Old Mr Crocodile

Let me tell you a story about Heaven and Hell.

There was once an old bastard called Mr. Crocodile and he was this big movie exec. He towered over the industry. Everyone ran from his shadow apart from a few pretty birds he snapped up for starters.

For years the old meanie got away with murder. Casting victims from his penthouse like shreds of waste paper. Everyone knew of the evil that lay beyond the gold door, but lips were sealed by fear.

Then, one day, the sun rose on a changed society. It was no longer cool for dudes to rape whoever they wanted, and old Crocodile found himself clapped behind bars.

But this Croc had ways you couldn't believe. They weren't gonna take him down that easy. So, pacing his cell, shaking his head at those bastards, he called up his lawyer, Mr. Hyena, and told him about a little black book hidden in his office in a safe behind a big painting of piglets.

Its tawdry pages held names, dates, and black and white photographs of prominent people – CEOs, presidents, royals, and celebrities – and they were all incriminating as fuck.

Mr. Hyena laughed and drooled and talked too loud at the bar where he drank and an off-duty Rabbit heard his laughter. Soon someone else knew and someone else until finally someone very important, a Chief Justice Bison, in fact, the most powerful judge in the nation. She was shaken awake by an urgent phone call at 4 o'clock in the morning.

A hushed conversation took place. Chief Justice Bison nodded and hung up. She rubbed her eyes with a hoof and told Mr. Bison to go back to sleep then went down to the kitchen where she took an old-fashioned cell phone out of a cereal box and punched in some numbers from memory.

Back in jail, old bastard Crocodile was brushing his teeth. He grinned a toothy grin at himself in the scratched mirror. Behind him, his cell door clanked open.

'Who's there?' he said, tightening the knot in his bathrobe's silk belt. He walked over to the bars of his cell. He could see the guard's station was unoccupied. The two chairs were empty. Then he heard a whirring sound and the security camera in the ceiling swivelled away from him and pointed up at the ceiling. There was another whir and the camera at the end of the hall pointed straight down at the floor.

'Hey,' he said then stopped.

There was someone behind him.

'Destiny, sucka,' said a hissing voice and King Cobra emerged from the shadows, all tattoos and muscle.

'What- whatever they're paying you, I'll double it, triple it!' cried old Mr. Croc. 'A hundred million. A billion. Name it.'

King Cobra smiled. 'Don't you see, you arrogant prick, this is what I was designed to do.' And he showed his fangs and lunged forwards.

No one was surprised to see the headline: Suicide. A few quiet people asked a few quiet questions about the fang holes in the old bastard's neck, but they were swept under the rug with all the similar cases.