Excerpt: Confessions Of An Evil Overlord

He studies a piece of parchment and grunts, clearly irritated. He looks at a series of coiled metal springs on his writing desk, selects one and pokes it. Within a matter of heartbeats, a knock comes upon the door to his study. A guard opens the door, and a young man with a cheerful smile and dark hair strides in.

“Evening, m'lord Laird!” he chirrups.

The Evil Overlord Laird (as we have just learned is his name) regards the dark haired chap and gives him a guarded smile. He is a strange Evil Overlord. He does not dress in dark, mysterious shades of black, nor does he wear a cape. He dresses in bright, cheery tones. The darkest colour he has ever been seen to wear was a forest green, and he had the tailor shot afterwards, claiming it made people think he was evil to be seen in such a dark colour.

“Evening, Sam,” Evil Overlord Laird says. He waves the parchment he has been studying and says, “Is she still being difficult?”

Sam, being a cheerful sort and not wishing to upset his master, says, “It depends, m'lord...”

“On what?” Evil Overlord Laird asks.

“If you consider fashioning her metal dinner tray into a shank and threatening to kill us all if we don't set her free being difficult,” Sam replies.

Evil Overlord Laird sighs heavily, and looks at Sam with something like pity in his eyes.

“Well, I suppose you had better bring her up here,” he says.

Sam's cheerful brown eyes widen in surprise. “But, m'lord, she's armed with a shank!” he protests.

“Yes, but my guards are armed with common sense, several mystical arts from overseas, real weapons and the fear of me. If they can't best a girl with a home-made tray shank, they shouldn't be in my service, should they?” he replies, and smiles like a wolf that's spotted a lame buck.

Sam nods, cheery once again. “Right you are, m'lord!” he says, beaming. “I'll go inform the dungeon master.”

Evil Overlord Laird settled back in his chair and stroked the two armed crossbows built into the armrests. An Evil Overlord often faces assassination attempts, and trying people who test his patience. Often, this happens at the same time, but armed crossbows at the ready are very helpful in dealing with these types.

A short amount of time passes (perhaps ten minutes), and Laird can hear faint shrieks. As time continues its steady tread onwards, the shrieking grows louder, until Laird winces and tries to stuff things in his ears to block it out.

The door to his study opens, and three guards escort in the beautiful princess Karenina. She is shrieking like a toddler denied the chance to maim itself, and Laird indicates with a gesture that this should stop. When the beautiful princess fails to interpret this signal correctly, Laird's guards instantly attempt to rectify the situation. One produces a sock. Another produces a length of fabric. The other stuffs the sock in the princess' mouth and wraps the fabric around her face so she cannot spit out her makeshift gag.

Laird looks wearily at the princess. He can hardly call her beautiful with a gag stuffed in her mouth, nor with her face purple from shrieking overmuch.

“Princess,” he says, his deep voice seeming to boom about the small room and shutting her final squeals that the gag could not silence. “Your lord father promised you in marriage to me. Are you still of the opinion that you will not have me?”

She tries to talk with the gag still in her mouth. Laird feels like bashing his head against the wall. Not exactly beautiful, a voice like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn up bottom on a frozen toilet seat (Laird's fists ball in rage at the last part of that thought), and the intelligence of your average reality TV aficionado. He has really lucked out with this one.

The guards recognise the look of weariness on their master's face, and remove the gag. She immediately shrieks at the same ear-splitting decibel, “I shall never marry you, you hear me!? NEVER!”

Evil Overlord Laird sighs and says, “Oh well.”

The guards pale and back away from the beautiful princess, who looks suddenly pale and confused. Our Evil Overlord raises the crossbows and shoots her with both bolts, one hitting her in the heart and the other shooting cleanly through her lips and sticking there, closing them forever.

He laughs and says, “Nice shot, don't you think lads?”

The guards look at where the arrows have hit, and burst into genuine laughter. Their sense of humour has grown rather twisted around Evil Overlord Laird.

“Be good lads and get rid of her body,” Laird instructs them lazily.

“Example or bad memory, sire?” one asks.

“Hmmmm...” Laird says, clearly thinking about it. “Bad memory. But fetch me a messenger, I wish to write to her father and apologise for shooting her. Do you think that sending him that possessed goat we got last month will make up for the loss of his only daughter?”

The guards think about it and eventually Sam pipes up from behind them, “We could say it's a magical talking goat, m'lord. He don't have to know it's possessed by a demon and sings hellish songs from a hideous nether dimension.”

Laird nods, satisfied. He knew there was a reason he had appointed Sam as one of his chief advisors.