Burns sat in his office, still fuming from the meeting with his father. Who did he think he was, anyway? That man wasn't the same man who had raised him. He couldn't be. It was impossible! He had hoped that his father would have come to his senses after all that time, but... well, obviously, he hadn't.
Words alone simply could not express how disgusting it was! His own father, a once powerful and very threatening man with brilliant ideas on how to put others in their place...
Standing up, Burns took a quick walk around his office to cool himself down. It didn't work anywhere near as much as he had hoped, but it was good enough. Burns opened the door to his office and peered out at Smithers.
"Something wrong?" Smithers asked.
Pausing, Monty Burns looked back in his office, at the large and glowering painting of his father. "No. I want you to get rid of the paintings in my office. I've decided to redecorate, and the paintings are not in my future plans."
Smithers paused. "What do you want me to do with them?"
Burns looked back in his office. There were three other paintings in the room. A large painting of himself, matching the one of his father, and two others: a pack of lions bringing down a zebra, and a large crocodile waiting patiently in a river. He wanted to keep those two, and perhaps the one of himself as well. It was just the painting of his father he wanted destroyed.
"Put them aside so they can be brought up to my mansion." Burns replied. He went back into his office, carefully walking around the place where the trap door was, and sitting back at his desk.
For once, Burns did some work. Usually he let his assistants do his paperwork, but he wasn't in the mood to nap.
-
There was a knock on his door. Burns was surprised; ever since he hired Smithers, he was warned of who was at the door over the intercom.
Burns hit the intercom button – the real intercom button, since the button for the trap door had been moved, as he had ordered, to the other side of his desk.
"Come in."
The door swung open. Slowly. Burns leaned forward with anticipation, although he had a feeling that he all ready knew who it was.
His father walked in, looking more disheveled than he had at lunch. Burns leaned back at frowned at him.
"What do you want?" he asked coldly.
"I want to talk to you." Burns' father replied, walking straight to Burns' desk. He stood in front of it, a patient look on his face. It annoyed his son beyond words.
"Say what you must, and leave. I'm a busy man." Burns said, resting his head on the back of his chair.
"That's not how two people talk, Charles."
"Stop calling me Charles." Burns snarled, leaning forward. "I go by Montgomery now. The name Montgomery Burns put fear in hearts before I used it, and it will put fear in hearts now, whether you agree with it or not."
C. M. Burns was surprised to see that his father looked sad. It made him angrier.
"I wish you wouldn't use my name like that, Charles."
Burns gritted his teeth, and prepared a retort. His father spoke first.
"I know. My name came with an essence of fear attached, and it was as simple as using your middle name to get that. I wouldn't have passed up that opportunity either."
Silence. Burns looked suspiciously at his father, who just stood there and stared at the carpet sadly. Minutes passed slowly. Painfully.
"This office is a lot like my old one." His father said, looking up from the carpet. "And I see you've had a painting of me made up. What's that under it?" He asked, pointing at a thin pedestal with a little golden jar on top.
"Your ashes." Burns replied. Finally, something went just as he had expected: His father shivered. Visibly. It made Burns smile.
"Whose ashes are they really?"
"They belong to no one. I burned some old photographs of you and Mater, split them up into each urn" He paused to point out the other golden urn under the painting of himself, " and I say that they are yours and Mater's ashes. Yours under your portrait, and Mater's under mine. Of course, I don't tell anyone that they aren't really human remains.
"If you were both actually dead, and I came into possession of your bodies, I certainly wouldn't keep them in my office. Goodness, no!"
He paused, and waited for the question.
"What would you do with us, Charles?"
"Well," Mr. Burns said slowly, a grin spreading like infection across his face, "my attack dogs need to be trained to love the taste of human flesh, and it is quite difficult to find human parts to feed to them. I suppose your rotting bodies would suffice, although I would prefer it if you were both alive when you were fed to them."
Burns' father shook his head, and his son laughed.
"You certainly are my son."
"And proud." Burns replied. "Or, at least, I was until you were ruined! Ruined by Mater's selfish actions, that witch. My dream was to work beside you, the most terrible and powerful father/son team in Springfield! It's your fault that things didn't end up that way! You disgust me." With that, Burns leaned back in his chair, using the light cast by the window behind him to obscure himself in shadows.
His father pulled the shades closed.
"I'm trying to help you." He said as darkness fell over the office.
"You're trying to ruin me." Burns replied as he hit another button on the underside of his desk, and the overhead lights came on.
"Please, listen to what I have to say."
"You will not," Burns stood up and face his father, "fill my head with your hippie claptrap about love and peace!"
"Hippies haven't existed in a decade, Charles."
"I don't care what they're calling hippies now-a-days; it's all the same thing anyway."
Exasperated, Monty Burns' father put a hand over his face and sighed. "Can't we just talk? A friendly conversation between father and son. It doesn't have to be about this."
"What would it be about, then? Me? My life? How I've been wasting it? I think not."
"What about your assistant? We can talk about him."
Both men looked at the door, as if Smithers could hear them.
"Alright, fine. His name is Waylon Smithers. Honestly, he's he only decent assistant I've had since your old assistant, Davies."
"What happened to Davies?"
"I don't know." Mr. Burns said with a shrug. "I fired him."
The older man sighed, and chose to ignore it. "Right. So... what are you planning on buying Mr. Smithers for a wedding gift?"
"A wedding what?"
"Gift. You know... it's traditional to give gifts when someone gets married."
Burns looked confused. "He's not getting married. I don't even think he's seeing anyone."
M. Frederick Burns just stared at his son for a while. Could anyone be that dense? "He's got pictures of her all over his desk. I asked him about them, and he told me that they were engaged. I assumed you already knew."
Monty shrugged. "I can't be expected to keep tabs on all of my employees love lives."
"I think you should do something nice for him, for his wedding. Give him a couple thousand dollars so he can put a down payment on a house. Tell him that it's his bonus for this year, given early. You can even skip giving him a Christmas bonus. Just this one. After all, you said he was a good assistant, right? And you want to keep him around."
Burns snorted. "I'll get right on that." he said sarcastically.
The two just stared at each other for a moment. Monty Burns sneering at his father, and Frederick Burns looking frustrated.
"I should be going." Fredrick said eventually. "I have my business to look after."
"And my, your newfound brand of kindness seems to be making you a lot of money. How can you afford those disgusting, stained clothes?" Burns muttered, just loud enough so that his father could hear him. His father turned to look back, just as Burns smoothed down his expensive silk tie.
"I'll come see you later." Burns' father said, ignoring the comment.
"Of course."
A few seconds later, the door slammed and Charles Montgomery Burns was alone.