I’s a lackey. An underling. A minion. A hench...thing. And I takes pride in my work, I do. I even fake this accent to sound more henchy. Not sure how long I can keep it up though.
These days everyone wants to be mighty overlord of this, vanquishing hero of that, princess of whatever. But someone has to do the legwork. It’s all very well laying plans, but without minions who’s gonna get the job done? The Death Star didn’t build itself, you know! Nobody pays attention to the details any more. Time was when a minion could take pride in a good job of evil well done. But times are always changing.
I’m your basic common or garden underling. We’re not talking Igor to someone’s Doctor Frankenstein here. Or evil Robin to evil Batman. I’m not your standing-by-the-throne kind of hench-thing, not the go-to guy for toadying to the king or accepting the enemy’s challenge. I’m more your one twenty-seven thousandth of a horde type of minion. Part of the crowd. Expendable. Bottom of the heap. But the thing people forget about the bottom of the heap is... that without a bottom the heap would... be... well, the point is that we’re important, us nameless underlings.
You’ll have understood by now that I’m in the evil camp, so’s to speak. Heroes don’t go in for minions so much. Oh I know Captain Kirk has his red shirted crew members that you just know won’t make it to the end of the episode, but most heroes are surrounded by companions who they know by name. Sickening really. If my master, Thurgo the Awesome, King of Evil, Winner of Lotteries, and Overlord (of Slough), ever thought to call me Kevin then I’d know right there and then that his reign of terror was on its last legs. Even a ‘you there’ would be going too far, acknowledging my individuality. The closest Thurgo the Awesome’s ever come to being familiar with me was just before the Battle of Putney when he roared out “You lot on the left – if any of you survive the first ten minutes I shall want to know why!”
So, to business. I’m a goblin. They’ve been making us pretty much the same way at Ye Olde Goblin Factory in Hong Kong for nigh on two years now. The process involves taking a big lump of recycled plastic and basting it in liquid wickedness (fully organic of course) for several weeks before skilled technicians beat the heck out of it with hammers and then drop it off a tall building. After that it’s just a matter of saying the magic words and bingo – a new goblin. We’re blister packed, boxed, and shipped off around the world in cargo crates. Currently Lord Thurgo has fourteen of us camped out in his coal cellar. The master plan is to build the horde to twenty-seven thousand but you’ve got to build slow in this economy, Thurgo says. You have to speculate to accumulate, and also there are cash flow problems ever since the incident with the jam-bomb and subsequent stoppage of pocket money for two months.
Officially I’m minion #247. That came off the packet. Sir Terror-knight calls me “Oi!” Captain Bort calls me ‘the ugly little one’, and Sergeant Yellow-Fang calls me Kevin. The chain of command is vital. It goes Lord Thurgo → Sir Terror-Knight → Captain Bort → Sergeant Yellow-Fang → me. There are plans to make it longer but that’s it for the moment.
Right now me and my twelve fellow grunt-level goblins are in the cellar, sat on the coal heap, whilst Captain Bort outlines tonight’s mission. Blah, blah, blah. I really should be listening, but then if I was clever enough to do the right thing all the time then I really wouldn’t be good minion material. And my old mother, if I had one, would probably have said that evil plans always need a bit of flexibility in them, to cope with UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES. And she always said (probably, if she existed) that having at least a few of the minions without the least clue what’s going on is a good way of keeping it real. Anyway, that’s my excuse for sitting here gnawing on a lump of coal and narrating instead of paying attention to Captain Bort. Besides I’m next to Odo who appears to be attempting to fart the national anthem and it’s quite distracting.
“...blah, blah, blah.”
Now that I actually am listening it turns out that Captain Bort really is just repeating the word ‘blah’.
He sees that I’ve noticed and he coughs to clear his throat. “Blah and so on. Then we’ll rush up and hit them with-” I liked it better when I wasn’t paying attention, so I stop.
I guess it’s tough knowing nobody is going to listen and that even if they do the words will just run off them without leaving any impression of a plan, like water off the back of a particularly stupid duck. So it’s much easier if instead of preparing a plan briefing he just says what we all think he’s saying anyway. It’s efficient, and efficiency is, after all, one of the purest forms of evil.
“So, we’re all set then! Any questions?” Captain Bort slaps his pointing stick against the flipchart illustrating the master-plan (a rectangle) and the logistics (a triangle with a circle to one side).
“When’s dinner?” Alfonso asks. Alfonso always asks about dinner, sometimes while eating it.
“Anyone else?” Captain Bort casts a hopeful eye across the rest of us. I crunch my coal and swallow guiltily.
“Um?” I ask.
“Not a question.” The captain points his stick right at me. Which is kinda rude, frankly.
“Shouldn’t the circle be on the other side?” I ask. “And round?”
The captain swivels to examine his plan chart. “Well spotted, ugly little one.” He mutters and gets out his crayon to make corrections. “I was wondering if any of you would notice that.”
“Any more?” He watches us with his mistrustful eye now, which is on the opposite side of his head to the hopeful one.
Silence. Just the sound of goblins trying not to crunch as they eat the coal.
“Well then.” The captain finishes the replacement circle with a flourish of blue crayon. “To battle!”
And once more, just as always, we clamber up the grimy steps from the coal cellar, wedge open the cellar door and emerge black-footed beneath the many coats hanging from it, out into the hallway of Number 6 Victoria Avenue, or Castle Thurgo as our master titled it last Wednesday.
“To battle!” Captain Bort cries.
“Death or glory!” Sergeant Yellow-Fang shouts.
“Um...” I hate these multiple-choice questions. “Glory!” I holler. And we’re off.
Overheard by a goblin (left on the stairs):
Lord Thurgo (upstairs): Mum! Muuuuuum! .... .... MUM!
High Queen Claire (downstairs): What?
Lord Thurgo: MuuuuUUUuuuuuMMM!
High Queen Claire: WHAT? ...what is it, Billy?
Lord Thurgo: I’m Thurgo now!
(pause)
High Queen Claire: What is it... Thurgo?
Lord Thurgo: LORD Thurgo!
High Queen Claire: Billy!
Princess Pukey: Blurrrrg!
Lord Thurgo: How do you spell ‘counsel’?
High Queen Claire: Do you mean ‘counsel’ or ‘council’?