More Politics

Another Tale of Bravery
Synopsis: My visit to the White House to do a piece on the President reveals some interesting Obama family dynamics and some curious behaviors. The mysterious nature of Washington politics seems to unveil itself to me, and I discover things I wasn't looking for.

               Back in March, President Obama invited me to the White House after reading my pretty popular piece entitled “Politics: A Tale of Bravery.” He said he’d been a fan of my work for some time and wanted me to put together an equally revealing, honest, and no-holds barred piece about him. I accepted his invitation. On the evening of Friday, March 30^th, 2012, a helicopter landed in the small lake by my apartment. The American Flag painted on its hull indicated it was a government aircraft. Secret Service agents stepped out, black suits tailored to their forms, sunglasses shrouding their eyes. I watched through the windows of my apartment and readied myself for the knock on my door. In my arms were everything I would need for my weekend with the Obamas: my laptop, a pencil, a pad of paper, and my shoes. I didn’t put my shoes on until I was on the helicopter. Didn’t want to get them wet.

               The helicopter pilot shook my hand when I stepped on, and offered me a towel to dry my feet. He introduced himself as Brocko, and he wore aviators and a backwards baseball cap. Unlike the Secret Service guys who didn’t smile or speak, I could tell Brocko was a cool guy. If it’d have been the 80’s he’d have had a thick Tom Selleck mustache. But it was 2012 so he had a tightly groomed Colin Farrell goatee.

               We landed at the White House a few hours later and Barack and Michelle greeted me at the helipad. They were both full of cheer and hugged me at the same time, each tugging me toward them like I was their personal teddy bear. The warmth of these two rulers of a nation was comforting. When I closed my eyes I could believe I was in front of a fireplace, holding a dog or a warm cat. But I was still behind the White House with the President and First Lady when my eyes opened.

               “You made it just in time for dinner,” Michelle said, her smile beaming messages of wanton thoughts. I smiled back but without the same indicators.

              “Let me take your coat,” Barack said as we walked toward the House. I wasn’t wearing a coat, so he put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed me all the way to the dinner table.

               “And you of course know the girls,” Michelle said, as we sat at the table. Their daughters were already seated, their manners sharp and their postures unquestionable.

               “We’ve actually never met,” I said, extending my hand to the girls.

               “Sasha and Malia,” Barack said, pointing to each. “Now you’ve met.”

               I sat down, with Michelle and Barack sitting on both sides of me, no more than an elbow’s length away. The girls sat all the way at the other end of the table, a good ten arms’ reaches away. Before I had time to ask what was on the menu, waiters served covered platters to the table, setting them in predetermined patterns and arrangements that I could not decipher even given the color coordination of each container. The waiters pulled the covers from each tray and let the chickens and the hams and the au gratin potatoes shine at us.

               “This looks delicious,” I said.

               “I guess,” said Barack. “Just wait til dessert. The girls have made us something wonderful.”

               “Incredible! I didn’t know you two were chefs,” I said to the girls. They laughed but didn’t talk. I could tell the Obama family practiced traditional table manners in which children were to be seen and not heard. It was respectable, a tradition I hoped to cultivate with children of my own.

               As we ate, our conversation was lively and the things we talked about ranged from the color of leaves to the color of paint. Then we landed on the color of skin.

               “Barack’s the first black President of the United States,” Michelle said, while I stuffed steamed carrots into my mouth to flush down the horseradish soup. She reached her arm across my front, and clanked her glass of wine against Barack’s. They drank.

               “I know!” I said, when I’d emptied my mouth. “But I guess you could also say he’s the 44^th white President.” I clanked my glass against each of theirs and drank. They didn’t drink, nor did they nod.

               “Black President,” Barack said. “Black. First black one.” His voice was stern and rocky, like a conquistador ordering the mass execution of Aztecs. His eyes were dead Eucharist, impious, tombs of sacrilegious infractions. 

               “But you’re half black. You’re also half white, right?” I was smiling to show I meant no harm or disrespect.

               “Do you think that’s funny?” Michelle asked. “Funny to call him white? Are you saying my daughters are part white? You telling me I married a white man?”

               “No,” I said, squirming in my chair between the President and the First Lady. “Just, I thought your mom was white. That makes you half white.”

               “I had a black dad named Barack. I’m black. I’m a black president.”

               “Fair enough. You’re also a white president.”

               “Barack went to Harvard,” Michelle said, her smile back on her face, and her wine glass once more full. She clanked it against Barack’s again.

               “That’s very—“

               “Constitutional Law professor,” she interrupted.

               “Don’t forget Columbia, Honey,” Barack said. He clanked his glass against hers.

               If numbers could gauge the level of my impression of the Obamas, I would use numbers in nine figures, orders of a billion at the least, to convey the soaring heights of the impression which they left on me.  I wrote some things on my pad of paper hinting at the astronomical vastness of the speechless sea of wonder they left me floating in.

               “Dinner’s over,” Barack barked. “Bring on the dessert. Phil, you’re gonna love it.” He touched my leg with a presidential firmness.

               As the table was cleared by the White House staff, I tried to make small talk with Sasha and Malia, but was shot down by a Secret Service agent’s smack to the side of my head. “No one speaks to the girls,” said a voice in my ear. I turned to see if it was Barack or the agent whispering to me. It was neither. The agent had stuck his earpiece into my ear and the voice was coming through it. “Only speak to the President and his wife. Thank you.” The agent put the earpiece back in his own ear and walked away.

               “So what’s this dessert you mentioned?” I asked Barack. He didn’t say anything until the trays were set on the table.

               “Mud pies,” he whispered. Michelle put her lips to my ear and whispered the same thing, but sounded sensual when she should have been sounding professional.

               They certainly looked like mud. They were brown, gooey piles of what I could only assume was dirt and water. A waiter scooped a blob of it onto a plate and served me.

               Barack and Michelle crawled onto the table, stuffed their hands into the pies and shoveled it into their open mouths. Their daughters sat quietly watching. I poked at mine with a fork, then a spoon, which seemed more suitable. Things moved inside the dark brown goop, and I knew there was life just below the surface. The substance was mud-like in all the right ways, its stench was aromatic, pungent, penetrating of the olfactory senses. It was room temperature, yet it steamed at the top and bubbled where it touched the plate.

               “Eat up,” Barack said, brown goop falling from his mouth. “It’s delicious.”

               “You know,” I said, still poking at the substance, “I’m actually pretty full from that lovely dinner. Could I get a to-go box? Or maybe Sasha and Malia might like mine?”

               Michelle and Barack locked eyes, then crawled off the table, back into their chairs.

               “Girls, time for bed,” said the President. The girls nodded, stood in unison, and walked out of the room. Two Secret Service agents walked with them. I glanced at my watch to notice it was only 7:30. I’d heard rumors the Obamas went to bed early, but this… now this was early. And on a Friday!

               As soon as the door closed behind the girls, my head was grabbed from behind. The hands turned me face to face with Michelle, whose mouth was filled with the brown, muddy goo. It covered her lips and dripped down her chin.

               “Feed him,” Barack whispered.

               Michelle pulled my face into hers, forced my mouth open with her lips, her tongue acting as a hydraulic pump that filled my mouth with the oozing, festering sewage dessert. It tasted the way an unflushed public toilet smelled, and aside from the currents of sludge obviously guided by Michelle’s powerful tongue, there was a scampering within the maelstrom of filth that I knew must be the small forms of life I suspected residing within the treat.

               As a guest to the White House, my first time ever there on invitation, I didn’t want to be rude and pull my face from the First Lady while she shared with me the food of her daughters. I felt Barack’s hands on my shoulders again, and he rubbed them while Michelle pumped an endless supply of mud pie into my mouth. It was as though she had fit an entire stadium of toilets in her mouth and was flushing all of them simultaneously into my sewer of a mouth. It poured from my nose as I struggled to swallow, but she only pushed harder.

               I’ve neglected to mention Michelle’s eyes were closed the entire time our mouths were together, which seems now very relevant. She swished her head from side to side, like in the throes of passion and affection, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, into mine. In the near-paralyzed state I found myself, I could only stare into her eyelids, sometimes at her nose. But as Barack rubbed my shoulders and massaged my throat to help me pull the dessert slime into my stomach, he put his tongue to the back of my head. It reached around my face and slithered over my eyes, pushing my eyelids closed. When I stopped trying to force them open, he pulled his tongue away and let it rest on my shoulder. Horror flooded me, my mind forced itself to imagine utopias beyond those I’d ever known in desperation to escape the nightmarish inflictions on my physical self. Pictures of golden mountains and rainbow colored fields of flowers and waterfalls filled my view, and the light voices of angels sang in my ears to block out the sounds of flushing, pumping, heavily sloshing filth going into me. The living things inside the mud pies crawled along my esophagus, forced their ways between my teeth, and slid down my throat. Some clung to the wall of my throat and others nested on the roof of my mouth while the endless river of their spawn poured past them in violent torrents that threatened never to cease, to overtake me forever.

               My eyes opened as the cascade continued, and I looked to the floor where the waste from my nose and leaks from our mouths had fallen. Brown as human waste it lied splattered in small hills, and upon these hills crawled the nightmare entities that lived within. They were white and yellow, some wore hues of green and black, and more than twenty legs seemed to carry them in awkward marching. I knew those things were inside me.

               When Michelle’s mouth was empty she opened her eyes, pulled away, and licked her lips. She released my face from her grasp. Barack patted me on the back as I swallowed the last bit of what we were calling a mud pie.

               “Tell Brock to get the chopper ready,” Barack said to one of his servers. “We’ve got an interview to conduct!”

               I composed myself over the next few moments as the helicopter was prepared for departure. We strolled out to the helipad and Barack and Michelle held hands and told me about the kinds of gifts they received as the rulers of the free world.

               “I’ve seen the George W. Bush Presidential Library,” I said. “I was in Dallas two years ago and saw the absurd gifts given to George while he was President. Someone gave him a stuffed lion.”

               “I’ve got that beat,” Obama said. “When my Presidential Library is built you’ll see all the gifts I’ve received. Until then, I’ll show you a small sample.”

               We stepped onto the helicopter, and Brock nodded at each of us as we buckled up.

               “How about them sandpipers, Mr. O?” Brock said. I didn’t know if he was talking to me.

               “Sandpipers doing great this season, Brock,” Barack said. “I hope to see them play in Chicago sometime.”

               The helicopter took off and Barack told me to ask him anything my heart or mind desired, tangentially mentioning that he knew the heart and mind were separate organs, but both governed aspects of a person’s mental and emotional state. He said the heart was not the figurative emotional spring of the human soul, but that the actual muscle of the heart was the most powerful tool in the human body and truly controlled all human desires. I nodded to indicate agreement, though it was not sincere.

               “Alright,” I said, licking the tip of my pencil as a reporter might do, and setting it to the pad of paper as I’d seen in film. “The upcoming election will be easier for you since there are no Democrats running against you. You simply have to worry about pounding down another party. What’s your greatest asset, you think, in this upcoming election?”

               “As in the last election,” Barack said, his voice on stilts above a forest of redwoods, as though he were addressing gods and immortals instead of men, “the cult of personality built around me serves me better than any campaign promises could. When people label you a “progressive” it gives them this idea you’re better than the party you cling so tightly to. Progressive sounds good, right? Makes it sound like I’m moving ten steps forward, not twenty steps back.”

               “And this is an accurate label?”

               “You be the judge.”

               “Well, there’s the whole problem of, eh, genocide and—“

               “Nah, see. That’s progress. Bush fought a different enemy, and I fight the real enemy. Did you know I killed Osama bin Laden? I aim right for the heart, while Bush aimed for the ankle.”

               “I don’t suppose I understand.”

               “Four thousand feet, sir,” Brock shouted over the sound of the helicopter’s engine.

               The President looked out the window, noted our altitude, and nodded. “Thank you, Brock.” He took off his tie and began removing his shoes. Michelle unbuttoned her blouse and kicked her shoes to the floor.

               “I don’t suppose you would understand,” Barack said, unbuttoning his shirt. “But you don’t need to. No one does. The less everyone understands and the  less they think the easier it is to be elected. The more you think of black and white instead of “what are the issues?” the more likely you’ll be to submit to the chained enslavement of this parade of hungry fire ants. That’s what works, and we like it that way.” His shirt was off, and he started on his pants. Michelle’s blouse was on the floor and she began pulling down her skirt. I didn’t say anything. I kept eye contact with Barack as he spoke.

               “We use what works and we live by it. Everyone does.” He spit into his hands and let his pants fall to the floor. He wasn’t wearing underwear. Neither was Michelle. They faced each other and climbed out of their seats.

               The pages of my pad were covered in indecipherable scribbles. Had I made those? I must have.

               “Five thousand feet,” Brock said from the cockpit.

               Barack and Michelle opened their legs and spread their arms, and seemed to inch together by some unseen force, like magnetism or even gravitation, physical mysteries that manifested in whole in the helicopter’s secure passenger bay. Their bodies changed in color, as if observed through infrared goggles, and the glow was brightest where their bodies met. Their expressions changed from casual conversational aspect to entranced, hungry, demeanors. I unzipped my pants, thinking it was the thing to do. Small things squirmed inside me. Tiny creatures still roamed freely in my body, wandering and exploring what I was, who I was.

               “We’re above the first facility,”  Brock said. “Extending cargo platform.”

               I looked out the window to see a building below us, thousands of feet down. Something was attached to a platform below us, attached to the helicopter by ropes, which was then pulled up.

               “First delivery is onboard,” Brock announced.

               A hatch opened on the floor and Barack reached down to pull a box out of it. It was the size of a microwave. The box opened to the sound of choirs and Michelle pulled two clumps of bloody flesh from within. She threw them onto the floor. Two aborted babies. Their skulls were caved in, their organs spilled from a cavity in their chests. Eyes were bulbous, red, and lifeless.

               “Hmm,” I muttered.

               The President and First Lady smiled at me, glowing bodies radiating energy that heated the cabin of the helicopter.

               “Now approaching the second facility,” Brock said. “Extending cargo platform.”

               I couldn’t pull my eyes from the abortions on the floor to look out the window. Somehow whatever was out there didn’t seem as important. Everything in the presence of Barack Obama had this great sense of importance about it and I wanted to hit myself for not understanding.

               “Second delivery onboard,” Brock informed us.

               The same hatch opened on the floor and Michelle helped Barack pull large bags onboard, each the size of a person at least. They unzipped the bags and poured their contents on the floor of the cabin. A stench hit me hard that told me it was something equally as perplexing as the abortions before me. Here now lied 5 larger dead bodies. Two were obviously young children, one was a woman, and two were grown men. Their bodies had been badly mutilated, limbs were missing, and their faces each showed the kind of damage only intense bursts of energy could inflict. Fire had evidently charred parts of their corpses, though whether it happened before or after death was unclear. The small segments of their bodies that appeared unharmed showed brown skin. Barack laughed a gleeful, triumphant, childish laugh at the sight of these new bodies. He and Michelle pushed them closer together to create a pile with the abortions on top.

               “We’re almost ready,” Michelle said, kissing Barack on the arms.

               “Keep undressing,” Barack told me. I noticed I’d stopped at the unzipping of my pants. I nodded and removed my pants and my shoes.

               “Third delivery is coming aboard,” Brock shouted. Barack opened the hatch and pulled a full grown man onboard. He was Asian, completely naked, and had the bruises of recent abuse in his skin. Michelle yelled something in what I suspected was Chinese at the man, and pointed to the pile of mutilated, destroyed bodies on the floor of the cabin. The man climbed on top and closed his eyes.

               Barack’s eyes glared menace into me, his tongue whipped words so venomous and so fiery the very fabric of space seemed to tremble. It would be accurate to say I was afraid and I was willing to obey his every command. He  ordered me to finish undressing, which I did. He and Michelle closed their eyes, held hands, and spoke words more ominous and foreboding than any I’d ever heard, and syllables I couldn’t hope to repeat or understand came from their throats, often sounding inhuman, ancient, from beyond any stars men had seen.

               The cabin reached unbearable temperatures, and my nudity did not lend to me any reprieve. The Obamas’ bodies pulsated as they recited cryptic verses in forgotten tongues. It was as though their voices were the songs of ritual, thick as a choir of hundreds of singers trained to perfect pitch in some burning wasteland where sound and matter were the only constructs. Though I understood nothing of what was being said or sung, I became suddenly aware of the Obamas’ desire for me to come closer to them. It was by now dark outside and this, for some reason, allowed me to lose myself in the couple’s enchanting embrace. I fell to my hands and knees and crawled to them, the pile of bodies still between us. Michelle extended her legs to me, Barack threw his arm in my direction, and they each pulled at me. Michelle slid my hand into her openings, and Barack slid his hands into mine. I could see, over the pile of bodies, that Michelle was firmly tucked inside Barack. We were united. The Asian man kept his eyes closed, but I saw him trembling as the chaos swirled around the cabin. I felt sympathy for him, but unseen hands pulled my thoughts apart to render an emotional void within me.

               Barack and Michelle threw their mouths wide open and ceased the singing and recitation they had been performing. The sound of the helicopter’s engine was all that remained. In wanting to blend and to be swayed by their charming example, I opened my mouth wide as it could go. A roaring note emitted from places unknown, and I felt a horrible rumbling within my guts. My arms were stuck to Michelle’s body, but I saw bulges under my flesh scurrying in panicked order toward the same location, and could feel everything within me move. Crawling beneath my skin grew painful and the tiny creatures began to pile up in my throat. I could see the same bulges below the flesh of the Obamas, and their mouths hung open as portals. I let mine hang open and felt a rising sensation within me, a deluge of life climbing up the walls of my inside.

               As if by perfect coordination and planning the tiny creatures flew from our mouths at the same time, horrid numbers of terrifying hellish creations not of this earth, like the vomit of bellowing holes to hell, they poured forth onto the mass of human flesh before us. The Asian man on top was the last to be covered by the swarm, and his screams pierced my ears. It was the sound of pure pain. The creatures seemed endless as they flew and crawled from our mouths, and they covered the dead and dying humans in hungry, furious rages of devourment. The creatures consumed the corpses faster than I’d seen anything eat in my feeble existence, and even bones were turned to dust by the mouths of these odd creatures untamed by a universe’s needs. The Asian man was a skeleton in no time, and his skeleton was a mass of powder and shavings in minutes. As the creatures consumed, they grew in size, and the thousands of them began to take up more and more space in the helicopter’s cabin.

               Michelle and Barack closed their mouths as the final creatures escaped, and I did the same. Their eyes lit up at the sight of the desecration before us, and each started to shake in what I recognized as orgasmic spasms. I could not share their enjoyment.

               The cabin became wet under the President and the First Lady, and finally my limbs were freed. I rolled away to distance myself from the mess that filled our space. The Obamas continued to pulse while the bugs, seemingly full from their monstrous gorging, crawled over them and secreted juices on their flesh. I wanted to vomit but there was nothing left inside me. It seemed the creatures had taken everything.

              

               The helicopter landed by the White House a few minutes later, and we stepped out, fully dressed, and the bloated, disgusting creatures stayed onboard. “Goodnight, sir!” Brock shouted from the helicopter.

               “Goodnight Brock!” the Obamas said. They seemed happy. I looked at my pad of paper. Most of it had been torn to pieces. What was scribbled on its pages I couldn’t understand. I stuffed it into my pocket and wiped the sweat from my face. Words failed me.

               “You’ll sleep in Michelle’s room, tonight,” Barack said, when we got into the White House. “She gets the bed, I usually take the Oval Office when we have guests. My spot should still be warm.”

               Michelle smiled her wanton smile at me, obviously not satisfied by the night’s proceedings. I couldn’t fake a return smile.

               “Would it be alright if I took a guest room, perhaps?” I asked. My voice was shaking, showing weakness, and I couldn’t stabilize it despite my effort.

               “You want a weekend with the Obamas,” Michelle said, “then you need to get the full experience.”

               “If it wouldn’t be considered rude,” I then said, “I’d actually like to take a bus back home. I think I’ve got everything I need for my piece. It’ll be a big hit, I’m sure.”

               “No, no,” Barack said insistently, “we can accommodate you. Take the guest room. I’ll show you to it.”

               I said goodnight to Michelle and Barack showed me to the guest room. Two agents would be outside the room, he said, and if I needed anything in the night they’d be happy to get it for me. The bed was large and comfortable, as if no one had ever slept in it. I removed my clothes and lied down to reflect on the events of the day. They say Presidential life is stressful, is filled with the kinds of things we regular folks can’t understand. I suppose I’d agree with that. The Obamas surely showed me a glimpse of their world, and I appreciated it.  The closet in my room opened slowly while I tried to act like I didn’t notice. But when it stood open and Sasha and Malia walked out, wearing identical rose-covered dresses, with roses in their hair, and smiles on their faces, I felt compelled to explicitly notice.

               “Oh, hello! The dessert you prepared this evening was delicious,” I lied. They walked to the bed and put their hands on my face. Again, words were not spoken from their mouths. They looked at each other, smiled at me, then opened their mouths to battalions of larger, uglier, more brutally vicious looking creatures than the kind that had emerged from my own body. They rested on their tongues, dark blue eyes absorbing what I imagined was my own horrible visage. I pulled the covers over my head and asked the girls to leave. They stayed by the bed and the quiet chirpings of the creatures on their tongues rattled just above my head. Then, a voice. It seemed to come from below my pillow. With my covers still over my head, I reached under the pillow and pulled from it a small earpiece. I stuck it in my ear.

               “Pull your covers down,” said the voice. It was the same voice from dinner. “These are the President’s daughters. They fed you, and you owe them this much.”

               I wanted to argue, I wanted to tell the voice it was wrong.

               “Just don’t speak to them,” the voice said. “But I can see you’ve already done that.”

               “Please, just stop,” I pleaded. “This is too much.”

               The voice cut out and the lights in the room turned on. I sat for a moment with the covers still above my head, then finally removed them. The girls were gone and the Secret Service agents stood by my bed.

               “You think you’ll write any of this?” asked the voice from the earpiece.

               “No,” I said.

               The lights cut out, the agents were gone, and again the girls returned.

               “My God,” I said. “Sasha, Malia, please leave. Please go to bed.”

               “Daddy, we had a bad dream!” said Sasha. She climbed into the bed.

               “Whoa, I’m not your father!” I shouted. I tried to push her out of the bed, but she clung to my neck in fear.

               “Dad, we both had the same dream!” Malia said. She sat on the foot of the bed. I could see both the girls were crying.

               “What’s the matter?” came a familiar voice beside me. I looked down to see Michelle in bed with me, waking up. “Oh, girls, what’s going on?”

               “Oh My God,” I said again. I looked around the room and saw it had changed. This wasn’t the guest room.

               “We had a dream the reporter didn’t like the mud pie,” said Malia. “We both had the same dream.”

               Michelle looked me in the face. “Barack, go see if Philip’s still here.”

               I said nothing. I looked at my hands to note the darker skin tone. Gently, I set Sasha aside, who then clung to Michelle, and left the bed.

               “I’ll uh… yes. Yes, I’ll check on Philip,” I said. And for the first time, I noticed my voice. A different sound than I was used to. I looked at my body. I was not the person I used to be.

               The girls sat on the bed, sad eyes upon me, distant faces that begged me to assess the situation. On my way down the hallway I stopped in the bathroom. One look in the mirror told me everything I was beginning to suspect.

               I was Barack Obama. Gray hair, dark skin, and a face that showed the aging inherent to the American Presidency. No sound left my mouth, and I made a dash down the hall, through the corridors of my home, to the guest room. The agents  ignored me as I threw the door open. There on the bed was me, was my old self, Philip, appearing to be asleep. I woke him up. I woke me up. He rubbed his eyes, stared into mine with a strange blue glow, and opened his mouth. The horrible, engorged, brutally more vicious looking creature than those before stared up at me. It crawled from Philip’s mouth and slowly crept across the bed, a trail of ooze behind it, and it stopped every few steps to lay what I could only assume were eggs in its path. When it had laid five eggs it stopped at the foot of the bed. Philip lied motionless in the bed, his face betraying no emotion but fatigue.

               Each of the five eggs began to swell and to split at the top. Something began to emerge from each egg, and as they became more clear Philip shot straight up in bed, as if awakening from a nightmare, and grabbed my arm. I screamed in horror at him, and felt a jolt, then a quick, floating sensation, and then I was lying in bed, sitting straight up, grabbing the arm of Barack Obama, who was screaming into my face. The hand on his arm was pale, it was my own. I was me again, I was back in my body. Barack stopped screaming and pushed my arm away. He then pointed to the eggs on the bed, and stared intently at the things crawling from them. From one egg crawled a smaller Barack Obama. From the egg next to it emerged a tiny Rick Santorum. The egg after that unleashed a small Mitt Romney. The egg after it opened to reveal a small Rick Perry. The final egg hatched a miniature Michele Bachmann. All five of these creatures squealed like the horrors they were, covered in yellow slime, and naked. The creature at the end of the bed looked at me with its blue eyes, then at Barack, who was admiring the tiny Presidential candidates. The creature secreted a green, viscous liquid onto the bed and the five tiny people ran to it and began eating it. Barack, the large one standing by my bed, stuck his finger in the green liquid and tasted it.

               Barack looked at me and put on his best Presidential Smile. “Please don’t tell Michelle about this,” he said. He ate another fingertip-sized serving of the green liquid. “Or the girls.” After he filled his mouth with the liquid he offered some to me, which I kindly refused. If there’s one thing that could be said of the Obamas it’s that they are generous with food. If there’s another thing that could be said of them, it’s that they’re awfully imposing. My refusal wasn’t enough. Barack knelt down beside me and poked his finger to my mouth. The green stuff smelled rancid. I shook my head, I pushed his arm away, but he insisted. “Don’t you want to be President?” he asked. No, I certainly did not. But I knew that answer wouldn’t fly with Barack, the man who had it all, the man whose competition was wiggling around on my bed, sharing a green liquid midnight snack with him. I shrugged. Indifference to the Presidency seemed the safest response. “Here,” he said. “You do it like this.”  He stuck his finger in his mouth and rubbed the liquid on his gums and his tongue. He laughed and remarked that it tasted like primordial soup.

               “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

               The five miniature bodies on the bed were by now fighting over the liquid, a result of  its supply running out. The ugly creature didn’t secrete more, it simply watched as the five Presidential candidates  fought for their share  of the goo. Big Barack stuck his finger back in it, taking more than the small ones could manage, and once more offered it to me. I shook my head.

               “Primordial soup, Phil. Just taste it.” He was insistent.

               “I want there to be enough for everyone,” I said. It seemed like a decent excuse.

               “Come on, it’s almost time for me to go. The supplanting begins soon. Can’t you see they’re growing?”

               Now that he said it I did sort of notice the five candidates on the bed were getting larger. The green liquid seemed to make them grow, and the sounds they were making were closer to human than before. Barack stuck his finger to my lips and I gave in, my tongue swirling around his finger like a candy cane. The liquid was abhorrent, its taste was unlike any I’ve ever known. Each of my senses seemed, for a moment, to pause, to try suicide, and then to start again as if they were beginning anew. My vision and my hearing retrained themselves, my sense of touch snapped back, my sense of taste and smell still struggled to re-activate, obviously put under by tones so alien to them they would take some time to work again. I thanked Barack for the toxic taste.

               He rubbed his finger along his leg and went to the foot of the bed where the ugly creature sat quietly watching. Barack got on his knees and opened his mouth, extending his tongue as a bridge for the creature to walk across. The thing scampered into Barack’s mouth and turned to look at me, and at the five battling Presidential candidates on the bed, fighting over the last of the green liquid. The creature finally made a sound, a trebly cluster of notes that seemed unmusical and unpleasant. It ceased the fighting of the five candidates on the bed. They stood up, saluted the creature in Big Barack’s mouth, and said nothing. As Barack closed his mouth the creature became silent again. Barack turned to look at me,  winked his Presidential Wink, and began to shake. His body twisted into strange shapes and his flesh seemed to boil, although no pain seemed to be felt, for he was quiet and seemed content with the situation. Slowly he shrunk, and a green mist swirled from his body. As this happened the five candidates absorbed the strange mist and began to grow. They approached full size, and I rolled out of bed as they quickly overtook it, my senses still not fully intact. From my spot on the floor I watched the five Presidential candidates reach full size, their naked bodies seeming fresh and full of life. They practiced their voices and I heard the recognizable sound of each of them, speaking words of comfort and assurance to an empty room.

               When the first Obama had reached a small size and quit releasing the green mist, he collapsed to the ground. The new Obama, the one on the bed, stepped off, picked up the old, and ate him.

               “Not fair,” said the Mitt Romney. “Give us all a bite!”

               “Of course you’d do that,” the Rick Perry said. He put his arm around the Michele Bachmann who shook her head.

               The Rick Santorum pouted and jumped off the bed, nudging the new Barack Obama with his elbow. “Kind of a dick move. That was for everyone.”

               “Whatever,” Barack Obama said. “I’ve got to get to bed. Michelle’s waiting.”

               “So is my Michele,” said  Rick Perry, his eyes undressing the already undressed Michele Bachmann.

               “You guys,” I said as politely as I could, given the circumstances, “do you mind leaving? I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m too tired to care. I need to sleep.”

               They grumbled and nodded, each assuring me they were sorry, and they started to head out the door. The new Barack led the way. As he opened the door he turned back to me. The others did the same.

               Barack cleared his throat. “Remember, remember, to vote in November.” The others repeated it, one at a time, their eyes each wilted trees of winter. When they had each reminded me to vote in November, they left the room and closed the door behind them. Why I didn’t leave right then I do not know. I removed the silk comforter from the bed, for it was by now entirely soaked in green residue. I lied on the bed but found it difficult to sleep. Sometimes a long day can be so exhausting you just can’t sleep at the end of it. I knew this was one of those days.