The Archfornicator of Canterbury

11 Royal Secret Police Headquarters

The Royal Secret Police of Bulimia, or KSPB as the acronym went in Bulimian, occupied the first floor of the Ministry of Porn and Propaganda building. The penchant their officers had for shiny boots and long overcoats was often ridiculed, though never to their face. KSPB also occupied most of the building's basement. The official story was that the basement was used for storage, although the cries and wails that often emanated from below the building were suspiciously loud to be coming from file cabinets and obsolete office equipment.

KSPB enjoyed a great degree of autonomy and in theory answered only to the King. The King, however, had a long time ago delegated this power to the Minister of Porn and Propaganda. This made the Minister feared and respected all over Bulimia. The agency itself was led by Horst Hurenschwanz, a distinctly Aryan-looking tall blonde man in his forties, whose father Manfred had come to Bulimia to make his fortune selling marital aids and lewd postcards. Manfred's business flourished for a while, but his empire came crashing down when Osvald II, the current King's father, discovered religion and outlawed pornography including but not limited to pictures of scantily clad women frolicking with German Shepherds. A broken man, Manfred took his own life by smearing whipped cream all over his naked body and breaking into the Royal Yak Stud. His body was found in the morning, mutilated beyond all recognition.

Horst was six years old at the time of his father's death and did not speak for two whole years after the incident. His mother, Hilda, was heartbroken, went insane and had to be committed to an asylum. Horst was brought up in the Orphanage, joined the Royal Marines on the day he turned seventeen and would probably have become an officer, had he not been discharged because he beat another Marine up so badly that the poor fellow would spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic who could only eat through a straw. In the hearing, it was revealed that the other Marine had made an inappropriate remark about the recent performance of the Nuevo Saunabad Squonks, Horst's favourite yak polo team.

When his career in the Marine Corps came to an abrupt end, Horst had no backup plans for the future. By chance he happened to meet an old friend from the Orphanage, Luigi Scoreggia, who had recently joined the KSPB. Luigi arranged an interview for Horst with his superiors, and soon Horst found himself once again wearing a uniform, this time a black one.

Horst's rise through the ranks was lightning fast. He seemed to have a natural penchant for intimidation and torture, to the extent that he was soon handed all the cases that other KSPB officers deemed too difficult to handle. His nickname "The Butcher of King Square" was appropriate, and frankly the only viable choice among all the suggestions that the PR section of the Ministry of Porn and Propaganda came up with, the others being " The Fishmonger of Nuevo Saunabad" and "The Chip Shop Guy of Upper Bulimia".

Captain Horst Hurenschwanz of the KSPB was sitting at his desk when someone knocked on the door.

"Enter."

The door opened and a young man, clad in the pitch-black uniform of the KSPB, entered the room. The young man was junior agent Marcello Finocchio. His crew cut was held erect by a liberal amount of hair cream, and his acne-scarred face was reminiscent of a cross between a rat and a giraffe.

"Finocchio. Come on in. Have a seat."

"Thank you Sir."

"Any news of the CIA agent."

"He was seen yesterday in central Bulimia in an inn called the Spanner and the Cockroach. We suspect he is on his way to the US Embassy here in Nuevo Saunabad."

"Send a unit to watch the Embassy and give them orders to arrest the agent immediately if he shows up. We cannot let him get away this time."

"Yes Sir. There is also another matter. Our phone surveillance unit picked up a bomb threat delivered to the newspaper. According to the caller the bomb is placed at the Cathedral and is going to go off in roughly one minute."

"Did you trace the caller."

"The call was too short. We only know it was a pay phone somewhere downtown."

"Thank you Finocchio. Anything else."

"No Sir."

"We'd better get out of the room. The windows might get blown in even if they are supposed to be bulletproof."

"Indeed Sir."

Horst Hurenschwanz rose, picked up his gloves and followed Finocchio through the doorway. Just as he closed the door behind him, there was a loud explosion on the other side of the square.

The Archfornicator of Canterbury by Olli-Pekka Rinta-Koski
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.