Clovenhoof & the Trump of Doom

by Heide Goody

  A firm hand on his shoulder steered Clovenhoof round the building and down a side alley lined with loose and bagged garbage.

  “I’m flattered of course,” said Clovenhoof. “But I’ve got places to be, elections to stop.”

  One of the men shoved him brutally against a wall between two dumpsters. He turned Clovenhoof round, slamming him back against the wall a second time. There were three in all: one tall, one short, one fat. It was almost as if they had held auditions for the roles. The tall one held the pistol.

  “Give it to us,” said the short one.

  “In England, it’s called cottaging,” said Clovenhoof conversationally, “and traditionally it takes place in public toilets. The smell is hardly romantic, but at least it’s inside in the dry. An important consideration over there.”

  The fat one slammed a fist into Clovenhoof’s gut, doubling him over.

  “The cash, dickwad,” repeated the short one.

  Clovenhoof straightened up with difficulty. “Don’t do that again,” he said to the fat one, “or you’ll regret it.”

  There was something infuriatingly delicious about the human psyche, thought Clovenhoof. Among large swathes of society, if you told a person, “Don’t you dare do X” they would immediately do X out of spite, oblivious to the Y and Z that might follow.

  In this instance, X was a punch to Clovenhoof’s gut. The Y was Clovenhoof vomiting up fifteen hours’ worth of free casino prawns and beer all over the short, tall and fat muggers. The short one was unfortunately positioned with his mouth open. The Z was Clovenhoof running away, the short mugger screaming like he’d stuck his face in a blender, and the remaining two torn between giving chase and jiggling about in disgust at what Clovenhoof had done to their nice clean mugging clothes.

  Lake Geneva, Switzerland

  Heinz found a camp site near to Lake Geneva with pre-erected tents. The group settled in, lit the fire pits and ate some of the fragrant offerings from La Halle de Rive. Michael felt particularly pleased with the fondue he created from his gruyere: melting it on the fire pit. Todor was very happy to dunk tomatoes into the hot cheese, announcing it was delicious. Soon everyone was dipping in a selection of their own purchases, although Michael was perplexed at Ibolya’s dipping chocolate in cheese. Stefan had bundles of strong, cured sausages which provided an intriguing counterpoint to the molten gruyere. A distinct and pungent haze shimmered in the air; Michael considered it fortunate their group was alone in the campsite.

  “You guys! You should get out your instruments and do some jamming, yeah?” said Heinz, standing. “I need to pop out for a short while.”

  Heinz drove away in the coach as Stefan tuned his guitar. Ibolya sang some scales and Todor responded with snippets culled from The Aristocats’ Scales and Arpeggios, much to her annoyance.

  “You two must learn to sing together!” said Aisling. “Let’s find a duet that you both know, and you can warm up by singing it.”

  “How about A Whole New World?” suggested Todor.

  “Never heard of it,” said Ibolya scornfully. “Something like O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe from Tristan und Isolde might be more fitting, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know any of that fancy stuff. Do you know any pop duets?”

  Ibolya sighed. “Something like Dead Ringer for Love by Cher and Meatloaf perhaps?”

  “Yes!” said Todor.

  Stefan strummed some opening chords.

  “Very well,” said Ibolya, “but I want to see your heart and soul in the performance, yes?”

  “You got it, baby!”

  Michael sat back and admired his super group coming together. He was familiar with the song they were singing, but he didn’t remember so much tomato-based flirting in the video. On the whole, though, it seemed as though there was real chemistry here.

  Aisling clearly thought so too, directing the band on their imaginary stage in Heinz’s absence.

  “Stefan, I want to see much more moody pouting from you! There’s a time for looking like an eager puppy, but it’s not now. Todor! A little less twerking, perhaps. It’s a bit too 2013 don’t you think? Ibolya? I can see you like to have something to do with your hands, but we need to keep this family friendly. Maybe we’ll get you a tambourine, so.”

  “You know, this might just work,” said Michael. “Europe united by song, and Great Britain drawn back into the European family.”

  Stefan grunted in amusement. “You know, I never really imagine the United Kingdom as part of Europe.”

  “For shame,” said Ibolya. “It is a much valued and signed up member of the Union.”

  “I know that,” said the lawyer, as he gently plucked lullaby riffs on his guitar. “I mean I don’t see it as an essentially European place. It lacks a certain something … a je ne sais quoi.”

  Michael saw the twitch in Aisling’s eye. “Easy on the multilingualisms, Stefan,” he said.

  “So, what makes it un-European?” asked Ibolya.

  “Is it because it’s an island off the coast of Europe?” said Aisling.

  “Partly.”

  “But you don’t think Sardinia or Corsica are un-European?”

  “Yes, but the United Kingdom is stuck way out there: on the edge of things.”

  “And what about Ireland?” said Aisling.

  “Isn’t Ireland part of the United Kingdom?” asked Todor, innocently.

  Michael sat upright in case he needed to stop an Irish patriot attacking the Bulgarian but all Aisling did was fix him with a hard stare and say, “Men have been shot for saying less than that, Todor.”

  “But what about places like Iceland?” Ibolya asked Stefan. “Far to the north west. Is that European?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stefan. “The British. It is like they are fifty-percent American and fifty-percent I do not know.”

  “American culture permeates all countries these days,” said Ibolya. There was the sound of five people muttering in miserable agreement. “I don’t think you can say the UK is any less European than anywhere else.”

  “But I know what he means,” said Michael, “and I live there.”

  “You know,” said Todor in the dark quiet, “when I am faced with an issue like this, I always ask myself one question: what does the tomato teach us?” He held aloft one of his prized toms. “We ask, is it a fruit or is it a vegetable? It has seeds like a fruit but you would be fool to put it in a fruit salad. It is sweet to the taste but we use it for sauces with our main dish. Is it fruit, is it vegetable? We argue over words but, in the end, the tomato remains a tomato.”

  The fire pits burned low.

  Reno, Nevada

  With his fresh gaming wins, Clovenhoof took a taxi to the Reno-Sparks Convention Centre that evening. Best as he could tell, the Trump supporters of Nevada were very much like those he had met in North Carolina. A little bit less redneck, a little bit more cowboy. Red Make America Great Again baseball caps were very much part of the uniform for the die-hard Trump fan. As he mingled, Clovenhoof wondered what the correct noun was for a Trump supporter. Back home, supporters of Margaret Thatcher had been Thatcherites. Jeremy Corbyn had his Corbynistas. What was a Trump advocate? Trumpist? Trumpette? Trumpoline?

  Clovenhoof worked his way through the buzzed up Trumpettes to the front. He slipped past a man waving a Hispanics for Trump placard, and occupied a spot next to a bald guy in a thick coat.

  Clovenhoof gave the man a nod of greeting, which the man warily returned, but Clovenhoof didn’t engage him in conversation. He needed to keep a low profile until the right moment. He had to keep out of trouble until Trump took to the podium and gave Clovenhoof an opportunity to speak to him directly.

  Clovenhoof’s plans so far had failed. He couldn’t rubbish the man’s character or ruin his good name; Trump had aired all his dirty laundry in public already and the great American electorate didn’t seem to care. Clovenhoof couldn’t drive wavering voters away by revealing the extremist attitudes of the core Trumpists; the
mad, racist, sexist, xenophobia Trumpettes weren’t camera shy and the American public had seen them in all their backward-looking, blindly-simplistic glory.

  Clovenhoof’s new plan had to succeed and he had brought his two weapons with him. In one hand, he held his copy of Nostradamus’ Apocalypse Bingo with fifteen of the dire prophecies crossed out. In the other, he held the abominable bar of Toblerone that had set them on this final desperate race to save the world.

  Trump did not come on immediately. Just like any headliner, he had his warm up guys. Some be-suited local came on and, to much inexplicable cheering, wittered on about forty-six thousand something-or-others and declared “Election day is Elephant Day.” Then, not much better, a bespectacled geezer took to the stage, ranting about the FBI and how the judiciary should convict Hillary Clinton of that vague crime of hers involving e-mails (Clovenhoof wasn’t sure if the e-mails she had supposedly hidden were lesbian love notes, assassination plans or instructions to her army of Hillary doubles; it really wasn’t made clear by anyone at any point).

  But finally, to the accompaniment of an electric guitar fanfare, the Republican candidate for the White House came out of the wings and greeted the crowd.

  “We didn’t bring any so-called stars along,” he told the Nevada audience. “We didn’t need ’em. You know, the reason Hillary has to do that is nobody comes for her. She can’t fill a room. We can get stars. We don’t need ’em.”

  “That’s what I said,” said Clovenhoof to no one in particular.

  “Because we just wanna make America great again,” said Trump, “and we know what to do, eh?”

  The bald man next to Clovenhoof grumbled at that. Which was odd, because most of the audience were enraptured.

  Trump spoke and the crowd responded. “Crooked” Hillary. Rigged televised debates. The failure of Obamacare. Murderous illegal immigrants. The wilder the allegations, the louder the cheering.

  And Clovenhoof (not usually one for intellectual introspection) found himself remembering Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda. They had met once, back in the days when Clovenhoof still had the old Lord of Hell gig and went by the name of Satan. In Earth reckoning it would have been something like seventy years ago, not long after Goebbels had attempted to escape the final destruction of the Nazi dream with a cyanide capsule and a bullet. But Goebbels had only succeeded in swapping one hell for another.

  Satan had met him in the Sixth Circle of Hell, where the iron-bearded and steel-taloned demon Scabass was getting creative with a Jewish menorah and a tub of petroleum jelly.

  “And who is this?” Satan had asked.

  “Joseph Goebbels, my Lord,” Scabass had replied. “Adolf’s right hand man and a dab hand at stoking the fires of hatred.”

  “Oh, I like these types,” Satan had said. “Have you introduced him to our Fires of Hatred yet?”

  “Not yet, my Lord.”

  “I think our Fires of Hatred are better. They’re much more literal.”

  The horrible pale creature had sobbed, muttering, “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”

  “Scabass,” Satan had said.

  “Yes, my Lord?”

  “Is this the man who said, ‘If you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better’?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Interesting.”

  And Satan had leaned in close, to put his face next to that of the squirming man.

  “It’s not real,” Goebbels snivelled. “It’s not real.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, Joe,” Satan had said and walked on without a backward glance.

  Trump was no Goebbels. He was either far cleverer or far more stupid. Where Goebbels stuck to one or two big lies, Trump’s outrageous statements and accusations shifted and switched. It was almost impossible to point at one thing that he had actually, truly and definitely said. He mixed fact, hearsay, metaphor and hyperbole to such a fine degree it was impossible to seize on a quote that could be used against him. In truth, Clovenhoof was impressed.

  But his opinion of the man didn’t matter. Clovenhoof had a world to save.

  He waved the Apocalypse Bingo sheet in the air. “Mr Trump! Mr Trump! You need to stop!”

  People nearby looked at him but, close though he was, the noise in that hall was too much for Trump to hear him.

  “Trump! You have to drop out of the election!”

  “What are you sayin’?” said a man behind Clovenhoof and gave him a shove.

  Trump did at least see the altercation in the crowd and peered down. “We have one of those guys from the Hillary Clinton campaign,” he joked to the audience. “How much are you being paid? Fifteen hundred dollars?”

  “No, you have to listen!” Clovenhoof shouted. “The world is going to end!”

  “All right. Take him out,” said Trump.

  Security guys, all dressed like they were on their way to a Reservoir Dog fancy dress party, moved through the crowd towards Clovenhoof. The man behind him gave him another shove.

  “When we win the election on Tuesday,” Trump continued to the crowd. “You will finally have a government on your side. Fighting for your community and protecting your family.”

  The security guys – secret service, private security, Clovenhoof wasn’t sure – closed in and went straight past him to the shoving man.

  “Not me, him,” said the man as he was led away.

  Clovenhoof, chuffed by his good fortune, smiled to the bald guy to his left. The bald guy unzipped his thick coat. There was something stuffed under there, a folded sign or something similar.

  “By the way, folks,” said Trump, “while we’re at it—” He paused and, hand shading his eyes against the spotlights, squinted at Clovenhoof who was capering and yelling.

  “For the sake of the people, you have to quit!” yelled Clovenhoof. “Look! The fifteenth sign! They changed it!”

  The bald guy in the thick coat, opened up his banner to hold it aloft but it was Clovenhoof who now had his attention.

  Great—” said Trump, perhaps not sure what Clovenhoof was waving and pointing at him. Maybe they didn’t have Toblerone in the States.

  “Gun!” someone screamed.

  “What?” said Clovenhoof. “No, it’s a—”

  “Gun!”

  And suddenly the security guys were on the stage, holding up their arms to shield Trump, pushing him into a crouch to rush him from the stage.

  “Wait! Don’t go!” yelled Clovenhoof.

  But then the crowd swelled in. Someone body-slammed the bald sign-holder. Clovenhoof turned. A fist connected with his face. Something booted and unfriendly connected with his knees. He stumbled. And then an American, never one of the lightest nationalities, leapt on top of him and powered him to the hard ground.

  6th November 2016

  Lake Geneva, Switzerland

  Michael was woken by Heinz at dawn. He seemed very excited: saying that he’d found a great place for them to shoot a video. Heinz’s idea was to create a video that was so amazing that it would go viral on the internet.

  “Boom! All of Europe sees what you have done! Perfect, no?”

  Michael had been impressed by the idea. He knew the power of the internet, and was happy with the technical challenge of optimising their exposure online. Considerably more difficult was mobilising the team in the early hours of the morning. Heinz was insistent that they should arrive early, and by some miracle they were all on the bus, heading for the location of the video shoot. Heinz had acquired a camera from somewhere, and Michael had spoken to him quite firmly: suggesting that filming their route was perhaps something the driver should not do. Instead, Stefan had been placed at the front to capture their journey.

  They pulled off the main road at a tall fence. Heinz drove right up to it. He hopped down from the coach and dragged a section of it aside. After driving the coach through he dragged the section back into place. They drove on for a short
distance before pulling up outside a nondescript grey building.

  “This place is a little boring!” said Todor from the back seat. “No good for video here.”

  “Be patient!” said Heinz, leaning round to wink at them all. “You will see why this place is so perfect. Now we must all get off the coach and go inside the building. Make sure you take all of your things.”

  They trooped out with their backpacks and bags, and stood behind Heinz. He produced an electronic key pass from his jacket and used it to release the door lock.

  “Hey, it worked!”

  “You sound surprised,” commented Michael.

  “Come on in, folks. There should be nobody here early on a Sunday morning,” said Heinz.

  They walked through an empty reception area and corridor into a large room with many computer terminals. Michael realised it was organised into four distinct areas, each arranged in a circular fashion. From above it would resemble a clover leaf. There were displays above their heads, showing various charts and graphs. Michael looked at the enormous logo in the corner and gasped.

  “Heinz, are we in CERN’s control room?”

  “We certainly are!” Heinz said. “We have the day to ourselves, yeah?”

  Michael was about to query further, but he spun around to see why Aisling was making a strange gurgling noise. The grin on Aisling’s face assured Michael she wasn’t having some sort of seizure. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes just to be sure. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s perfect, so.” Aisling breathed. “The large hadron collider! The one thing all of Europe has that it can be proud of! Even America with its fancy Silicon Valley and Kennedy Space Centre hasn’t got one of these!”

  “Well actually—”Michael began.

  “It’s gorgeous. It’s huge. It’s— Exactly how huge is it?”

  “Twenty seven kilometres,” said Stefan automatically. “In two giant loops under Switzerland and France.”

  “The song must be about this!” said Aisling. “Quick! I need to get it down now!”