Clockwise Cat Strikes Back

Marchioness of Fressing. Pope said, "I banged her once or twice/but got infested with her
lice," to which Voltaire replied: "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer."
After he was through with Pope and feeling good and horny he looked up the
wench in Swinetown, who gave him a discount the second time around. "Come again,"
she said. "I'm afraid I can't," Voltaire replied, misunderstanding her intent.
Voltaire waded through the slops and reached his quarters at two in the morning.
The stench in the streets was horrendous. The sounds of the night intruded on his
philosophical thoughts as he twisted and turned in his lumpy bed: screams and shouts and
awful retching sounds as the patrons of the taverns and alehouses emptied their stomachs
of the foul liquids and gasses and tainted meats that had lain there all evening. Then came
the clop-clop-clop of a coach carrying another of the Nonentities to his palatial home and
mad laughter from the loony bin down the road. The noise was enough to drive anyone
crazy.
But Voltaire was actually having the time of his life. He got used to the puddings
and pies and the shit in the streets. He discovered Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton. He
met Swift and Walpole and befriended Bolingbroke and Chesterfield as well as the
Duchess of Marlborough, whom the Duke had liked to ball with his boots on after
galloping home from the battlefield. She was still a looker and still a ball of fire, giving
Voltaire a good dressing down when he dared to criticize her memoirs. Voltaire took
everything in stride. He was used to being hated and periodically blew off steam with the
Swinetown wenches. One of them used a whip on him, but that's also another story.
Toward the end of 1728 Voltaire returned to France and made a killing in the state
lottery. After that, it was all smooth sailing for the little man, give or take a couple of runins
with the law. He was on his way to immortality.
Author bio: Fred Russell is the pen name of an American-born writer living in Israel.
His novels Rafi's World (Fomite Press), dealing with Israel's emerging criminal class, and
The Links in the Chain (CCLaP), a thriller set in New York against an Arab-Israel
background, were both published in 2014. His stories and essays have appeared in Third
Coast, Polluto, Fiction on the Web, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ontologica,
Unlikely Stories: Episode 4, The Satirist, CounterPunch, Gadfly, Cultural Weekly,
Ragazine, etc.