The Prize

Charles Simeon was an accountant.

He liked to joke that line from that old Monty Python sketch, "I'm a certified public accountant and consequently too boring to be of interest."

Simeon worked as an accountant for Giza Investments Ltd.

Giza Investments Ltd. had for its President a mysterious man by the name of Trevor Fontaine.

Rumour had it that Mr. Fontaine was a vampire.

And that Mr. Fontaine worked for an even more mysterious major shareholder in Giza Investments- a sensuous and sensual vampiress called Isis.

Mr. Fontaine's latest project was working with another multibillionaire investor called George Soros.

The project was to create a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar.

All this talk of money was starting to make Simeon feel a little leery this Friday.

He was starting to feel sick of number crunching and his dull boring life.

He was paid a good salary sure but he wished he had enough money that he could give up his job and go live in the Bahamas and romp on the beach all day.

Simeon decided to leave work early today.

He left work right at noon and had lunch in an upscale London restaurant where he ate the baked salmon special.

Then he went for a carriage ride around the streets of London pulled by a splendid looking white mare named Norse Dawn.

He decided to spend his afternoon at the world-famous London Zoo.

There he walked by the cage of a seal named Siegfried.

He noticed Siegfried looked hungry and Simeon decided that the zookeepers were being slack and had forgotten to feed the seal.

Simeon looked around.

He happened to notice a brown paper bag that looked like a lunch bag left on one of the public benches,

He went over to the bag, opened it and noticed the bag was full of tuna fish sandwiches.

"I bet Siegfried would love these," Simeon said to himself.

He walked over to the seal's cage and threw him the tuna fish sandwiches.

Meanwhile the owner of the paper bag returned to the bench.

"I'm pretty sure I left my tuna fish sandwiches on this bench," Renfield R. Renfield remarked to Amadeus Emanon, "oh no! They're gone."

"Maybe there's a serial tuna fish sandwich thief on the loose in London," Amadeus remarked between mouthfuls of pink cotton candy.

Simeon meanwhile had left the zoo and was walking home.

He bumped into an elderly woman.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Simeon apologized.

"It's all right, dear," the old woman smiled, "I predict you'll receive wonderful news when you get home today."

She handed him a card that said Mme. Erda Fortune Teller and continued on her way.

Simeon arrived back at his apartment building and took the elevator up to his apartment.

When he entered the apartment, he noticed a fly buzzing around.

"Spring must be here," Simeon thought to himself, "the first fly I've spotted this year."

Simeon killed the fly with a copy of The Times of London.

The fly's blood was nicely smeared over a photo of Libyan leader Col. Gaddafi.

He threw the paper on his chair and was about to sit down when he heard a knock at the door.

Must be one of the neighbours he thought since he didn't get a buzz on the intercom from a visitor downstairs.

He opened the door and standing there was Rowan Atkinson.

"Mr. Bean," Simeon grinned.

"You can call me that, I suppose," Atkinson smiled, "I'm here representing Abbey Lane Publishers Clearance House to inform you that you've won 2 million pounds in our draw today."

"Oh my gosh," Simeon almost fainted.

"Now if you'd like to come down with me to the Publishers Clearance House office, there's a party and dancing girls and a cake and a big cheque waiting for you," Atkinson brought out his teddy bear from underneath his jacket and waved excitedly at Charles Simeon.

"I'll be right there," Simeon ran to get his jacket.

He followed Rowan Atkinson down to the waiting limousine.

The limousine drove Atkinson and Simeon to what appeared to be an old warehouse.

"In there," Atkinson pointed to the door.

Simeon excitedly ran through the door.

He looked around.

Just an empty warehouse.

"Where's the party and the dancing girls and the cake and my big cheque?" Simeon asked Atkinson.

Atkinson smiled his most Mr. Bean-like smile.

"April Fool," Atkinson laughed.

His smile then turned into the leering smile of the face of Freddy Krueger the serial killer from the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

"What the..." Simeon couldn't finish the sentence because he was slashed to death by Freddy Krueger's razor-sharp unmanicured extra long fingernails.

"The name's Loki," the Freddy Krueger apparition laughed, "you may have heard of me, Loki the Trickster god in Norse mythology. I always was a joker and a jester. Pity everyone got upset when I killed the Norse god Baldr the Beautiful. Anyhow as a trickster and joker and jester, every April Fools Day is my day to shine. I'm also a shapeshifter. Sometimes I can be a salmon, a mare, a seal, an elderly woman or even a fly. And you walked right into my trap... my Venus fly trap."

The warehouse echoed with the sounds of Loki's laughter.

And Charles Simeon number cruncher was found in numerous pieces on the warehouse floor.

And a vacancy for a certified public accountant was now available in vampire investor Trevor Fontaine's Giza Investments firm.

To be continued.