The Adderall had long since worn off and the early morning benzo-haze had lifted when a fresh jolt of cortisol kicked and sputtered into the rusty synapses of the old man’s brain.
A brain that had been fed a steady diet of salt and fat for decades, swimming in Diet Coke and character defects.
Compromised as he was by his own moral failings and derangement, he was still cognizant enough to hear each ‘Guilty’ verdict as they rang out in the cold (only to him), grey courtroom.
Not a bit of gold ornamentation or chintz in sight which had unnerved him the moment he walked in six weeks ago.
Thirty-four times it rang out, seemingly echoing off the plaster walls covered with a century’s worth of old paint - helping it bounce and reverberate.
Like a nightclub sound system for the damned.
Each syllable sounded like laughter whose pointed tips turned to arrows and pierced his wounded ego a little more.
It was as if his insides were made of brittle glass.
Like an old-fashioned Christmas ornament that was being squeezed by an iron fist. He could literally feel himself breaking.
He began to deflate before the eyes of the onlookers, resembling the last orange left in a bag of clementines. He had turned to mostly mold inside his bright orange cage, a nylon netting that held him together.
Nobody cared enough to come by and place it on the compost pile so he just sat there rotting, for all the world to see.
His eyes would cause a madman to change seats, if you sat next to him on a bus you would get off at the next stop.
He oozed instability, it emanated from him like a smelly fog.
Like a garbage barge floating down the East River on a moonless night.
You couldn’t quite see it but you knew it was there.
Everything nobody wanted, all in one place.
Rotting, fetid and moving under a power not his own.
He sat and stewed in his own juices; his freedom, at least for the moment, not under his own purview.
He HAD to sit there and it killed him.
This was only temporary he told himself.
He would exact his revenge.
‘Get that little jockey-looking f*cker on the phone ASAP!’ He barked at his underlings as soon as he left the courtroom.
Free of the courtroom and the cameras he was once again himself in the sanctuary of his SUV, with his burly agents and feckless assistants.
‘Listen Mike, I NEED YOU to get this f*cking verdict overturned and I need it to happen fast or I am gonna make it rain f*cking kompromat on Capitol Hill! Capiche?!’
‘Yes Sir, I fully agree and we’ll get right on it….’ came the reply from the little man in the Brooks Brothers Boys’ Department suit.
His cheeks the rosy blush of a man who went from obscurity to second-in-line for POTUS.
He had hit the Southern Cracker Christian Trifecta and he damn well knew it.
He went from the Popeye’s in Baton Rouge to The Palm - and there was no way he was going back.
He didn’t care what they made him do or who he had to screw over.
‘Tell those f*cking candyasses I’ll send my boys down there to toss every conservative frat house on Capitol Hill…’
You think I don’t know what you freaks get up to on the weekends?!? Those bastards won’t set foot at CPAC again when I get done with ‘em, AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?’
‘Yes, Sir and I would like to take this opportunity to invite you back to Capitol Hill to address the Republican Conference in a few weeks…’
“Good boy Mike. I’ll be there, now make it go away.’
They chose their King, the feckless and the frightened, three years after he sent his angry mob to soil their hallways and set aflame their dome.
It did not succeed on that day but it did on this one.
They surrendered one and all.
Bending the knee to the worst man this once proud country had ever known.
Even Ole Mitch, who at this point resembled a corpse found under a pile of leaves by a jogger on Law & Order, sucked up to the orange potentate.
The desire to hold on to power was a stronger pull than any sort of legacy or loyalty to the institution and country it represented.
Their beclowning was complete now and this would be a coronation of sorts.
The dark stars of the movement, MTG, Gaetz, the weird guy from Arizona who looked like he had a vast collection of butterfly chrysalis in his basement, all lined up to suck up to the fool and the freak.
To bask in the glow of his redolent power.
It was a power that in its essence was controlled by another man on the other side of the world. A man whose bidding the GOP had already been doing for decades.
At first perhaps unwittingly but by now it was an open secret.
Were they so terrified of Putin and whatever demands he passed through the American oligarchs that served as his emissaries?
Buttressed by Fox News and the lickspittle influencers that were making a mint tearing at the fabric of our nation.
In many ways it was McConnell himself who set it all in motion.
They seemed a long way from ‘Citizens United’ now but the SCOTUS he stacked was in full effect.
A little behind the scenes wrangling to get Justice Kennedy to retire - no problem since Trump & the Russians had used Deutsche Bank as a money laundering op for decades.
He leaned forward to shake the tiny hand extended to him, ‘Mr. President, welcome back to Washington.’
The bad men were angling to be fully in charge now and in a few months there would be no turning back.
It pained the pure at heart and the patriot.
With the debate less than two weeks away, I think Noel should debate the SHPOS (it's a term used in emergency rooms). How much fun would that be?!?!? First words are "sub human". Brilliant piece is an understatement.
This is just so good. Brilliant