The nightly protests are beginning to gather steam. He thinks he can smell the weed smoke, even through the filtered air of the nuclear bunker, and knows he can feel the voices demanding their ridiculous justice. The voice of the people just thrums with poverty and disease. It disgusts him and makes his whole body vibrate with hate.
Especially his heart.
Chest tight, he blames the constant yelling outside and reaches for a drink that is not there.
Disappointed, he bellows, “diet coke!” and hears the scampering feet of a servant running to get him one.
He returns his attention to the monitors.
Through the speakers, he can hear the chant already.
Hands up.
Can’t breathe.
Don’t shoot.
“Fuck justice!” he screams back at the images of people collecting on the giant yellow letters. He has a history with justice, and doesn’t like it. Justice and it’s judges making his father soil property with “qualified” renters. Justice closing his casinos because of a silly little thing like financial solvency.
He slams a tiny fist on the security desk, but instead of the boom he wants, the sound is muffled by paper.
And dammit, he gets her attention.
“Is okay, baby? You need I rub back?”
He ignores his bride, once brand spanking new, but since, the dew has long since dried. He had been shopping a Brazillian model when his desired choice of job, media mogul, fizzled out, and forced him to move into government housing.
He chuckles at his own joke.
She chuckles also, and his irritation surges.
He should be tickled, she is at least trying to please him, but instead, he wants to punch something else, something softer, something that will go, oof.
Plus, her constant presence irks him now.
“How much longer do we have to be in this bunker anyway?”
The secret-service agent looks up from his phone, tie loose around his neck, and handgun strapped under his arm appearing so easily retrieved. “We can leave whenever you want sir. You demanded safety for you, then your family.
The President hates that the agent says it like that. Yes, his wife may have had a lobotomy then sold into the sex industry, and he got her for nickles on the dollar, but she was capable of latching on to something like that and not letting go.
Her, and that boy she claimed is his.
He shakes his head at how ludicrous it all is.
She claimed, Ha! And though in the beginning, he had his doubts, after watching as the boy abused a secret service agent by making her pick up a dropped napkin more than three times, he has decided- maybe.
All three of his boys could be clones, the girls? Should just count themselves lucky that the world is so vastly overpopulated.
He stares deep into the security monitors, through the image of the growing crowd, to the reflection of his own orange face.
“You alone make this world worth saving,” he whispers to himself, before bellowing a final command, “take me to the roof, I want to see a man about a rifle.”
Stories 