(11) Cage Fight


President Satchel P. Pussy, known affectionately as Snatchel to his many supporters, was having a rare moment of privacy with Commando Cannon, who trolled the internet as a military man willing to provide training and humiliation to those wishing to serve a Cannon instead of a Canon. Snatchel was on his knees, his face transfixed with a grimace of lust, when he saw the light. "Not now, Lord," he whispered.

"Did I tell you to speak?" Cannon roared.

"Your money's on the dresser," the President stammered. "I see the light."

Cannon's eyes narrowed as he scanned the wall of the underground bunker. "There's no windows," he said. "Is it a hidden screen or what?"

"It's a wall," the President said. He was still on his knees but had turned around now to serve the strange light coming through the wall from some unknown source, a light which caught him like a spotlight, and in which he was increasingly visible to himself. "It's a solid wall. I wouldn't be with Commando Cannon in a room with a window."

"Yea, it's like they say," Cannon agreed, "don't get caught with a dead girl or a live boy."

To an objective observer inside the President's bunker of love the two men were still talking, but they were being tuned out, like weak stations. They were becoming less substantial. The signal that made them real was breaking up, until they were a weak memory, dissipating in the static of the radio, from which a voice said, "One niner delta I repeat, there is an energy field of unknown origin penetrating the White House. Secure the vice President and then check on Snatchmo in his play pen."

"Lots of dead boys," was the last intelligible phrase from the President.

The three special agents were the only ones allowed to disturb the President when he was doing what he called "cage fighting."

"You lock two men in a cage," he had explained with narrowed eyes and a grim mouth to his incredulous wife. "They fight to the death in that cage." As usual, the First Lady had said nothing in reply. She sat still, like she was in a trance, and stared at him with unblinking eyes, her face frozen in an expression of disbelief. "You understand?" he asked. He gently touched her throat with his fingertips and grinned crazily.

She nodded weakly.

"Of course I can't do it that way because I'm the President, and we can't afford for me to get killed by some nobody just because he gets lucky and rips out my kidneys. So we have to fight with rules. But that's what I do, May Ling. I am a cage fighter."

The agents were running toward the bunker. "Is he having a cage fight?" one asked with just a hint of a smirk.

"I reckon," another said.

Their superior was ahead of them, already knocking on the door of the bunker. "Mr. President?" he bellowed. "We've got an emergency situation. We have to come in, Mr. President. This is code red alert."

He pressed in a combination of numbers and the door slid smoothly open to reveal an empty room.

"Where is he?"

They looked around. But it was just a square room with no other exit, and nothing in it but a dresser filled with military costumes, and military gear, such as flexcuffs, uniforms and swagger sticks. On the floor was a large square gym mat. "The head agent had already grasped the situation and relayed it to the vice President. "Affirmative, sir, we have lost the President."

"It could be worse," Chutney Bowles, the powerful vice President, said dryly. "Get Priscilla over here to swear me in."

"Yes sir. How do we explain losing the President, sir?"

"That's for public relations to worry about. He was becoming a liability anyway. Fuck him."

The President had not known what was happening to him when he heard the buzzing in his ears. Everything had shifted, as if he was waking from a dream and finding it rapidly dispersing into nothingness. The new reality had become solid, all of a sudden. Somebody was informing him that he had been beamed aboard a flying saucer, but he didn't know who it was. He couldn't see anybody. Then he realized he couldn't see himself, either. He had become separated from his body, and though he was aware of being present, he had no private container.

This was very upsetting to the President because he wanted very badly to be on his knees before what he was convinced was a god sent to elevate him beyond his human condition, into immortality. But he had no knees to kneel on. He had no hands to press together, he had no lips with which to form his undying devotion and pledges of service. He had no eyes with which to see his savior.

"I always knew the Rapture would come," he said. He was convinced that the story he had heard of all the special people being spirited off the earth by God in the final hour was true, and that he was one of many of the faithful who was now being lifted to heaven and to a state of grace.

"What's wrong with him?" Speedy asked.

"Inflation," Hans said. "He's gonna crash like dropped china."

"Relax," Archer said, his voice perfectly aware of itself inside Snatchel's mind. "If you need your rental to get around on the ground you'll get it back."

"What happened to Commando Cannon?" Snatchel wondered to himself.

"He's stored on a glass slide," Archer said.

"You can read my mind?"

"Yea. It's got that special large print."

Posted: Thu - June 9, 2005 at 03:08 PM