"Cassius Clay was wrong when he uttered he was the greatest!" A man pounded his fist on the heavy oak table in his great hall in his palatial mansion.
"It is I, Count Ladislaus Zark who should have the honor of that title! No one out there has the style and panache that I possess, nor the cleverness." He dramatically whipped his purple lined opera cape about himself as he strode towards the window.
It overlooked his gardens, vast and grandiose. Within them a maze made of thorny bushes.
"That," he pointed, "is where I should have sent that runt of an UNCLE agent Kuryakin, instead of letting my darlings feed upon him. There he would have surely languished and died and not have been able to touch my control panels, recalling my bats and ruining my plans."
"Will you quit the drama Lenny," a dark haired man moaned.
Zark turned to listen to him as the fellow sat in one of the great armed chairs, smoking a cigar "Knock it off with the phony accent and that Bela Lugosi act."
"How dare you speak to me thusly? I am the great Count Zark!" He struck a defiant and haughty pose, now pointing his finger at the man.
"You're my brother and you ain't no Count. Your name is Leonard Zarkowski and you're from Jersey City."
Zark lowered himself to the window seat, his head bowed in resignation.
"Yeah who am I kidding Willie? I couldn't cut it as an actor and now when I should have been the greatest villain in all the world, that pipsqueak Russian never heard of me. Kinda shatters the ego."
"Why don't you come home with me, get your job back in the electronics division of Aerotek, find a nice girl, get married and forgetta 'bout it? You can go back to raising pigeons again. No more bats, huh?"
In a moment of clarity Lenny Zarkowski returned...looking and sounding like himself; he seemed to be contemplating his brother's words but when the suggestion of surrendering his beloved bats came up... that was it, that was the last straw.
Lenny's eyes went wide and became playful but menacing. The Lugosi-like accent returned.
"No you are wrong Willie, I am and will always be the great Count Zark. And I will make the UNCLE regret their lack of acknowledgement of that greatness! I will make Solo and Kuryakin rue the day they ever dismissed me!"
"Aww Jeez, Lenny will ya just give it up. Ma is really missing you," his brother stood.
"I have no mother. I have no brother. I am Zark and I am…"
"Yeah yeah, you're the greatest villain the world, I know. Look, I'll tell Ma you send your love and we'll leave it at that. Now I'm going, it's Halloween and I have to give out candy to the trick or treaters. So you take care of yourself. Try to get better Lenny?"
Zark turned away from his brother, staring out the imaginary window again.
Silhouetted against a full moon, a flock of bats fluttered past, and in the distance there was the howling of wolves
He smiled."Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make." Zark quoted from the book, 'Dracula.' "
"Perhaps it is time for other creatures to come to my aid. 'Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.' Come to me! Hear me! " Zark gestured with a clawed hand, using his will to call the unseen dead.
"We learn from failure, not from success. "There is a reason why all things are as they are.' I must rethink my strategy, but first and foremost Kuryakin and Solo will pay."
Willie Zarkowski shook his head as he rapped on the cell door for the orderly to let him out.
The treatments weren't working. His brother was still having his delusions, thinking he was living in some fancy schmancy mansion, when in reality he was in a padded cell in New York's Bellevue Hospital.
Count Zark; Lenny was obsessed with that identity, and Bela Lugosi too. And where he came up with these characters called UNCLE agents, well that was a new one….
a/n: all quotes in italics are from 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker