Congratulations Fig Newton Baron!

Your boot will land on the villager’s throat as your men set upon his wife.  He’ll try to look away, but you won’t let him.  You’ll hold a gun to his head and force him to open his eyes.

“Watch,” you’ll drone at him.

He will watch.

This will be but one of many such atrocities that you’ll visit upon the people of the small, culturally obscure by vaguely Eastern European village that night.  Dogs will be released.  Children will be scarred.  Elderly men and women will be rounded up and strung up in gibbets, where they’ll be displayed for months.  You’ll calmly inform the villagers that anyone who attempts to free them or bury their bodies without your express orders will be shot.

When all is done, you’ll return to the camp a few miles up the river, where your employer sits in a suit, smoking a cigar.  He’ll smile at you around his stogie.

“How’d the night go?”

You’ll shrug.

“Sounds good to me!” he’ll cackle before throwing you a packet of Fig Newtons.  You’ll tear into it like a wild beast, ripping the package apart, cramming Fig Newtons into your mouth.  When you’re finished you’ll emerge from a fugue state, face covered in Fig goo, still salivating.  You’ll look your horrified employer in the eyes and ask:

“How long was I out?”

He’ll shrug uncomfortably.  He’s taken full advantage of that gypsy curse to forever crave Fig Newtons, and he might be a former vice president turned oppressive psychopath who now spends his time enforcing the status quo in Eastern Europe, but he’s still horrified by you.  By what you are capable of, by what you become when Fig Newtons are in your hands, and by what you will do to him when he no longer has Fig Newtons.

This man lives in righteous fear of the day when he is finally of no more use to you, a day you lazily dream about with bittersweet abandon.

Congratulations Fig Newton Baron!