come free. We knew from the beginning that talent attracts talent and so we have spent a great deal of money hiring the best and the brightest for positions here in marketing, development, outreach and education.”
“Those are a lot of departments,” the shadowy visitor said.
“It takes money to make money,” Johnn Sharp replied. “This office attracts a huge number of donors but we are operating on a shoestring. I mean, really we are functioning on nothing more than the barest necessities. We need Nespresso pods for our coffee machines, and fresh bagels brought in from Montreal for our team. We need to pay our in-office massage and bodywork therapists. We need to pay the classical quartet who perform at our networking gatherings. The hand towel budget alone is massive, but we believe that our team members perform best when they’re given the proper support, and I think you’d agree that we really are asking a lot of them.”
“Of course,” the visitor said.
“We’ve got a click-and-mortar environment to handle,” Johnn continued, getting on a roll now. “And we view ourselves not just as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization but as a portal and central clearinghouse for all things Satanic.”
“That’s a big job,” the shadowy visitor said.
“But I think you’d approve. Not only do I give facetime at various meetings and conferences on a global scale but we have a webinar team performing online videoconferencing and giving guidance to potential donors. We are big, but the cause is large. However, you can see that we are running a tight ship. Salaries alone run to the hundreds of thousands per day. It’s not easy. We take in almost exactly what we need to survive.”
“It must be very difficult for you,” the visitor said.
“It is. I don’t think you know how hard it is,” Johnn Sharp said, suddenly feeling very sorry for himself. “Would you like to see my executive bathroom? It’s the only tiny bit of luxury I allow myself. It’s that door there, right next to my meditation chamber. No, no, that’s my recording studio. I’ve been learning how to play the hammered dulcimer and the mixer and playback system really help me track my own progress. Yes, that’s right. That’s the door.”
With the visitor safely inside Johnn Sharpe’s private executive washroom, Sharp allowed himself to look out the wall-to-wall window over the parking lot of Prius’s and Hummers. Just a few weeks ago this building had belonged to Exxon Mobile, but he had been willing to pay top dollar and they had happily abandoned it. Good vibes remained. It had been a struggle and a race to the finish, but he had managed to have the entire building gutted, renovated and landscaped in just one week. No one could possibly understand the stress he felt every single day. A few small luxuries for himself, that’s all he had. Who could possibly object to that? Certainly not his shadowy visitor who seemed to be coming around to his point of view. That’s something Johnn Sharpe prided himself on, the ability to show other people the correct perspective.
He would have been surprised to know that at that very moment, his shadowy visitor had exited through the back entrance of his private bathroom, walked across an empty conference room, gone down the hall and was now on the next floor up where the accountants sat. No one questioned the visitor because they thought he was there to shoot a promotional video. But he wasn’t. He was there to watch them type in their passwords. He was there to steal access to their accounts. He was there to do evil.
It’s not hard to empty out Madison Square Garden for a private event without paying a cent. All you have to do change the sign outside to read:
Hootie & the Blowfish Reunion
One Night Only
Playing the Music of
Edvard Grieg
Exactly twenty tickets were sold, and those people were prevented from actually attending when certain celestial powers ensured that a live John Tesh concert was on Pay-Per-View that very same night. Inside the abandoned Madison Square Garden, the Arena was dark. Safety lights were on throughout the six tiers of seating but there was not a single sign of life. The massive room, capable of seating twenty thousand spectators was ominously quiet.
The food court staff had been sent home early that day. The custodial and maintenance staff had been quietly bribed and sent back to their apartments in Queens. Security guards had been replaced with a private company brought in