the claimant.

That morning, a husband and wife team—physiotherapist and psychologist—shot him a glance in the stairwell. Dr Sim always took the stairs. He knew what was good for him. He’d have ignored them, but something worse than dislike emanated from them. They shared a common sympathy. Empathy even, that extended to him.

Dr Sim’s scepticism was his shield. It extended beyond the disability claimants that had come to Cadowan House for reassessment to his work colleagues. They seemed the only ones incapable of work.

He tried to remain rational and willing to be disambiguated of any such notions of rabid unfairness that was catching as a company disease. After all, he had a medical degree and worked as General Practioner for twenty years. Working for the French company employed by the government wasn’t revenge, as some of his ex-patients had claimed. He just liked to think he had certain standards and was unwilling to compromise them or himself.

The French company had let standards slip. They employed unqualified staff. People who had worked as physiotherapists or in family planning, even ex-nursing staff who were too fat for bending and lifting on the wards. Next, they would be employing ex-teachers that insisted on calling pupils by their first names.

‘Is something the matter?’ Dr Sim enquired.

Helen, the taller of the two, and the physiotherapist, shrugged in a way that was made to look almost Gallic in its effortlessness.

‘No,’ Mike said pleasantly and smiled in a way that suggested that was the end of the matter.

Even if they had misunderstood each other, they had signed a confidentiality agreement. Cadowan House looked after its own. What happened in its office suites with piped music, free water and interview rooms, remained inside.

Dr Sim nodded. ‘Good. Because let’s clear the air. I really hate and detest both of you.’

He glanced at Helen’s broad bovine face and her attire.  

‘Helen, you really shouldn’t wear that kind of thing to work. You’re no longer a netball school coach. And if you’re a butch lesbian that’s no more business of mine than why you married that strange looking queer. But I guess you wouldn’t have many other options.’

‘I’m not queer,’ Michael said in a deeper voice than normal. Flapping two fingers like antennas around the word ‘queer’ to show ironically he wasn’t fazed.

‘We’ll report you to management,’ said Helen.

‘Well, they’ve never read any my reports or recommendations. Management rarely do. When you’ve been here longer than two weeks, you’ll realise that. They have a hierarchy with profit and loss at the top and us at the bottom.’

He paused, waiting for them to say something. But they took the high ground and left him standing alone.  

Dr Sim couldn’t wait to get back to work. He’d read through the notes and walked through the office to greet him. Flipping over the last page and waiting for someone to stand or limp towards him.

The claimant had made an effort, wearing his worst clothes. An impossible pelt of the darkest animal hair crossed his forehead. It might have once been a foraged denim jacket and trouser combination tattooed to his skin. He wrinkled his nose. Mr whatever-his-name was stunk and ticked all the out-of-work boxes.

Dr Sim waited. He expected the pretty girl in a white blouse beside him to take his arm and totter along beside him, especially as he’d dark glasses. His sort usually had someone else speaking for them. Showing him which way to go and whispering reassurances. In an officious way it made things easier. He wouldn’t have to speak directly to Mr Lucifuge Rofocale. He could go through with the public charade of assessment without getting his hands dirty.  

Dr Sim could quickly finish the claim, typing two-fingered, in half the time others took. The examination room was adequate. It had a desk which he perched behind and a chair in which the claimant sat. There was also an examination couch, covered in greenish paper and easily wiped down. Dr Sim prided himself in never having used it.

Dr Sim asked, ‘Do you want a recording of this meeting?’ It was needless bureaucracy at work, but he was professional in his approach. Ticking the box, no record was needed.

The claimant found it difficult to look at him, which wasn’t unusual. The dark lenses slipped out of his spectacle frame. His nose wrinkled to stop it, but he was too late and the frame slipped over the bridge of his nose and it slipped onto the floor. He held the frame in two parts, where the stick tape had come unstuck. His eyes were like fireballs.

Dr Sim spoke from rote memory. ‘What do you do first thing in the morning on your average day?’

Mr Lucifuge Rofocale laughed and the room shook. His voice boomed in Dr Sim’s ears. ‘It depends what you mean by your average day. On the first day, for example, God created the heaven and earth. Modern man, no longer, tends to think of that in terms of hours and minutes. Rather we speak in terms of epochs. And they’d be quite right about that. But quite wrong about how we can describe such an event.’

Dr Sim typed at such a fantastic speed the noise was like a plague of locusts and he felt his fingers burning. Words whirred quicker than he could hope to read hieroglyphics. But he could not stop.

‘Enough,’ said Mr Lucifuge Rofocale clipping the dark lenses together and placing the spectacles back lopsided on his nose. ‘The examination is finished early. A calculus of the unfortunates. A hierarchy of grievances. I think we’ll cheat God a little. I have use for such a man like you.’

Dr Sim slumped in his chair.

Mr Lucifuge Rofocale licked his lips as he breathed in the stink of piss and fear and unfolded his wings.