Improving Stories for Tiny Tories

The Creeping Error

Once upon a time there was an Error, which crept into some Accounts. As soon as the Error arrived, it was seized, searched, questioned about its financial and racial status, and finally brought quivering before the Honourable Member to whom the Accounts belonged.

"Migratory and misbegotten miscreant," fulminated the Honourable Member, "how dare you drag your unauthorised carcass into so noble a residence, so pristine an estate, so Caucasian a sepulchre as the ledgers of a hard-working parliamentarian?"
"I beg you to excuse my erroneous presence," the Error replied, "and I ask for the most severe public correction which can be administered by your entire private regiment of dominatrices."
"We are always prepared to temper justice with mercy," said the Honourable Member hastily; "if you work hard and play by the rules, you may possibly delay retribution."

So the Error crept back to its place in the Accounts, and gained the Honourable Member a small fortune from three corporate sinecures, twenty-seven speaking engagements and four hundred and ninety-three free lunches of which, thanks to the Error's tactful efforts, the Accounts remained blissfully ignorant. The Error grew and prospered, and was only ejected when the Accounts grew so implausibly mutated that they were opened up by an Interfering Bureaucrat and subjected to compulsory surgery. The Honourable Member sacked his accountant, denounced the Error as a filthy foreign influence of which he had been entirely unaware, and subsequently made it a confidential offer of a place in the Electoral Register.