Read Barbarian King Page 16

had another gift, the gift of being able to drone on incessantly, while appearing to be knowledgeable, but with absolutely no idea what I was saying.”

  “I quickly put my sonorous voice to work for me...first as a teachers pet, and after ten years, as a lawyer-community organizer. Then I became a politician, because it turns out that talking nonsense in an intelligent fashion was a near perfect quality for the Democrat Party. Anyhow, I was so good at creating mischief when it came to rousing the rabble that the powers that be ended up pushing me into politics to keep me off the streets, to keep my megaphone blasting mobs out of their front yards.”

  Snort...snort...Zzz...

  “I began the road to the White House soon after I entered the state legislature where I was forever voting ‘present,’ or yelling hysterically to drown out the two, or three Republicans we had in the state congress. My talent caused quite a stir and was quickly picked up by others in the Party and has since become an integral part of the way all our politicians go about debating the issues, not only in Hawaii, but also in Washington DC. Just take a look at Congressman Elijah UmmingsCay next time he appears upset on television for a near perfect example of my technique in action.”

  “The secret to my success, as it turned out, was the leadership in both the Party and the media had been looking for someone with my special qualities for a long, long time. The powers that be needed a politician, someone of color, someone who believed the same crazy ideas, who appeared educated and spoke fluently, not some bastardized variation of English. I was the perfect advocate, the one person they needed to push their agenda forward, someone who could snow most of the country with platitudes, with straight-faced lies and set the country on a course that would make us not the greatest, but the most ‘fair and nice’ country in the world...kind of like Cuba. That was me, the President.”

  Zzz...Ack-ack-ack-ackawoooo-ack-ack-ack!

  “My technique of howling out during a political debate in the capitol turned out to have been simply an unexpected bonus for most in our party. Anyway, some journalist once asked me where I had gotten the notion to yell at the top of my lungs whenever a political opponent tried to say something. You can find the reason for my actions in Alinskyway’s Rules for Radicals.”

  “Back to Dad, he went on to sire another twenty, or thirty kids, most out of wedlock. I’ve since given up trying to recall any of their names even though they continue to pop up everywhere looking for handouts...as if I don’t have enough freeloaders on welfare to deal with already.”

  Zzz...snort...Ack-ack-ack-ackawoooo-ack-ack-ack!

  “My mother, unfortunately, lives with us in the White House, what’s worse it appears I ended up marrying someone who impersonates her and is also like mother...a vegan. Both of them are forever trying to force the staff to go vegetarian, especially the chiefs. I’ve been trying to figure out how to kick them both out, but having them sent off to live in some exotic place like Cuba seemed a little drastic...for now. So, I have them flown around the world in Air Force Two and Three instead sending them to places where they can extoll the virtues of a vegan diet on the unfortunate locals.”

  Zzz...snort...

  “I must admit my life has been far grander, far more remarkable, far more historic than I would have ever guessed it would be. I have managed to push the country closer than anyone imagined to the very precipice of becoming a full-fledged Progressive Empire. It’s wonderful what I have done to the folk. More citizens than ever before are enjoying time at home, only having to make an occasional trip to the welfare, or food stamp office. There are fewer greenhouse gasses because those on government programs cannot afford to drive anymore...same is true for beef consumption and the related byproduct, cow flatulence. It is truly wonderful what ‘politically correctness’ can do for someone like me in the White House.”

  Zzz...Ack-ack-ack-ackawoooo-ack-ack-ack!

  “So stupefying a place that I never wanted to give it up. It has fifty-plus bathrooms, over forty guest suites, a bowling alley, an underground bunker, fifteen chefs on call twenty-four hours a day, flat screen televisions in every room including the bathrooms; it has everything a President could dream of. Then there is all the attention that goes with being in the big white house. The falling-all-over-themselves fawning media kissing my butt at every turn all the while making sure I achieved stratospheric heights when pushing their ideas onto the folks of the nation.”

  “I know it’s a rather glossy picture, but I must admit I have always been a bit of a sensation when it comes to acting smart, but without knowing what the hell I was saying. It is a fine character attribute to possess as a Democrat President and I must say you appear to have the same endearing qualities.”

  Zzz...snort...snort.

  “Are you asleep!”

  Zzz...Ack-ack-ack-ackawoooo-ack-ack-ack!

  “Darn, I hate when that happens.”

  IllaryHay’s eyes fluttered for a moment. She was dreaming.

  “Oh, so you are still awake.”

  And so, the President ignored every sign that his companion was fast asleep...believing upon hope-of-hopes that she was still listening to his important story about himself. And so, his telling the tales of himself, his exploits, his wonderfulness continued...ad nauseam. The sun set hours earlier. With time he too succumbed to his self aggrandizing tale...until he, like his companion, fell fast asleep.

  Zzz...e-eeb-bee-bee. Zzz...e-bee-bee.

  Another Day in Paradise

  The Chicago Post-Chronicle-Tribune-Times - Prayers continue to come in from around the country as the search widens for missing Presidential hopeful IllaryHay of the Clinton Clan and President BamaOay. Fears that the two may have been whisked away by tornadic winds continues to build. White House spokesman Jay-Bob ArneyCay gave reporters little in the way of hope that evidence might be uncovered and would lead to the discovery of the twos locations. “Any trace of the President and Presidential Candidate appear to have been wiped clean by the horrific winds that struck the island late this afternoon. We can only hope that Gaia...I mean God is looking out for them and that they will soon be found and found safe.”

  It was becoming dawn in this dreamlike world, the sun would be rising soon on this, another day in paradise.

  IllaryHay awakened from a dream-haunted slumber with a snort to the mellifluous racket of what could have only been bats flittering around in the stillness of the pitch black sky. She lay upon the supple limbs of a spruce tree, head sticking out of the teepee, staring up into the heavens for the briefest of moments and wondering why she was not seeing the overhead candelabra of her bedroom. A heaven full of twinkling stars had become her ceiling and lent a little illumination to her shadowy surroundings. As she lay there she became aware of a pair of radiant glowing bits of light circling above in the dim darkness. She watched clueless as more of the green luminescent orbs appeared, grew in intensity, deepened and became more clearly visible. They looked like...sets of eyes! Hovering just overhead! She froze in terror.

  Above the President there was a slight movement in the air above. Something was flying just overhead and it was big enough to stir up a breeze.

  Buzzzz...

  BamaOay’s ears were supposed to keep watch while his eyes slept, but did not pick up the buzz of wings thanks to his own snorting and heavy breathing.

  Buzzzz...

  IllaryHay lay petrified as the President sat upside one of the forest trees sound asleep. He was about to discover this world was not altogether picture perfect.

  The Amazon rainforest was the kind of place most long-haired, maggot-infested Sierra Club types believed was akin to Adam and Eve’s original garden, the sort of place everyone would want to live: to plant gardens, breed and look at the stars. The problem with their simpleton’s point of view was the jungle was also the home for some unusual and deadly pests: the hairy Brazilian Wandering Spider; the poisonous, but pretty Golden Poison Frog; everything living and all out to basicall
y kill you.

  This utopia, too had similar menaces; some were like mosquitoes and now flying overhead, but a bit different, a bit bigger, but also with people’s bodily fluids on their menu. One of the things now alighted on the President’s arm...and was just in the process of taking a blood sample. He unconsciously shooed the thing away just as he might with any flying annoyance.

  Buzzzz...

  It worked for the briefest of moments.

  The tranquility of his sleep was suddenly broken by the shuddering cry of his female companion.

  A-ieee!

  BamaOay hugged his golf club, as he might a security blanket, as he looked about terrified. He could make out some of what the little creatures looked like: part dog, part hummingbird, part bat and part vampire. He saw and realized the little critters were intent on only one thing - blood. The evil vermin moved side to side rapidly here and there in the air, their wings as large as those of a crow, but as rapid in motion and noisy as a hummingbird and with pale, gleaming, ravenous eyes that desired just one thing. A forked tongue darted in and out with bright-white, glittering, bared, pointy teeth.

  BamaOay screamed out at the hideous misbegotten freaks of nature hoping to scare them off.

  Ar’rooff!

  The tranquil forest setting was upset again and again by the duo’s tremendous terrified squawks.

  A-ieee!

  Ar’rooff! Ar’rooff!

  The air was filled with the rapid flapping of unfeathered, leathery wings.

  Buzzzz...

  There were at least a dozen of the nasty things flying around in the early morning light. Their eyes glowed green and evil and with much hunger.

  Screech.. A-ieee!

  IllaryHay screamed out as one of the blood sucking creatures came flying into her teepee to get some.

  Buzzzz...

  They were not as fast as hummingbirds...

  Ruff...ruff.

  ...nor as graceful.

  Buzzzz...

  ...very likely the reason they died out as a species in the late Cretaceous Period.

  Ruff.

  They did sound a little like Mexican Chihuahuas...

  Ruff...ruff.

  ...wolf-barking to one another as if working together as a coordinated pack.

  A-ieee!

  IllaryHay screamed out when the thing landed on her arm, but just for a moment.

  Whack!

  She backhanded the little beast slapping it clear across the campsite. Quickly jumping from the teepee and to her feet she scampered clumsily to where the creature lay stunned and...and...and stomped the living shit out of the helpless little thing with her tremendous, strapping, hairy clodhoppers.

  BamaOay, too, needed to act quickly. He tried to stand, but taking swift action on one’s feet took a little finesse, an act not yet mastered!

  The flying canines circled buzzing overhead baring their sinister teeth looking as if they were preparing to nosedive upon the weakest of their prey...him!

  “Do something BamaOay!” she shouted, still swatting about with her arms, vain attempts to shoo the buzzing Chihuahuas away.

  He had to get to his feet no matter what it took!

  Ruff ruff.

  “Damn it! Here they come!” he shouted as he made every effort to gain his feet.

  Buzzzz...

  “Ow! That hurts!”

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  “Shit!”

  Buzzzz...

  “You vicious little bitches...I have a little surprise for you!” he exclaimed upon gaining his feet, now pale as a ghost having lost a pint or more by the time he was standing to the foul bat-eared vampire Chihuahuas...with wings!

  “Ow!”

  He had to act swiftly to save himself, before those flying banshees drained him of every drop of blood. He swung his club...

  Swoosh!

  ...in a wild arc about his head around and around flailing aimlessly and looking like a cowboy might with a lasso. The plan...to knock the living daylights out of the little shits before he was completely bloodless.

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  Swoosh! A miss...

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  Bang! Yipe!

  “Yes, that’s one of you little astardsbay!” he shouted in a triumphant, blood curdling shout.

  Bang! Yipe!

  “That’s another of you little...A-ieee!”

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  “Come on you little bitches!” he screamed out mightily. “Come on and get some!”

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  “Fuck me!”

  Buzzzz...

  For most of half-an-hour the President and his female companion battled the flying blood suckers; the former knocking many of the creatures to the forest floor only to be stomped to death by IllaryHay’s massive, Herculean legs.

  “I wonder what they taste like!” she shouted as she stomped the living daylights out of one more bat thing.

  “Chicken!” hollered back the President, “Probably chicken!”

  Buzzzz...

  Ruff!

  He flailed about with his driver, then tripped falling to the ground. The dog-vampire-bat things descended upon him like a mad pack of Chihuahuas.

  Buzzzz...Buzzzz...

  Ruff ruff!

  “Shit damn!”

  Buzzzz...

  “Ow! Shit! Fuck!”

  The Three Stooges

  The New York Post-Chronicle-Tribune-Times - The last person to see the President alive, Special Agent Brown spoke of how the President bravely fought off an attack by a wild, demented English Bulldog before he disappeared.

  “Yea mudder-fucker, duh Prez saves me. That mudder-fucking bastard had teared off one of my hoofs (shoes). I tried kick’n that tings toofs (teeth) in. Then dat thing bites me in the rump that’s when me tink (think) me whacked. That when me see the Prez swing he club...knock’n duh daylights out’a dat bitch side of duh hey’d.” Sobbing, the agent had continued, “I can’t gets it into my hey’d...(whimpering)...that my Prez did dat for me...he such a goot (good) homey (guy).”

  Special Agent Bobo-Dog Brown is one of the half-dozen brothers to have arrived in the capitol along with the President; a member of the same neighborhood pack now calling themselves “Hoodees” in deference to their lost, illustrious leader.

  Through the silence which shrouded the forest surroundings stole three furtive figures. Their stealthy feet, bare or cased in deer hide made no sound either on the grass, or bare rock. The sun was rising casting shadows on the one wooden spear the bearded woman carried; the bone knife the tall, wooly man carried; and the single keen-edged, turtle-skull-headed ax the fat, whiskered man with missing teeth carried. All were wearing smelly animal hides.

  "Quiet!" hissed the wench. "Stop huffing! Something come!”

  The inbreeds began moving slowly, secretively away from the road.

  “Quiet!”

  “Back!”

  “Hide!"

  The three stooges crowded back to the other side of a cluster of bushes and almost immediately gave away their position when one, the female primitive, mindless of anything save for the approaching man carelessly stuck her spearhead up the derrière of the aborigine wielding the turtle skull ax.

  “Hey, watch out!”

  The man approaching them was odd looking and had taken no notice. He was not wearing animal hides, but some kind of clothes made of plants. His feet made a strange scouring noise on the hard roadway surface as he approached with weird looking strides that reminded all three cave people of a stork. He was also carrying a long stick with knocker on the end and it reflected the growing sunlight.

  The man’s face had no hair like a baby. He was bald with big ears and a superb tan. The man had a stupefied look on his features as he strolled cautiously glancing about at his surroundings.

  Weapons whetted in the hands of these braz
en tanned primitives with tangled hair and eyes of blue, brown and green; eyes that now glared with hunger through the bushes at the weirdo walking around and casually tearing up all their hallowed Moo Moo Trees.

  These lowbrows resembled people who could have been the earliest ancestors of modern-day liberals, blockheads whose future progeny would, or could have become prominent in a political party made up of intellectual lightweights. These early spermatozoon's were constantly having sex all the time, constantly trying to procreate in the oddest of positions, always in a constant ‘60s style’ Summer of Love Orgy...all to satiate their hedonistic appetites, all to propagate like any wild animal of the woods...these three, even now, had a growing desire to go bam-bam one another doggy-style.

  Foreigners like this bulky-looking fellow had occasionally dropped in unexpectedly into their hunting grounds. The last time strange visitors had arrived they wore sparkles in their ears and rings on their fingers. They too had once walked carelessly around these hunting grounds...just like this dude with rock-scraping sandals. Those outsiders who had not escaped by running away north had died at the hands of this shadowy threesome, most ending up on the end of barbecue spits.

  Now this man-creature had shown up.

  He too would soon be on the menu.

  The dark figures closed in on him with a rush of feet over the lava rock surface. With a yell the three sprung at the President, the bearded woman first. She came like a charging chicken head down, pointy stick aimed at BamaOay’s testicles.

  “Me want his baby makers!”

  BamaOay turned to face the assailant not as some weakling about to be mugged by a group of half-naked, fur-clad Troglodytes, but as a wide-awake warrior with his girl’s driver in hand.

  Bang!

  BamaOay had struck first with his large headed driver to her noodle. The first went down beneath the swing of his mighty driver.

  A muttered voice spurred on the attack! "Me get him!" roared the overweight wild man on fire with the spirit of the deed, boneheaded ax in hand running untamed at the stranger.

  BamaOay sprang backward to avoid him and with luck swung the club in one hand. In a whistling arc the head of the driver flashed through the air and crashed into the cave dweller's thick skull with a mighty Bang!

  He too had suffered the same fate and crumpled to the ground.

  The third man-rat had seen both his fellow savages roll unconsciously under the swing of that mighty stick with club-wielding man’s hand.

  BamaOay grinned bleakly, wolfishly panting in the gloom as the last vagrant reined back a safe distance from the grim stick-club wielding figure looming over his tribe’s people. Before the President, his brown eyes blazing murderously from beneath his low unibrow, the boldest would have slinked away. BamaOay’s dark, hairless face was inkier, yet with fieriness his white tunic ruffled in the breeze now splashed with blood, his bang-stick a little crimson. In this difficulty all the veneer of the civilized man had faded; he was a barbarian who faced the one remaining hairball.

  BamaOay was a civilized offspring at birth, one of those cry babies who incessantly screamed when their diapers needed changing, but no longer.

  So, the vagrant kept his distance scared to his wits.

  BamaOay chuckled at the site of the hairy man trembling in terror. He took a step forward saying, “Put that knife