asked for the second time that day: ‘What’s going on?’
‘Are you trying to blackmail us,’ asked Marcus huffily.
‘Tasmania,’ said Elvis in a final tone.
‘Yeah? Now you listen to me you little git,’ continued Marcus.
