Flint

Oh, this was bad. Very, very bad. Boss wasn't going be happy at all.

Flint paced back and forth, casting nervous glances at his computer's screen, hoping beyond the hope the poll's results would have miraculously changed over the five seconds since he last looked at the screen.

They didn't.

"Okay," he muttered to himself, adjusting his tie nervously, somehow making him look even more dishevelled. His normally well-pressed suit had become a wrinkled mess hung over the back of his chair, his slick hair now looked more greasy than professional, his face marred with week-old stubble, and his predatory golden eyes looking more like those of a frantic prey animal. In short, it was evident to anyone who took a look at him that Flint was not having a good day.

"Okay. This will all turn out okay. We can still turn this around. We can-"

The ringing of his telephone nearly made Flint jump out of his own skin, which was about the last thing he needed today. Taking a few breaths to calm himself, he trudged over to his desk and reluctantly jabbed the speaker button.

"Yes, hello?"

The familiar voice of his secretary crackled about the room. "Mr. Graves is here to see you, sir."

"Right," said Flint, taking in a nervous breath. It was showtime. "Thank you, Carol. Send him in."

Flint barely had enough time to hang up the phone before the doors to his office's cabinet crashed open. From the impenetrable darkness within reached out a pair of long, thin hands, tipped with wicked claws the colour of polished bone. The hands reached towards the edge of the cabinet and, finding familiar grooves there, clamped down. Long, thin legs emerged from the swirling gloom of the cabinet, too long and too thin to be human, and clad in only the finest, specially tailored slacks. Glowing eyes shone in the dark for a moment before a malformed human skull pulled itself from the cloying darkness, with a tall, emancipated body following on behind. Finally through, the unearthly beast stood straight up, a towering giant of suit and bone.

Flint nervously looked up at suited titan before him with a nervous gleam in his eyes "You didn't take the door today?"

The skeletal giant glowered down at Flint, pinpricks of cold blue fire burning in its dead sockets. "Do you think you've got any grounds to be cute here, Flint?" the giant asked, its voice hollow and dead yet carrying with it the distinctive hint of a brisk New York accent.

Flint winced as if he had been struck across the face "No sir! Absolutely not!"

The giant glared at the cowering man, seemingly sizing the quavering mass up, before something more interesting caught his attention. The blue pinpricks of his eyes flared as he leaned down to face the computer's flickering screen. "Unbelievable..." he muttered.

"Yes sir."

"What is this?"

"It's, well," Flint coughed "It's difficult to explain, sir. I've tried-"

The giant proceeded to pick up the computer screen and, with a furious roar, tossed it straight at Flint. The trembling man seemed to warp and twist for a second before he just simply wasn't, sending the monitor crashing into the far wall with the sound of something very expensive breaking.

"Sir," Flint's voice sounded from behind the giant, "I know it looks bad, but-"

Whatever Flint was going to say was cut off when the Giant's hand thrust itself into the shadow of the desk, sliding into the darkness like a pool of water and seizing something within. Flint managed to get off a started yelp before he was yanked out of the relative safety of shadow and held right before the giant's inhuman face. "Those poll numbers are bullshit!" the giant made certain to emphasize the last word clearly.

"Actually, sir, the poll is completely accurate. It's the findings that are-"

The giant's eyes narrowed. "You do know you're the closest thing for me to throw here, Flint."

"I'll shut up now, sir."

"Good," the giant said as he unceremoniously dropped Flint to the ground and walked over to the large windows that overlooked the bustling streets of Washington, D.C., below.

Flint hastily picked himself back up, noticing some rich brown fur sprouting through his torn shirt. He scowled and the fur vanished. That hadn't happened in decades. This whole fiasco must be more out of him than he thought.

"You're here to give us a leg up, Flint," the giant spoke, not turning his gaze from the evening view of the American capital. "So, what can you give me that I can take back to the Parliament?"

Flint managed to catch himself before mentioning his computer screen. After all, his boss was in a bad mood, and he very much didn't want to get reassigned in a fit of rage. A senior adviser at a polling firm was a dream job: lots of connections, plenty of hand-shaking and feeling important, not a lot of actual work, and, best of all, no more kids! Of course, what else could they do with somebody with a dual degree in public policy and mathematics. The other option would to put him as a bean counter in some municipal government, and that would be less than ideal.

So, stuffing his pride as far down as it could reasonably go, Flint picked up the printed copy of the poll he had been pouring over earlier, and handed them to his boss, who took the papers in his bony hands. "So, what am I supposed to looking at, specifically."

"Well," Flint tugged at his shirt collar nervously, not noticing his hand had become a bestial claw that tore his shirt slightly. "I mean, if we want to be positive, almost all the markers that indicate general societal unease and paranoia are up. This is good for us. People are more afraid now than ever. But, well, if you take a look here at the causes," he flipped several pages over to one which had been heavily marked up with highlighters, "unfortunately, most of them are beyond our direct control. Things like terrorism, religious fundamentalism, wrath of God, the like. Also, xenophobia seems to have spiralled completely out of our control, so we probably want to get somebody on that-"

"We've had several somebodies on that for years now," the giant muttered, before tapping a specific part of the chart. "And is that what I think it is?"

"Right, that's the bad the one. That's mistrust or fear of the government."

A groan emerged from the giant as it raised one bony hand to massage its bare forehead. "Wonderful. I have a meeting with Aurora right after this."

"Hateful Sun?"

"Yes."

Flint winced "I am so very sorry sir."

The giant grunted, and turned his attention back to the papers. "So, in summation, Americans are more terrified than ever, but..."

"But their fear is completely out of the control of the Parliament, sir. I mean, it's great, our long-term plan is paying off, but what this is showing is that maybe we need to rethink our game plan so we're not like the dog who has just caught the car."

The giant rolled up the papers and slipped them into the darkness within his pocket. "I'll need to take a closer look at these later. Be ready for that call. Also, I'll be sending you a list of questions I'd like to see in your next poll here... when is that?"

"Right after the primary, so we can see what impact it has on the numbers."

The giant nodded, and headed back to the cabinet. "Send the numbers to our operatives on the teams. Let them know we're losing control out there, and that if they don't want to be facing a parliamentary committee, they'll do something about this."

Flint sunk into his chair, barely noticing has his claw tore the leather of his armrest slightly. "Yes, sir. And thank you, sir."

The giant was halfway into the cabinet when a thought struck Flint.

"Sir, if I may. We're pretty certain that he's not one of us. But could he be a rogue? A feral who's somehow... well..."

The giant sighed and looked back "Sadly, everything seems to point to him being completely human."

"But that hair!"

The giant shrugged in an almost defeated manner, and headed into the cabinet, his wicked digits remaining behind long enough to cut further furrows into the door as it closed behind him. Flint spent several minutes looking at the silent cabinet, thinking to himself, before he released a massive sigh. "By the Bogeyman, what have we created?"

Still, there was some hope for the night here. His paw reached out for the remote, and he flicked on the large, flat-screened television that dominated the far wall of his office.

"-dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing."

Flint took one long look at the television screen before getting up, walking to the door, and throwing it open. "Carol!"

"... Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing."

Flint groaned. It was going to be a long election.