Dawn of the Opossum

Gut Check

Mustard Seed

 

“Imagine yourself as being all powerful.  You are the judge, the jury, the executioner,” the transmission goes on.  “The time will come when *you* will teach the world what is right and what is wrong.”

“I can’t believe this shit actually works,” I say.

You’d be surprised.

Himalia and Feuerborn had been ramping up their subsonic transmissions to me lately.  While vague at first – merely pumping me up to be the supreme arbiter of justice on Earth – they’d become more and more precise about just who my enemies are, and where and when I must bring them to justice.

“In time the murderers must pay the price for their bloodlust,” it continues.  “Picture yourself doing to them what they’ve done to millions of innocent souls.  Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.  You alone are the wrath of God.”

We should make more journal entries before we go.

It’s time to pack.

*****

Agent Feuerborn moved from the relative peace of the northern reflecting pool, down the steps and toward the barricade.  He paced inside the arc of bollards, weaving among the various uniformed security personnel, eyeing the crowd.  It was difficult for him to tune out the rasping chants of, “My body, my choice,” the bullhorn commandos’ incomprehensible legato litanies, the undercurrent of rumbling voices.  There were inconsequential scuffles between protesters and counter-protesters that caught his attention, but he wasn’t interested in those things.

Jay Ledsinger was standing among the trees across 1st Street when Feuerborn spotted him.

“Jack Jack Blue, Jack Jack Actual,” Feuerborn called over his concealed comms.

“Go ahead.”

“Eyes on Tango.  Tree line west of my 20, over.”

“Seen.  I’m Oscar Mike.  Wait one.”

One of Feuerborn’s plain clothes operators moved toward Jay.  The operator stood next to him, placed a backpack on the spare grass between them, made the brief small talk, then walked away.

“Package delivered, over.”

“Copy.  Actual out.”

A roar went up from the crowd.  Feuerborn turned back to look up at the lectern with its cockfight of microphones, sitting atop the lower set of steps and centered between the reflecting pools.  The Supreme Court behind framed the scene as the usual suspects of Democrat Representatives and Senators did their best imitation of the Denzel Strut to take their place among the gathering gaggle there.

Last to join was the triumphantly smirking Madame Speaker herself.  She took her rightful place before the hungry mic’s.

Applause erupted.  And drowned out the crack of the first shot.

Feuerborn watched as Mrs Pelosi’s face disappeared, to be replaced by another covered bright red and mottled in Madame Speaker’s blood and brains.  It was Mr Adam Schiff’s puckered visage; and in that split second of recognition, Schiff’s own head emptied to its right upon Mr Shumer, in a sort of Hot Potato of gore.  Schiff slumped out of sight.  Shumer screamed as his face became the very essence of cowardice before it too disintegrated into fragments of brilliant bone amid murky fluid.

The Squad comically fled in a group, stumbling, falling, all clad in red dresses and impractical high heels, garb grasping at a contrarian fantasy of submission to the male’s visceral rage that they simultaneously coveted and despised.  Sadly, on this day, rather than getting at least the good grudge fuck, they were killed, mowed down, in a bad way, by that which they mocked, by bullets whose purchase they’d voted to approve.

Feuerborn turned to find Jay – this was not the plan!  But Jay was still standing in the shade of the trees, the backpack yet lay untouched by his feet.  Jay should be shooting at Pussyhats; he was doing nothing.

More gunfire.  Screams.  An Entire Fucking Crowd of Screams!  Feuerborn drew his own weapon while taking a knee, head on a swivel for the threat.

Congress Critters were getting ventilated and dropping in rapid fashion, some cowering, some running, blood spoiling the concrete.

Security had opened fire… but on whom?  Where was the threat?

Ho. Ly. Fuck!  Feuerborn realized in pants-shitting panic that it was the uniformed officers who were slaughtering Pelosi et al.

A quick glance to Jay.  Gone.  Backpack still there.

“All Jack Jacks, all Jack Jacks.  Secure the Tango and fall back.  Repeat:  Secure the Tango and fall back,” he took the briefest of moments to hope that his team couldn’t hear his voice trembling.  

“UNFUCK THIS.

“NOW.

“OUT.”

Then to himself, “Ledsinger, just what in the hell have you done?”

He was about to find out.

 

“You can hear happiness staggering on down the street,

Footprints dressed in red.”

—Jimi Hendrix

 

“What a day, what a day!” I joyfully think to myself.  I’d been part of some glorious victories in the war, but this… This!  I can’t get too cocky; I’ve still got Feurborn’s and others’ blood splattered on me from their failed interrogation.  I need to keep moving to the pickup.

Alice pulls up alongside me.  I hop in.  She’s ecstatic,

“Omigod, omigod, omigod!  We did it!  We can do anything, everything!!!  My God, Jay, you should see the news!”

She hands me her phone open to Google News.  It’s all about the pro-abortion / anti-Supreme Court rally gone horribly wrong.  The security personnel manipulated by my ventrem tractatori apparently kept up the carnage for a long while, before other unaffected G-Men figured it out and engaged them.

“Yeah, but,” she adds, “some were taken before they could off themselves.”

“Shit.”

“We can work on that; I’ve got some ideas.  So, what’s next?  Where should we go?  When do you think they’ll come looking for us?”

“There’ll be higher ups who know what I *should* have done.  I’m not sure how long it’ll be before they work out what really happened, what we really did.  Feuerborn’s soldiers were in the dark.  Our biggest loose end is Himalia.  However, you and I never spoke out loud about this, and we never wrote any of this shit down.  The journal entries are misdirection, as you know.  All that’s to say, I think we have some time.  I hope we have some time.  Bring the gun, just in case?”

“Glove compartment.  So where to?”

“Dealer’s choice.  I need a nap.  And I’m gonna need a shower and some new clothes before too long.”

I recline my seat, sink into the comfort, and close my eyes.

*****

I wake to some intense grogginess.  It’s dark now.  Alice is driving.

No, not grogginess.  This is something else, something dark, oppressive.  Whoa.  Guilt.  Massive guilt.  What have I done?  Images of the congressmen and -women murdered, essentially dead by my hand.  How many have I killed, in the war, with my candida?  …and reveled in it all?  I’m being pulled down deep inside my mind.  Into despair.  Bone crushing despair.  It’s overwhelming.  I’m drowning in sadness and sinking, sinking, sinking.  There’s only one way out.

One way out.

Earth’s gravity feels like its pull on me has increased tenfold as I raise an arm to reach for the glove compartment.  Pulling on the latch sends scorching pain from my fingertips to my head, pain that wells behind my eyes and wants to pop them from my skull.  It takes all my strength to remove the pistol.

I put the barrel in my mouth.  Teeth scrape and clack on thick metal.

Alice licks her lips.

I squeeze the trigger.

 

*****

 

“You wanna beer?” I ask Himalia as I get up and head to the kitchen.

“Nah, I’m good.  Thanks, love.  So, hey… I know you’ve been pushing Reston, and that’s closer for me – thank you – but I’m good with Alexandria, too.  Hell, you’d be able to walk to the NSF, and I’ll still be in the field mostly, so…?”

“Well, the goal is the West Wing.  So I say we plan around that.  God, I can’t wait.  You know what I really, really, wanna do, most of all?  Start a fucking war.  What a rush that would be.”

“I can only imagine!”

I finish heating up some left overs.

“Hey, Alice?” Himalia calls to me.  “On second thought, I will take that beer.”

“Comin’ right up!”

 

End