Introducing Hugo (Ego)

I work with Ego and I don't like him. We're ad men, nearly mad men.
We are overpaid to have our minds wander. To trawl the depths of
depravity, scale the heights of ecstasy, and to drink heavily.

We're both writers for a struggling London agency. Billings are down,
alcohol consumption up. Our CCCs (company credit cards) are regularly
sharing glasses with receipts behind the bar of our local, but that's
about to end. The agency can no longer support two middleweights; one
of us must go. It must be Ego.

I sit opposite the man. His mood swings and violence towards
malfunctioning technology are legendary. He's a frantic smoker. Seventy
a day. He blames his habit on the hard-hitting anti-smoking ads on
television. He finds them so traumatic, he needs a cigarette after
seeing them to calm himself down.

I can see him now as I write, a Marlboro Red between lips he's smoking
away. Puffing more frantically than he's typing. I think he knows I'm
onto him.

Ego is a fraud. I know where he gets his ideas from. His concepts.
Headlines. Turns of phrase. Puns. They're not his own.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Our Creative Director has
given us a month to prove who's the most valuable asset. He hasn't said
as much, but we writers can read between lines. I'm going to confront
Ego this lunchtime. Tell him I know. Tell him to resign, or things
could get nasty.