Letters From the Ministry

By Phillip Donnelly

Something is rotten in the Ministry of Mammals.

S. Fox, a recent recruit, finds that his new life in the office block is every bit as dangerous as in his native forest. In a set of letters written to his cousin, Arctic Fox, we follow his trials, as he tries to navigate a way through the forests of bureaucracy. Before his eyes, factions tear the office world apart. S. Fox must keep his head off the paper guillotine, when waves of oppression, revolution and counter-revolution engulf the ministry.

His world is complicated further by messengers from another. The un-dead headless chicken, a transdimensional cat and a phantom Afghan hound, stalk the sleepless fox. All call on him to avenge them, and to grab power for himself.

This satire of everything from political history to corporate management is witty and entertaining, making Letters from the Ministry the Animal Farm for the 21st century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phillip Donnelly
• Release date: Mar 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301446421

Phillip Donnelly

After completing a psychology degree, the author realised that he was profoundly misanthropic and set about travelling the world looking for aliens to take him to another planet. Unable to speak any foreign languages and almost incapable of holding a conversation in his own, he decided to teach English as a foreign language because this was the only job that would allow him to travel widely without any marketable skills or noticeable intelligence. He has unsuccessfully searched for life from outer space in classrooms in the following countries: Spain, China, Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Beirut, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Lebanon France and Vietnam. In the future, he hopes to continue his search for alien life forms in different countries, and he would be most obliged if any aliens reading this work could spirit him off to an altogether more exotic planet in a more harmonious dimension. About two dozen of his pieces have appeared online -- mainly travel writing and short stories, and one of them, The Interactive Classroom, won a Bewildering Stories’ Mariner Award in 2010. His latest novel, Kev the Vampire, which will be released in early 2014 by Rebel ePublishers. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Book preview

Dear Arctic Fox,

An unkept promise is a lie and I will never lie to you. I promised you letters and I’ll keep my word, writing until the sun and moon both shine at once and sing in unison of the end of days. I’ll record and recount the office day for you, here in the Ministry of Mammals.

Can it really be only seven days and nights since I last saw you? Already a part of me wishes to go back to the simpler world of the forest, to return to a world without concrete or glass, to a world free of rules and regulations, to a world with you in it.

But, I said farewell to the forest and to you of my own free will. That fateful August evening, under the spreading chestnut tree, we parted – you for your northern wilderness and me for the city of lost men.

Only a week has passed and already I whine like The Negative Swine, a fable related to me by W. B. Otter, of whom I shall speak presently. In the story, a mournful pig, on finding his trough half-empty, sighs inconsolably and cannot eat. He is deaf to the contented snorts of his happier brother, who judges the same trough half full and gobbles up every morsel.

The moral is clear: one must live in the present and look to the future. One mustn’t forever search for lost chestnuts, like the obsessive tree rodent, The Demented Squirrel, another fable told to me by W. B. Otter.

So enough of the past. Let me not repeat the foibles of fables. I’ll live in the present and tell you about some of the people I work with.

W. B. Otter arrived in the Ministry shortly before your good cousin, but he has adjusted to this brave new world of Council creatures with gusto. Thus far, without a great deal of success, it must be admitted, but this hasn’t dampened his spirits.

I first came across him swimming on his back in the goldfish pond in the courtyard. He was circling the statue of Owlus Cognitor, an ancient founder of the Council of Creatures. He was holding an old leather-bound book open between his paws, oblivious, lost in thought.

Soothed by his clockwise motion, and intrigued by his reading matter, in spite of its gruesome leather cover, I approached him and coughed discreetly, by way of introduction.

He looked up and stared, not at me but at the sky, and said, as if to himself:

‘That little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky

makes wistful noises of remorse for one brown otter’s eyes.’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘Lost am I, you see, encased with Wilde’s sweet misery.

A prison wall surrounds us both. Two outcast men are we.’

‘The book?’ I said.

I was afraid he must have thought me a very dull-witted fellow, capable of only the most rudimentary questions, like a curious ewe, who asks all but understands nothing.

He jumped out of the pond with surprising alacrity, for his watery fur had already tinges of grey about the whiskers. Then he passed me his book and an umbrella. He told me to open it and ‘shield both book and fur’. I did as instructed and there followed the sound of a small wave of water, lashing against the umbrella.

Hardly had the water begun to drip on the ground when W. B. was at my side, right paw outstretched, the left paw taking back the book.

‘W. B. Otter, librarian of the lost world.’

He shook my paw and waited for me to introduce myself.

‘S. Fox, newest member of the High Council of Creatures.’

‘Honoured am I indeed to meet

a fox with four such powerful feet.

Letters long have I writ

to wolves and bears and other crit.

But answers I have not received

and these dead letters do I grieve.’

I was about to enquire as to the particulars of these ‘dead letters’ but a sudden bark made me turn round.

I saw one of the senior wolves, who goes by the name of Beta Wolf. She sniffed the air and pointed at the puddle left by Otter’s ‘shake’n’dry’, as he likes to call it.

‘I demand an immediate explanation regarding the unauthorised hydroginisation of this Arid Area. The Ministry Building and Facilities Committee have made the mandatory guidelines for Cognitor Courtyard as clear as oxygenated hydrogen itself.’

She pointed indignantly to the small puddle beside Otter, and then to the sign above her head, which stated, in the boldest capitals:

AA

NO H2O

MBF Com.

W. B. Otter, dumbfounded, rubbed his ears vigorously, believing them to be water-clogged.

The language of the High Council of Creatures is difficult for many mammals to understand, but my post forces me to spend a lot of time in the company of High Council managers and I often find myself downwind of their tongue. Frequent exposure is training me to sniff out meaning in the undergrowth of their prose.

Otter eventually understood that Beta was angry about the puddle and replied to her. He spoke with his head held high, which isn’t common among the other animals, who usually sit down before speaking to her, in order to address the wolf from below.

‘A watery offence was not my intent

and this puddle comes by accident.’

Beta Wolf shook her head before replying. It’s difficult to convey her mode of speech. It calls to mind the tapping of a woodpecker. The jagged words hammer past with such speed that one never seems to have time to decode one phrase, before another replaces it.

‘Your apology is acceptable and accepted, provided it is accompanied by a physical demonstration of remorse. Water crimes cry for dry sentences.’

‘Sorry?’ said Otter.

‘Words mean nothing. Only action speaks. You must complete a voluntary act of community service, at your convenience and immediately. Displace your unauthorised spillage by employing the anti-incendiary device.’

There was a long pause while W. B. Otter waited for her to elucidate. Silence fell on the courtyard – a noxious, infected silence. I hoped that a leaf might fall, if only to provide an end to the silent suffocation.

I spoke then, hoping to add clarity and diffuse the tension.

‘Beta Wolf requests that you wash away the water using the hose behind you.’

Otter’s nostrils flared. He opened his arms and threw rhetorical questions at Beta Wolf.

‘And should I then empty the air

from my lungs with more air?

Shall I move clouds with clouds?

Defeat fire with fire?

Slay ire with ire in the widening gyre?’

Beta’s hackles rose. ‘Are you refusing to obey the collective decision of the Ministry of Mammals? Do you set yourself above Ministry law, W. B. Otter?’

These words were plain enough. W. B. set about his impossible task, muttering something under his breath about the birth of ‘a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem’.

I followed Beta Wolf upstairs, two steps behind her, watched by all we passed, as she watched all who greeted us. It seemed to me that everyone was observing unwritten protocols about showing proper respect to members of the High Council. I’m still piecing together this Ministry jigsaw but many of the pieces don’t fit well. If all mammals are equal, I ask myself, then why all the fawning?

Perhaps in punishment for consorting with W. B. Otter, Beta Wolf assigned me the task of ‘Grass Management’, as part of my managerial induction. I took blades of grass from boxes, counted out nine hundred and sixty three of them, and placed this specific number into plastic files. I then hung these plastic pouches in a row, with dozens of others, in a storage area near the sheep pens.

It was an irksome task. We foxes don’t have the paws for counting blades of grass, lacking opposable thumbs and such like. After hours of this tedious, yet difficult chore, I suggested to Beta Wolf that it might be easier simply to leave the grass in the box and give it directly to the sheep, known not to be creatures of discernment regarding the number of blades in their high tea.

She informed me, in an aggrieved tone, that nine hundred and sixty-three was the optimum number of blades, established after years of exacting field research. She went on to remind me that the Ministry believed passionately in striving for perfection. She said that as a newcomer, I should focus on the positive and not try to tamper with established systems and procedures.

She finished by reminding me that I had a lot to learn. She told me there were many wolves in the forest coveting my position but, in the interests of diversity, the position was offered to a non-wolf.

I considered pointing out that the wolves are already over-represented in the High Council, but thought better of it. With her words of warning hanging in the air, she left me to my thoughts and the uncounted blades of grass.

She spent the rest of the day grooming Alpha Wolf, watching me from afar, while I counted to nine hundred and sixty-three long into the night.

As dusk fell and artificial light extended the day, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fleet-footed animal of some description speed by Beta Wolf, who immediately stopped licking Alpha Wolf and gave chase.

The shortness of the glimpse I captured and the stress of the day must have played tricks on my eyes, because I thought I saw Beta chasing a headless chicken, of all things!

And no, before you ask, good cousin, I hadn’t been dining on mystic mushrooms. This must have been an optical illusion brought on by fatigue and stress. I hope it will be the last.

All in all, dear cousin, it’s been a difficult first week in the Ministry. I fear I haven’t made a great impression on Beta Wolf and the other members of the High Council of Creatures.

I hope things will improve, and soon, since the post of Councillor can, one suspects, be withdrawn as easily and as unexpectedly as it was offered.

I’ve asked several other Councillors why I was plucked from forest obscurity and brought here. They’re as much in the dark as I am. There are times when I wish to shout from the rooftop ‘Why am I here?’, but of course, I do no such thing.

What I hope for most, however, is a speedy reply. Don’t let the lazy soft hand of procrastination touch you – for the young, like the wind, are prone to change and easily distracted. Take pen to paper at once. Distract this fox with news from the north. Ties of blood and friendship demand it.

Begin!

Yours ever

S. Fox

Dear Arctic Fox,

My life is full of memories, ghosts, and ghouls. Memories of you, of my father, and of forest life.

The past won’t stay buried: it rises from the crypt in the form of memory. Who can exorcise memory? Where are the priests of the mind?

Last night I dreamt of the dead, of my father. I found him in the forest, lying in the undergrowth, sunken and alone. He spoke to me, his eyes rheumy and his voice cracking in the hoarse whisper of the soon-to-die. He looked much as he did near his real end, with his mind choked by the weeds of schizophrenia.

‘We are but dust with water added,’ he said.

‘We are the embodiment of dust,’ I replied, echoing the Owl Cannon Couplet.

‘It’s a fool’s bargain – from nothing to nothing, and all for nothing,’ he said.

His eyes closed and I turned to walk away, but a hiss made me turn back. My father’s eyes were open again but they were now the eyes of the dead – jaundiced, pained and full of suffering. His voice had turned shrill and ghastly.

‘Life has a final destination but the journey has no itinerary. Those who travel in cursed worlds will be cursed. Those who seek the dead will find them. Awake from your dream! Death is all around you.’

I woke up, shivering.

How I longed to scale these Ministry walls and run north to join you in the tundra.

Is this what my dream meant? That I wish to leave? That I want to be free again? Free, like the wind that never tires, but only rests to take sustenance, before rising again to blow as strong as it has ever done, winning victory over even the most hardy and ancient of trees.

But of course this cannot be. Freedom, like youth, is a memory. I am betrothed to the Ministry.

It’s a grim marriage, this union of creature and corporation: loveless, dry and ashen-kissed. Or so it seems tonight. The Ministry air is sterile and bare.

How sour my mood is. My body aches in sympathy, with headaches, stomach cramps and all the other pains to which flesh is heir. W. B. Otter is also a victim of lurid dreams and churning squirming bellyaches.

We’ve made an appointment with the doctor for tomorrow morning. I’ll write no more until he offers me a prescription. Hopefully, it will improve my mood and my prose.

The cause of my distemper is now clear to me. We are what we eat!

The Ministry medic told Otter and I that our symptoms are typical of those newly arrived at the Ministry. We’re experiencing MWS (Meat Withdrawal Syndrome), also known as acute Fleischhungersnot. The only cure is time.

In a few days, the pains will lessen and then disappear, as our bodies become accustomed to the absence of meat in our diet. Our digestive tracts will come to accept the tofu substitutes but the psychological craving for meat will last much longer, lingering in the darker parts of the mind. Indeed, the doctor warned us that flesh-hunger is never totally conquered. He also said that we should be grateful because for some carnivores, such as the wolves, the sudden withdrawal of meat brings on delirium tremens and has even been known to provoke seizures.

Absolute abstinence from flesh is rule number one in the Council of Creatures. Indeed, the Oath of Hortophagos is the very first article in everyone’s contract of employment. I signed the contract and I took the oath. I will beat this craving. Now, as I write this letter, every cell in my body cries out for meat. I can think of nothing else.

I’ll break off this stuttering letter again and beg you to forgive its many stops and starts.

Another sleepless night, but in the morning, a mystery to distract me. Let me now describe to you the strange tale of the Headless Chicken.

Of all the office creatures, great and small, it is the Headless Chicken that is the most difficult to pin down. This is due in part to her speed, but mainly due to her unpredictability.

There is simply no way to tell from one moment to the next what the Headless Chicken will do, or where she will go.

Some say that even she doesn’t know her destination or purpose; that motion is both her cause and her effect. But how can those with heads speculate on the minds of those without them? The world of the free decapitant, the sans tête, is beyond our ken.

Unwilling to accept that the office universe could spawn and support such an illogical creature, I am determined to find out what’s going on inside the head of the Headless Chicken. If nothing else it will take my mind off my cravings and, as you know, foxes cannot stand an unsolved mystery. I must have the truth – who is the feathered ghost in the machine?

I can see her now as I write to you. She’s standing in the centre of the centre, the office’s busiest point, turning this way and that on her ugly yellow feet, disturbing the flow of flesh and fur. She carries a mysterious white box under her wings, speckled with the bloody effluent of her decapitation.

Under her gyrating claws, the carpet looks worn and worried, but there she stands, indifferent to the traffic jams she creates and all the bottlenecks of hooves and paws. All swerve left and right to avoid her, crashing into one another and spreading paper carnage on the office floor.

Let me leave the mysterious hen tapping on the floor awhile, puzzled cousin, while I provide you with some recently gleaned background information.

The Headless Chicken, then known as Miss Poulet, was accused of adulterating the chicken feed with gravel and cat litter. Others suggest, in hushed tones, that her downfall originated in an unwise peck to the nether cheek of Beta Wolf, following her insistence that all corn grains needed to be counted and catalogued before consumption, as part of Beta’s Triple C Corn Initiative.

Whatever the reason behind her beheading by the paper guillotine, this much is sure; it was G. Bear who wielded the handle and Alpha Wolf who signed the death warrant. At this unsanctioned and invitation-only execution, the wolves looked on as G. Bear sliced off the chicken’s head.

All the while, in the meeting room below, the High Council debated the chicken’s appeal. Locked in procedural arguments, the chicken was already dead before the High Council even learned of the execution. Capital punishment had been outlawed for generations and the Councillors were outraged. They set up a Select Committee to judge if Alpha Wolf had exceeded the judicial authority granted to him as Councillor for Justice.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. F. T. Ferret, rumoured to be in the pay of Alpha and Beta Wolf, headed the Justice Commission.

Needless to say, Alpha Wolf and G. Bear were acquitted. ‘The chicken had it coming,’ was the commission’s conclusion. They, like all the other office animals, are at a loss to explain the chicken’s continued presence in the office and her drain on the corporate payroll.

Apparently, the chicken was unaware that a head is necessary for life, nor that she was expected to shuffle off her poultry coil as soon as her head hit the stationery cupboard. Death held no dominion over this gallus domesticus.

In a couplet of contradictory e-mails, Beta Wolf first stated that the chicken did not exist and that those who suffered from the optical illusion of the ‘chicken vision syndrome’ should report to the Simian Health Centre for corrective ocular surgery. The next day, she recalled this e-mail and sent another, offering a reward of thirty pieces of tofu to any animal that apprehended the intruder and brought the renegade to the wolves for justice.

The reward has gone unclaimed and the Headless Chicken is here still, but never still long enough to be caught. However, when it comes to catching chickens, there’s nothing like a fox.

I will lay this pen aside awhile and ensconce myself behind a hulk of office machinery and wait for her. Spies must remain unseen.

Do not imagine, good cousin, that I mean to ensnare the death-defying hen and claim the blood-fried tofu prize. I am driven by curiosity and am indifferent to lucre.

Oh, the thrill of the chase, Arctic cousin! How much faster is the beating heart than the clicking paw?

Without warning, she was off. Darting to her right, and then straight ahead; then backwards and then to the right again; then forwards; and so on and so on, as fast as her weedy shanks would carry her. My eyes twitched left and right as they followed her but I stayed where I was for the present, hidden behind the broken photocopier.

Attracted by an open door, she escaped our floor and I had to break cover to follow her. She moved quickly and my chase was more of a scramble than an elegant pursuit, more the hunting of a peasant dog than a noble fox.

I thought I noticed one of the mangier wolves