This was how Mister Jerome Spencer McDonald, master of the world, passed away. The entire world mourned the day that the storm killed their great leader, a man who had only contempt and hate for his weak subjects.
Under a blisteringly hot sun on a pebbled beach a naked old man stood inert, his mind a blank. He was a hostage to the burning pebbles that lay between him and the endless cliff that seem to melt into the sky. This was the humble beginning of Jerome's life on the beach. But his life was not a simple one. He did not know who he was or where he had come from, only that he was alone. His instinct willed him to escape the interminable beach and that meant climbing the eternal cliff that stretched to the horizon. He climbed for a day without ever seeing the top. As the sunset, he had passed the point of no return, leaving him no choice but to jump. As he slipped off the ledge, a sombre figure bounded up the cliff face only to watch Jerome fall to an uncertain death.
The old man woke to be confronted by the towering figure of a debonair Black Cat, standing on its hind legs. It was the cat that had tried to save Jerome. The cat was a philosophical sort, not the type to be appreciated by the old man, but that did not bother the cat. As Jerome pondered his situation, he noticed an island on the horizon; a paradise of white sand encircling the rich green palm trees. But how was he to get there?
Jerome's first inquiries were with the Great Lobster, union leader and general bully. In return for Jerome's curiosity, the lobster snipped off a finger as punishment for his insolence. But Jerome was undeterred going on hunger strike until the Great Lobster returned. Their second encounter went no better than the first, the lobster throwing him into the middle of the ocean. He tried to swim to the island but the tide dragged him to the abyss.
Again Jerome awoke on the pebble beach to find the Black Cat towering above him. It informed the old man that he had been summoned before the judge, the Grand Poobah. Prostrate before the judge, Jerome was read a very long list of charges against him in a language he did not understand. The sentence passed, Jerome was condemned to crush the island's beach to the finest sand. To help him in his endeavour, he was given a boiler suit and a pair of lead boots. The old man did not understand why he had been condemned as he denied even being the man they called Mister Jerome Spencer McDonald. He was just poor Jerome who had been attacked by the Great Lobster.
At first he refused to work, but as the centuries passed, so his ardour waned. He put on the huge lead boots and made his way to the beach. Before him stretched an eternity of beach. Crushing the pebbles to shale, terrible visions struck him, his knees buckling as the dreams beat him black and blue. But the beatings did not deter Jerome who had set out to conquer the island filled with horrific memories. Many years of relentless crushing had passed before a sorry cockatoo washed up on the beach, telling him that it would help him to build a boat for his escape. Jerome built a boat of driftwood and fish paste.
Washed up in paradise, Jerome was revived by the tender touch of a beautiful nubile called Love. She, with her three helpers, proclaimed him their king, selflessly loving and caring for him. But their love could not quell Jerome's need for revenge against the Cat. The night before Jerome's confrontation with the c at, Jerome raped Love only to tall unconscious as he climaxed. On waking, it was the Cat who lay beside him!
Back on his island, Jerome lost his sanity. Blindly, he continued to crush the past to sand. He accepted is fate and in time, a fragile friendship bloomed between the Cat, called Felix, and himself.
Eventually, the day came when there was only a thin strip of pebbles left to crush. As he stumbled across the pebbles, he was assaulted by a most terrible revelation. lone on a frozen lake, a young Jerome and his half-wit elder brother Alfred, ran on the ice. Jerome so ianted his brother to disappear from his life that he led him onto the thin ice where he drowned.
Failing to reconcile the dream, the relentless routine continued, first grinding away his lead boots. He continued bare foot. Slowly his feet ground away, leaving his legs honed to the sharpest points. Now he could only totter across his sandy kingdom.
Before the Grand Poobah, he was unable to present his handful of dust, his pointed legs sucked into the fine dust. Stuck up to his waist, he begged for help but Felix only watched him sink. The summons was adjourned for a week to let the old man dig himself out.
Day after day, Jerome slipped deeper into his sandy pit. On the fifth day, Love appeared wanting to help him but he refused. That night, in the darkness of his dreams, he was catapulted into a tunnel of brightly windows, each presenting a moment from his previous life. At the end of the tunnel, he passed through door that opened onto a frozen lake. In the distance was a lone figure running towards the centre. Jerome ran after it, his pointed legs slipping on the ice but he never caught it up as it fell through the ice. As he searched for the victim, the stony face of his mother slammed against the ice, before morphing into faces of his victims from his previous life.
The sand was now up to his neck as Jerome returned for a second night in the dark tunnel of his dreams. As he passed through the door a second time, his clone, mister Jerome Spencer McDonald, confronted him. The suave young man tried to tempt him with heroic rhetoric of hate and denial but Jerome resisted. Then, as the night before, Jerome saw two figures running across the ice, one was his mother, the other is brother Alfred. Jerome ran as fast as he could only to see Alfred fall through the thin ice. Alfred egged for help, his blue hand outstretched. Jerome, unable to overcome the satisfaction of being rid of is sibling, resisted saving his brother, reconfirming his original sin. Running back to his mother, she transformed into a shark and tore him apart.
The sand had risen up to Jerome's chin when Felix appeared for the end of week summons. The deluded Jerome declared that he had finally quelled his hate, begging the Cat's help but he refused. The wind blew up, heralding the Grand Poobah's arrival, the dust suffocating Jerome. The lost old man glimpsed Felix transform into his brother Arthur, before the sand covered the last of him. All that was left was of the once great mister Jerome Spencer McDonald was a petrified forearm sticking out of the sand. The Grand Poobah closed the case, surmising that Jerome had been unable to reconcile his hate.