“I was ghoulish before, but now, I’ll be more transparent with my business practices,” said Richard Cox.
Photo by Abby Offenhauser
Multi-millionaire CEO, lobbyist, and oil mogul Richard Cox shocked the nation last week with his decision to “formally retire from sitting on his laurels and begin to actually do something worthwhile,” according to Cox himself.
Following a lavish birthday party extravaganza, which spanned across approximately 75% of the territory of the Maldives, Cox distributed his shares of the company equally among the board of directors and immediately formed his own charity foundation aiming to “help those less fortunate than [him],” to which he donated the rest of his estate.
At a press conference for his new charity, Cox revealed the reasoning behind this drastic departure from his previous lifestyle.
“I looked at myself in the mirror one morning and realized that I am ninety-nine years old and not long for this world. I wanted to leave it a better place than I found it,” explained Cox. “Oh, and the ghost visitation. The ghost visitation admittedly did play a big part in it.”
According to audience members, when asked to elaborate on what he meant by a “ghost visitation,” Cox reportedly “looked around dramatically, as if expecting to see lurking specters.”
“It was the night after my birthday party, and I was a-tossing and a-turning in my yacht, when I saw this figure dressed in tattered robes and bound with chains. It told me that it was the ghost of my past, present, and future, and that it was there to impart a moral lesson upon me, and felt that I, not yet a billionaire, still possessed a bit of soul and might be persuaded.
“Still believing myself to be in a dream, I asked why, if it was insisting on the whole ‘Christmas Carol’ shtick, there was only one ghost instead of three. The ghastly phantasm told me that the spirit world was beyond material reality but not beyond free-market capitalism, and that budget cuts had been especially rough that year.
“In reverse Dickensian fashion, the ghost showed me my future first. I saw fire and brimstone; I heard the agony of damned souls and saw the devil himself dancing over my desiccated corpse. The ghost then plucked me from the visions of my personal hell into the hell of different people. I saw people living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to pay rent, or feed their children, or paying healthcare bills. The ghost told me this was the present, and that all of the people I saw were suffering — directly and indirectly — due to me. The ghost then showed me opulent visions of my youth, the parties and riches I enjoyed, but somehow, the memories of it were now soured by the knowledge just how many people I exploited to live that life. The ghost then left me with one more vision of damnation, promising to drag me there itself if I did not make tangible change.
“Which is why I am so pleased to announce the funds were donated to aspiring A.I. tech startups. They’re trying to make the world a better place. I respect that.”
“The ghost continues to visit me in my dreams every night,” Cox added. “Apparently, everything I’ve done thus far hasn’t appeased it yet. I think I’ll start lobbying for school voucher systems next.”
"Annelise" walked out of the sea thirty years ago and they have looked back multiple times since! When he is not writing and editing satire, she enjoys arts and crafts and taking long strolls on the MC Escher stairs.
