Chapter Text
How many times had he woken up like this? The bed was in shambles- he didn't know the name of the girl in it, even though he knew he had heard it a million times- she was in the fucking ad-spot yesterday… Goddamn it. The alarm- why the fuck was the alarm still going? Didn't it know that he had a massive headache pounding at every sound? He slid his arm over everything, not daring to open his eyes to the light that he knew would blind him, knocking things from the nightstand until he found, and silenced the source of the noise.
Alright. Gotta get up. 9:00am meeting with the art department over the photo-shoot from yesterday- 10:00am photo-op with some charity, an orphanage that needed to keep the kids warm or something, 11:00- FUCK what was going on at 11? Something important… He'd figure it out at the office. He'd overslept, somehow, and sitting here was eating away more and more time. He got up, and stumbled to the shower, cursing at his delay as he did.
There was a time when he would get up, make some pancakes, read or knit or something, and lounge until midday when he finally went to make his sales pitch. It hadn't been like that for a long time. Now he had to rush- everything, always frantic, always demanding more and more time, and time, he had realized, really was money. You had to put every waking second into the business, or it would fail. If you wanted it to grow, you had to just throw time at it.
There was already a dress shirt and pants laid out for him. He didn't remember doing it, but whatever, it was done. He slipped into them, brushed his teeth, and realized that, once again, he wouldn't have time for breakfast. As he sat back down on the bed to slip on his socks and shoes, the girl awoke.
"What time is it?" She asked in a panic.
He glanced at the clock, "It's about," he signed, "8:40."
"Fuck!" She spat and threw off the blanket, "I've got to be at the agency at 9:00!"
"Relax, baby," he sighed, buttoning a green, striped jacket, and pulling out a cigarette case. He opened it, reveling in his own face etched on the silver, "You need a thneed."
He offered her a cigar made from the same plant as his own marvelous invention. One of the many uses of the wonder plant was that smoking it produced a relaxing effect- and smelled amazing- it was one of the only ways he could get through his increasingly stressful days.
"I'll call you a limo," he added, lighting the one she had between her lips and then his own. She didn't respond- she had hastily dressed- in the short time it took him to utter that sentence, and was already heading outside. He sighed and proceeded to keep his promise, dialing for transportation for her- and deciding whether or not it was worth walking the 20 feet to his office past the folk who were protesting the "deforestation". It probably wasn't. The last thing he needed was some paparazzi leech snapping a picture of him being pelted with tomatoes or some stupid shit.
What the fuck was wrong with some people? They had nothing to bitch about- just wanted the limelight. The company was reseeding, it wasn't hurting the forest, it was supplying over 100,000 jobs- but there were always people in the world who just couldn't wait to destroy the success of others. It was human nature- jealousy, greed, and the like. But he really didn't want to deal with them today, so he arranged a car to come and pick him up, as well.
He took a long draw and blew a billow of smoke. It was going to be a long day. They all seemed long anymore.
He grabbed his hat and headed out the door.
"Mr Once-ler," his assistant was upon him the second he stepped out of the elevator.
"It's 8:59," he slid a gold watch back into his pocket, "Schedule, fast, let's go."
"Your 9 o'clock is here with the magazine proofs for you to sign off on," she rattled as she handed him his coffee, "You've got the photo-op in GreenVille at 10:00- warmth for orphans, we've got security standing by to escort you. At 11, you've got a meeting with the business beuro to talk about the buyout, at 12 you've got a lunch meeting with the head of the logging union, at 1:00-"
"I can't do a lunch meeting," he interrupted as they came upon the conference room, "I was supposed to do something else, I looked over it yesterday."
"You had nothing scheduled for noon, you were just going to eat with Norma, I rescheduled it, because you have a lot to deal with today,"
"Alright, what's going on at 1:00?"
"You've got to meet with the engineers about mechanizing the spinning, then directly after that you have to meet with the workers who will be downsized when we switch to mechanization. At 3:00, you've got to do employee reviews for your managerial staff, which, I won't lie to you, is going to take a few hours, because you went on and on yesterday about inefficiency and how you need restructuring, but at 5:00, your mother was very insistent that she get to see you, so I went ahead and scheduled her in. I thought that if you weren't finished you could bump her back."
"Must be nice to be able to think that," Once drowned his coffee in one gulp, "Get me another of these, will you?"
He lit another cigar off the dieing embers of the last one and tossed the discarded butt into a near-by garbage shoot before stepping into the conference room.
6:00- exhausted, the Once-ler slumped over his ornate desk, made of the truffila wood that he so loved, and tried to finally slow down enough to breath. He had his hat slung over the back of his chair, he had just signed a $20,000 check to get his mom a table at some fancy-ass charity dinner and promised he would be there, even though he had already forgotten what the charity was, and he knew she didn't give a damn- it was just somewhere to be seen.
Just take a second to breath, then he could get up and drown the stress, in whatever way first came to mind. One thing he had learned was that when you had the kind of money he had, you could honestly do anything you wanted. And with all the side-buisnesses he was opening, he more or less owned all of GreenVille. He needed to get working on the plans for that place- he was slowly buying up the land to turn into a sort of Utopian city-state, but he had been so drained lately that he just didn't have the energy.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a box of the truffila cigars, opened his case and began to refill it. That done, he took a last one, put it to his lips, and lit it. The match had just gone out when he heard an annoying voice ask,
"Are you smokin now, beanpole?"
"Yes," he hissed, and spun his chair around, "I'm smoking. What do you care?"
"Why does it smell like truffila tuffs?" A smallish creature in oranges and browns was standing at the double-door entrance to the giant balcony that overlooked the land the Once-ler owned.
"Why do you smell like," the man paused, "Hey you seriously do smell terrible. I'm not even making fun of you- why do you smell like that?"
"Have you been outside?" the Lorax shouted.
"Not today- look, mustache, I'm tired. Can you please bitch about whatever you're gonna bitch about and let me rest?" Once-ler took a long, deep drag from his cigar and closed his eyes, leaning against the chair, the only chair he'd ever had that he could lean into, normally he was to tall, he toppled or overshot the back completely.
"Have you heard any swammy swans singing?" the Lorax asked.
"I don't know," Once-ler had expected to sound confident and uncaring, but it came out whiny, "I have more important things to think about then birds, mustache."
"They're dieing." He said it simply, concisely.
"What, the birds?" the Once-ler sat up, "Why? What happened?"
"What happened?" the Lorax shouted, "WHAT HAPPENED!" he marched up to the Once-ler and grabbed his wrist. He drug him to his feet, bent more then half over, and out onto the balcony, "LOOK!"
"Looks like rain," the Once-ler shrugged.
"RAIN!" the Lorax was growing more and more irritated, "Look, I speak for the trees, but I'm also in charge of the Swammy Swans."
"Are you?" he hit the apathy perfectly that time.
"Yes!" The creature hissed as the Once-ler blew a puff in his face, "And the smoke coming out of that factory is blacking out the sky. They can't fly. They can't catch fish. They can't raise their young. They are dieing."
"It's dark because the sun is setting." The Once-ler rolled his eyes, "There are always clouds in the sky. The factory doesn't make that much smoke- we just need to vent the dust and flakes and everything coming off the machinery, not to mention the wood-dust and the dander and whatnot. If we didn't vent it, it'd be stuck in the factory with the workers- that's 1: illegal and 2: inhumane."
"Inhumane? You're wiping out an entire species!" The Lorax shouted.
"There is no way that one man could kill an entire species," the Once-ler leaned against the railing of his balcony, "Look, mustache- over there in that clearing- I'm building something. I'm expanding the town. I'm helping people." He arched his eyebrows.
"Why do humans need more space?" The Lorax asked in horror- the opposite to the emotion Once-ler had expected.
"Because so many people have moved here to work for me," the Once-ler explained smiling, "Because I'm helping so many people. Paying them a living wage, giving them decent hours and a benefits package, donating to the school system so their children will grow up…" he grumbled, "Better then I did."
"This is a bad idea." The Lorax's voice was full of worry.
The Once-ler had tried to explain. He was dead tired, he was annoyed, he was being shot down, but he had tried to remain calm. But the fact that this little… thing couldn't understand all the good he was doing- snapped something inside him. And then he got mad. He got terribly mad.
"You think all my ideas are bad!" he snapped, "But they aren't! I'm the good guy here! I'm helping people! I'm this whole area's economic backbone! I have customers and followers and groupies! Everyone loves me! My family loves me! You are always trying to tear me down! Get the hell out of my office!"
"Get your office off my land!" The tiny monster countered.
"It's not your land!" the Once-ler yelled, infuriated.
And the phone rang.
"I need you out!" Once-ler shoved past the creature and headed back to his desk.