Writing Sample

Stepping into Rumsford Higgins Sr.’s front office was like peering through a window into his hypothetical soul. It was a decidedly unpleasant place.
A layer of grime covered every surface so consistently and completely, that were it lemon-lime polish it would make the responsible housekeeper the talk of the town.
The corners of the room and the strips of carpet obscured by the cupboards had long since been abandoned by any semblance of humanity, and  Mother Nature had set up shop and begun the task of evolving a more meticulous species.
Amidst this dystopia of disarray there stood a desk, whose proprietor – the secretary – tried her best to stymie the onslaught of dirt. She did this between arranging calls to the good-for-nothings who had the misfortune of owing money to her employer, the celebrity agents who invited him to three different greatest-party-of-the-year’s a week, and the occasional reporter who had suffered from a lamentable attack of ethical responsibility.
She did her job admirably well, with a voice that ranged from the gracious and fawning to coldly calculated derision.
It was this end of the sonic spectrum that grated on Albert’s ears.
‘Mr. Higgins is not in.’
‘I saw him come In a moment ago!’
‘He is indisposed.’
‘He’s humming show tunes!’
‘He has no desire to see you.’
Albert was a reasonable man. He could negate falsehoods and expose deceit, but when faced with absolute truth he was quite powerless. All through this exchange his face had been cycling through several shades of virulent red. He gave up and barged through the door.
If the front office was a window into the soul of Mr. Rumsford Sr, then the inner chamber was like a seat next to it in a crowded bus. If the room had been placed in a modern art gallery to symbolize the decay of the human spirit, it would undoubtedly win the highest accolades of the critics of the art. If the man sitting in the room was included in the gallery then the artist would be lauded as the next Picasso. However, it was not, and the artist could only be regarded as the next Marquis de Sade.
Upon looking at Rumsford’s visage a sort of disgust washed over Albert in a manner that was shared by all those who had to interact with the man.
The one defining characteristic of his face was his nose, which was as swollen as a pustulent lemon, and his lips, perpetually puckered as though they’d tasted one. His hair had long since lost the war they’d waged with his forehead, with the few troops that remained valiantly, but unsuccessfully, trying to cover the battlefield.
It was clear that a similar sense of disgust washed over Rumsford as he looked at Albert. Albert’s face had always reminded him of one of those fish he had had to dissect in his School going days, sometime in the Mesozoic era in the guise of science. He had hated science almost as much as he hated fish.
Albert cleared his throat. ‘Hullo, father.’
Rumsford glared at him long enough to make him feel even more uncomfortable.
‘Hello,’ he said finally, with an air of affected civility that can only be acquired through years of hobnobbing with the socially elite and the morally bankrupt.
‘I, that is to say, we, need some, er money.’
‘Is that so?’
‘A thousand pounds should suffice.’
Rumsford cleared his desk for a few moments. ‘I suggest you take it from your made-to-order razor-blade business, which  undoubtedly is successful.’
‘Well, that was - I mean, this is a foolproof plan!’
‘Like all the other ones?’
Albert was, like a careless batsman, quite stumped.
Rumsford cleared his throat and waited for a retort. None came.
Al hung his head and left the room, slamming the door in an impotent display of emotion and straightening the picture on the wall jostled by the impact. Ignoring the cries of the secretary,he trudged down the stairs.