Once upon a time in the dustiest corner of Everywhere, there lived a man known for his unsavory talents. This was no mere mortal; this was Mr. Dantafizge, the town’s undisputed expert in ideological prostitution. A master of sycophancy and shameless self-preservation, he could bend, twist, and grovel with the kind of finesse most people reserved for yoga or rumba dance. To his credit, Mr. Dantafizge had built a career on bootlicking and kwaram. A skill well refined, albeit crudely. So long as the ganja flowed, the purses jingled, and the lords of the town needed “Hurt-line” to applaud their every nonsense. He lived a life of splendid idleness.
But as with all such careers of borrowed feathers and false compliments, the day came when his benefactor grew tired, or perhaps simply sober, and shut off the golden tap. With the purse strings pulled tight, Mr. Dantafizge looked around for another lifeline but found only the blank stares of those he had once itched. His partner, a hardworking woman with more backbone than affection for his antics, took on the burden of providing for the household. She slaved to feed him, to dress him, and to finance his assorted iniquities, all while he wallowed in his accustomed indolence. Yet in the way of all tragic heroes, or fools, fate soon took another turn. Without prior notice or even a dramatic farewell, she dropped dead.
Faced with destitution, Mr. Dantafizge realized he would need to return to his original craft, though at this point, he was a salesman without an audience. The wealthy patrons had moved on, and his persuasive charms, once wielded with velvet gloves, were no match for the indifference of his potential benefactors. So, Mr. Dantafizge did what any self-respecting parasite might: he turned to land grabbing, reasoning that property might be acquired just as easily as praise, if one could only silence enough objections.
Eyeing a stretch of land owned by a quiet but determined fighter, he tried his standard tricks—intimidation, innuendo, even that sebaceous allure that had served him so well in court circles. But his would-be victim was immune to both threats and flattery, standing resolutely against Mr. Dantafizge’s advances. Frustrated, he did what all desperate men with an exaggerated sense of entitlement do: he dragged the case to court, hoping for a judgment that might fall in his favor by a sheer accident.
However, within the courthouse, Mr. Dantafizge felt as out of place as a raven in a dovecote. The air was thick with principles of justice, objectivity, and truth—concepts as foreign to him as chastity to a brigand. He fumbled for the usual allies but found instead an entire court disinterested in his greased palms or his silken words. Judges, it turned out, were less susceptible to his charm than he had counted on.
With his last appeal falling on deaf ears, he turned to the one weapon he still had in abundance: coercion. Calling upon a small army of hirelings, Mr. Dantafizge had his victim’s home reduced to rubble overnight. If he could not have the land, he could at least make sure it was uninhabitable. Yet his victim—still quiet, still steadfast—refused to yield, finding solace in the glacial but unstoppable gears of justice.
Eventually, the courts issued a restraining order, barring Mr. Dantafizge from so much as sniffing the land he’d tried to seize. Worse yet, what will follow is liability for damages; a costly reminder that some battles are best left unfought.
This debt would have been manageable had Mr. Dantafizge lived within his means, but his means had always been those of others. The house he occupied, in fact, was not truly his own but shared with his long-suffering siblings. Now, these brothers and sisters, who had quietly watched his foolishness from afar, will surely and suddenly see their inheritance threatened by his reckless escapades. They had tolerated his grifts and his schemes, but the idea of their family property becoming collateral damage was more than they could bear.
So, the siblings will surely gather in indignant unity, quietly preparing for the day they would shove their brother into his own ruin if it meant salvaging their legacy. For the first time in his life, Mr. Dantafizge will definitely find his miserable self staring down a wall of unwilling creditors. With his pockets empty, his allies gone, and his reputation in tatters, I imagine him siting in the ruins of his own making, contemplating the singular truth that, for a scalawag, the final fall is always the hardest.
