Cody Samet-Shaw

In the year Nineteen hundred and Eighty-Four, I was born the only child to a family of wealthy French aristocrats. As such, I was to inherit their vast financial empire upon their deaths, which, upon learning of my inheritance, I planned to bring about with as much expediency as possible.

Sadly, they doggedly persisted in living. Neither poisoned food, nor hired squads of Swedish death mercenaries, nor repeated exposure to high doses of radiation from small samples of Plutonium hidden under their bed was successful in bringing around their (in my mind) timely demise.

Then came my fourth birthday. I suppose, in my haste to be rid of my parents, I became sloppy and careless. My scheme to dispose of them through a shrapnel bomb hidden in my birthday cake was not one of my better ideas, and I still feel shame when I think of it. The cook (damn him) caught me trying to plant the device in the baked concoction, and promptly brought me before my parents. I used every manner of deception and persuasion I knew, but to no avail. My treachery had been discovered. My mother wept, but my father was as unmovable as the Rocks of Gibraltar. His countenance was one of granite as he cast me out from his family, disowning me forever.

I was but a young lad of four, thrown into the harsh and unforgiving world, with nothing but the clothes on my back, a trust fund worth several million American dollars, and my faithful servant Smythe. I had attempted to filch several choice pieces of silverware on my way through the kitchen to the back door (father would not allow me to leave by the front) but I was frisked by the scullery maid, and was undone.

I knew I had to rely on my own wits to survive. Smythe was a loyal servant, but had the brains of a sea slug. His favorite leisure time activity had been watching paint peel off the wall of the gardener's tool shed. I attempted panhandling, begging, every method of acquiring money I could contrive to think of, but it was very nearly fruitless. By the end of my first week on the streets, only 50 cents and a subway ticket stub had found its way into my outstretched hand.

There was only one thing to be done, I reasoned. Travel to America! The land of opportunity! Smythe and I booked passage on a ship bound for that part of the world, and set sail for the Promised Land! Life in America was harsh at first. I had been raised in complete isolation in my parents' mountain home in the Alps, and so knew little of the world. My life on the streets in Europe had been bad enough, but in America, it was something else entirely. Smythe and I spent our first night in America in a back alley, with Smythe fending off giant rats and stray cats and dogs with stick while I slept.

We emerged from our alley, and began the search for more suitable accommodations. We found none, and so spent a second night in the alley.

This was getting tiresome; I decided that I was to have no more of it. It was winter, and we were in the frigid northern part of America. I had heard tales of a warm and pleasant land that lay in the south. Some called it "The Sunshine State". Others called it "Florida". Smythe and I began the trek to this golden place at once.

When we arrived, I found that neither "The Sunshine State" nor "Florida" did this place justice. I decided to make up my own name for it. I finally settled on "Wretched, Swampy Breeding Ground for Enormous Stinging Insects Where No One In His Right Mind, Not Even Smythe Would Want To Live."

This place was even worse than the north. The north had been bad enough, with its snow and ice, but here, one could die of heat stroke after an activity no more strenuous than standing up! I yearned to leave, but our supply of cash had long ago been exhausted, and I was not due to come into my trust fund until I was 18 years of age. So, in Florida we stayed.

I found a family that was willing to take me in, and adopt me as their own child. They gave me some ridiculous last name, which half the time, I do not even bother to remember. Samet-Shaw or something like that. A horribly common name for one of the noble birth, like myself, but there was naught else to be done. My first name, which in my native tongue is a truly wondrous sound, they shortened to "Cody". How vulgar.

My life passed without much event in Florida, with each year slowly dragging by, each more boring than the last. Except for the day that I saw in the television news that both my birth parents had been killed in a train accident. It brought a warm glow to my heart.

So now you know my story. I hope it pleases you. But know this as well; I am not always destined to live as a commoner among giant mosquitoes and Canadian tourists. No indeed! Some day I will come into my own, and the world will tremble before my might! I will rule this world like no other before me! Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Genghis Kahn, the great conquerors will pale in comparison to me! Even you, you wretched peon, will fall before my feet in humble supplication. And on that day, as you beg for your life, I will laugh. Because I will know then that all was not in vein, and that I have been vindicated.