A new #blogbattle prompt for the month is dynamic

This is what emerged

There are many examples of businesses moving with the times and then overstretching themselves, thinking they could apply previous lessons to a new dynamic. Contract killing wasn’t one of them.

Jeremy Spawn started out in pest control and gradually moved through the lepidopterist levels of lawful killing to the lower forms of mammalian murder. During that long and, mostly enjoyable apprenticeship – the period of concentrated cockroach annihilation hadn’t been a high point, what with their tendency to explode glutinously – Jeremy hadn’t considered the step to the next level.

It was, therefore something of a surprise to be headhunted by a bespoke Life Adjustment Cooperative that ran its termination operations out of a redundant chicken shop in Lower Dalston.

Indeed, given the nature of the services they provided, when Jeremy was informed by Constance Middlebrow, CEO of the Cooperative that he was being headhunted, he briefly wondered if someone had ordered his decapitation. Probably Mildred Unbeknownst, he thought, whose choir stalls Jeremy had been employed to cleanse of a suspected poltergeist, and who turned out to be an itinerant armadillo painter looking to practice his shellacking in the off season. When Jeremy explained how he could not, in all conscience remove a shellacking shell painter from his shelter, Mildred had threatened a dire comeuppance. Jeremy was still waiting.

Initially Jeremy found the new role unusually refreshing. The clients were universally anonymous and unlikely to complain; the subjects equally so; and the equipment used no longer secondhand and liable to malfunction but new, faultless and never seen twice.

However, as in all businesses, those who are successful tend to be the subject of takeover bids. While this was above Jeremy’s paygrade, he was not unaware of other’s stepping into Constance’s shoes and so, when Jeremy was summoned to an away day to review corporate development opportunities and investigate how brand awareness could be enhanced he wasn’t surprised to find the sessions being led, not by Constance but by Cummings Altercation an American Assassin with neat hair, preternaturally adhesive biceps and an unabashed insistence on his right to open carry his surgically engorged penis. There was nothing floppy about Cummings.

Jeremy always wanted to please and he listened attentively to the various speakers, each of whom insisted that they welcomed ideas from the team. Anything that might enhance their business opportunities.

Jeremy noted that, despite these exhortations, no one spoke up. Maybe he speculated they hadn’t had his range of extinguishing experiences; indeed many of his colleagues appeared to have joined the business from branches of the services or following release from long term psychiatric facilities. He tentatively raised a hand.

‘Jeremy? You have an idea to enhance our offer?’

‘Well, it did occur to me, when I first joined that there was one noticeable difference between my previous role with urban foxes and overfed rodents and this one.’

‘Indeed.’

‘What about we clean up after? We used to.’

There was a pause. Maybe a stunned silence. However, Cummings didn’t get to fondle the Great Todge for all and sundry to admire by ignoring enthusiasm. ‘Say, Jem, why don’t you put together a pilot and we’ll run it and see.’

So he did. He investigated the best forms of chemical solvents and acids and their transportation requirements. He explored exsanguination techniques and efficient butchery. When, finally he had a package to put to the head office team, he offered to set up a trial.

On the designated day, six members of the board descended on a quiet disused car park when Jeremy had set up his equipment. Everything seemed to be ready, save for the most obvious; a target.

Cummings, still very much the man with the packet in the pocket raised this slight limitation with Jeremy.

Jeremy, ever helpful smiled. ‘I took soundings and there was universal agreement among the staff that you, sir and your board should experience the proposed method first hand. Everyone would be delighted.’

‘You mean…?’

‘Indeed.’ In seconds the ever efficient Jeremy had expunged his boss and his co-owners, dissected the carcasses and slipped the miscellaneous body parts into the canisters where they bubbled and broiled.

Jeremy was still stirring the opaque liquid as it reduced the residues to their essential molecules, when a PA appeared.

‘Any sign of Cummings?’

Jeremy pointed at the dismembered member, a small trophy he thought he’s have embalmed.

‘Oh. Right. Cummings is…?’

Jeremy pointed at the acid container. ‘Goings. Indeed, I think he’s probably gones.’

Jeremy pulled off his gloves. ‘Can I help?’

‘I was wondered where to obtain instructions?’

Jeremy looked around. ‘Well, I suppose from anyone. I think we’ve become an employee led collective.’

The PA nodded. ‘The new dynamic.’

‘Probably.’