The Grasshopper

Chapter 12

Prince Kaella was obviously wiser than his father, at least on this night.

“Events are taking their course,” he thought. “The right course. Capable and loyal people are in their positions, prepared to act.”

Why should he trouble himself with that anymore? Especially now, when she was finally there, just a few floors beneath him. He could decide tonight, at any moment, to get out of bed and to knock on her door within a few minutes.

Who knows, he might even do that. Because this desire, this passion… he has never felt… anything similar... so powerful. It was as though he had only now awaken from some monotony, from some mist, nothingness, senselessness… in which he had spent his entire life.

Her body, her seething flesh… exactly in the right spots, exactly where it should… simply forces a man to lose his mind… to go mad!

But no. Not only that. There are such female bodies on every step, alright not exactly like that, but similar. But there is no journalist, host, editor that looks like that, while at the same time creating an evening news program with record-breaking ratings.

How much good she actually did for his father, him, the Company and the State. She exposed irregularities that occurred in society, invited to the studio the persons responsible from all sectors of the Company and the Inspectorate and clearly, without any reluctance, before the millions-strong audience, demanded that they stop non-consumption and mercilessly punish the Non-Consumers.

Those responsible would promise that before the cameras and soon after, in some cases already the following day, they would carry out arrests and raids of well-concealed, secret Non-Consumer outlets, full of goods from past seasons. Such successful actions by the Inspectorate were always immortalized by Babe’s camera crew. In the next show she aired with great pleasure the footage showing outlets ablaze and Non-Consumers with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, surrounded by shapely inspectors and their grayish uniforms, humbly entering Inspectorate vehicles, heads hung low.

Prince was pleased with himself. He had decided that from now on he would always give in to his desires, urges and instincts. His rationality would never allow him to simply get up after one of Babe’s shows, to go to his study followed by his wife’s gaze, and to call the director of Capital City TV and announce his official visit to his media company, with the request that Miss Babe describe to him the entire process of creating her show In the Eye of the Storm.

Had he not acted on the cries, the shrieks of his soul, had he not listened to the real him, he would have never learned… he would have never seen, felt how Babe looked at him, how her breath stopped from his nearness, how this fearless journalist become confused, only in his company…

How she bowed her head and trembled.

This is why he organized this interview in the submarine, far away from Capital City. Here, where he and Babe would be alone, where he could knock on her door…

No, he would not disturb her tonight, his instinct clearly told him. He would not allow her to feel uncomfortable when she stepped out before him, half-asleep, in just a plain nightgown, without any makeup. Let her prepare for the interview in peace. Tomorrow she will look…

He would make it another night without her, just one more night. Just one more. And after the interview, when they return to the hotel… then nothing would to stop him. Nothing!