Bronte's Inferno XXV (Parma Violets)

There was a scent in the air. Almost pleasant, but not quite. As though someone had lit one too many joss sticks to cover the smell of a particularly sulphurous fart. I felt quite sick. Woland, Mitie or whoever he was, was smiling; the sly smirk of a schoolboy who'd done the undetected dirty at the back of the class. He puffed out his cheeks and let out a concentrated blast of the smell. I wondered how he could believe Parma Violets could fight the stink of his breath.

'So? What is it you want? Everyone has their price. Except me, of course. And the other fellow. He's not much bothered about anything now. Sometimes I wish he were. It was more fun, you know, when there were more of us.The classics. I remember that business with the swan, I wish I'd thought of that –

'I don't want anything. I'm ok.' Even those few words were hard to say without breathing in.

'You're ok? Good book that, I spend every day trying to provoke people who swallowed that guff. Not many of them left. Too busy not listening and just shouting. Where's the finesse in that, I ask you?'

It struck me that Woland was lonely, with only the cat and Hella for company, out here in the arse-end of somewhere everyone had forgotten about long ago.

'I want world peace, an end to famine and to fix the planet.' I sneered.

'I didn't realise you could be so funny. Would your books make me laugh?'

'I thought you had read everything.' I had thought that. There seemed to no book – however obscure – but that he did not have some knowledge of it.

'I used to. But then, you know… Those sportsmen's biographies, minor royals' children's books,' he looked as though he himself might be sick for a moment, before lowering his voice to a whisper, 'the tv-show hosts' crime novels.'

'I thought that was what I was going to be writing for Charnel House,' I said, maybe a little too loud, since Woland flinched and then gave a shudder.

'Of course you will. But I will NOT be reading them,' he took a breath, 'Nor will anyone dull enough to buy them, I'm sure.'

'So that IS the deal. You publish Bronte's Inferno and I spend the rest of my days spinning dross into publishing gold?'

He laughed, actually laughed. If anything it made the stench of his breath worse.

'Oh no, Mickey B, you aim far too high, I will be satisfied if you spin dross into coherence, however uninteresting.'