Washington Horror Blog

SEMI-FICTIONAL CHRONICLE of the EVIL THAT INFECTS WASHINGTON, D.C. To read Prologue and Character Guide, please see www.washingtonhorrorblog.com, updated 6/6//2017.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

Who ya gonna call?

Bridezilla finished unpacking her suitcases--the one she had taken to Europe, as well as the second one she had purchased in Europe to accommodate all her souvenirs.  (Those Euro paupers had been desperate to sell anything!)  She was still fuming at the Dulles I.C.E. agent who had interrogated her and made her open her bags after she had claimed to have traveled to Europe on business.  (It was no business of his that she had taken the honeymoon trip by herself--and gotten on her laptop every night to bill hours and fill her loneliness!  Honestly--going to an airport these days was like volunteering to go to prison!)  She started the washing machine and sorted out her dirty clothes, quickly noticing the photo booth photos of her and Mamidou in a shirt pocket.  My gorgeous Algerian, she thought.  His twinkling hazel eyes, curly black hair, and mischievous dimples mocked her decision to treat Mamidou only as a fling.  Well, what were you supposed to do? she thought.  Tell 'em you'd marry him and bring him to America?  She stuck the photos in her pants pocket, wondering if her ex-fiance' at the Defense Intelligence Agency had ever eavesdropped on Mamidou...and heard him talking about her.  (In fact, Colonel Alexander Wolfbugler had...but didn't realize this fact since Mamidou referred to Bridezilla as "ma cherie".)

Her cellphone rang:  it was Laura Moreno.  She picked it up, eager to feel wanted (even if it was only as a partner at Prince and Prowling).  "What do you mean the client fired us?!" she squealed.  Moreno told her the client had flipped out upon discovering that P&P's contract attorneys had tagged 800 software licenses as "foreign language" instead of "non-responsive".  Bridezilla's nostrils flared, and her eyebrows flew up.  "Fire them all!" she hissed.  "We don't pay those losers $29/hour to pass the buck!"  Then  she remembered that Moreno had no authority.  "Never mind!  I'll be down there in two hours!"

Several miles to the east, Glenn Michael Beckmann--militia man, conspiracy theorist, blogger, and leader of the Hunter-Gatherer Society--was prepared never to hear his cellphone ring again.  "It ends here, today!" he shouted, whipping the small but enthusiastic crowd outside the Justice Department into a frenzy.  "Screw FISA!" ("Screw FISA!", the crowd echoed.)  "Screw NSA!"  ("Screw NSA!")  "Screw Obama!"  ("Screw Obama!")  ("Didn't Bush start this?")  ("Shut up!")  Beckmann dropped his cellphone on the ground, and enthusiastically began jumping up and down on it.  "Die, die, die, die!"  Several of his followers did the same, as Justice Department security guards discussed amongst themselves whether to allow this small rampage to continue or not.  "You!" hollered Beckmann, pointing at a fidgety woman who had not thrown down her phone.  "What are you waiting for?!"

"I don't have Verizon," she said, clutching her cellphone like a baby against her bosom.

"You fool!" cried Beckmann.  "They've got us ALL now!"

Too true, thought U.S. Attorney Atticus Hawk, as he walked past the protesters into the Justice Department.

Not far away, Angela de la Paz was holding hands with her boyfriend, Major Roddy Bruce, as they took in "One Million Bones" on the National Mall.

"I realize a genocide display is kind of a bummer," said the Aussie attache', "but it was your idea to come here, and you look super bummed out."

"Sorry," said Angela.  "I'm a little freaked out about this."  She handed Bruce a letter from her doctor.  "A cyst has completely replaced my left ovary!"

"Um," said Bruce, whose mind had ricocheted rapidly from unplanned fatherhood to ovarian mystery land.

"Well, is this normal?" asked Angela.  "Why doesn't the doctor say he needs to see me?"

"Um," said Bruce (who was still reading the report, in shock that his girlfriend had come to him about this, instead of her friend Lynnette Wong), "did you show this to Lynnette?"

"Not yet," said Angela.  "I just got it yesterday."

"Well," said Bruce, recovering his composure and stepping up as lean-on-me guy, "it's not cancer.  They don't care as long as it's not cancer."

"They don't care that my left ovary has been replaced?!"

"I guess not," said Bruce.  "It's not like a lung, is it?"  He immediately regretted the remark at the sight of her wincing.

"What if I want to have kids?" she asked.

"Well," said Bruce (who had heard the question as "we want to have kids"), "I mean, you can still have kids some day--with the other ovary, right?"

"Well, why did it happen?  What if the other one gets replaced?  How would you feel if one of your balls was replaced?"

Bruce shook his head, suddenly nauseous.  "I dunno.  Look:  the important thing is, it's not cancer, alright?  Why don't we go see Lynnette now--you'll feel better after you talk to her.  We'll figure it out--I promise!"  And suddenly he wanted to have kids with her!  He folded her into his arms, fighting the impulse to inspect his testicles.

A few miles to the west, Bridezilla was heading back into Prince and Prowling, heading straight for the state-of-the-art review center adorned by rotating art displays and staffed by sardined contract attorneys.  "WHO coded those software license agreements as 'foreign language'?!" she hollered, as she stormed into the large (and mostly empty) room.

Chloe Cleavage jumped up from the lap of the only contract attorney she had not yet put on "sabbatical", and he blurted out, "it was me."

"In his defense," said Cleavage, who had quickly moved five feet away from her paramour, "software piracy is the sleeper cell of the litigation world.  An intellectual property dispute can blow up out of nowhere, if you're not prepared!  We really should get all those software license agreements translated!"

"This was a racial discrimination class action against a cupcake company!" hissed Bridezilla.

"Exactly!" replied Cleavage.  "So what were they doing with software license agreements anyway?"

 "I don't know," said Bridezilla in a temporarily sweet-as-pie Virginia Tidewater accent, smiling before the screaming kill, "maybe 'cause EVERY DAMN COMPUTER IN THE COUNTRY HAS THEM, YOU IDIOTS!"

"The thing is," said a still-calm Cleavage (who had too much dirty blackmail on Prince and Prowling to ever get fired), "it's important--"

"SHUT UP!" hollered Bridezilla at Cleavage.  Then she turned to the man cowering in his chair and pulled out her smiling Tidewater accent again:  "Please log out for the day, sir.  Your agency will let you know when we have more documents for you to review."  She turned back to Cleavage:  "in my office in ten minutes, please."

Down in the Prince and Prowling parking garage, former Senator Evermore Breadman's phone was ringing--the magic phone Charles Wu had given him, which used a private satellite service and obscured anybody's attempt to read incoming or outgoing messages.  (Well, anybody but the owner of the private satellite service:  triple agent Charles Wu.)  "Yes," said Breadman, recognizing the voice of the most recent D.C. Councilmember to plead guilty to a felony, "I'm on top of it."  In the shadows, the river rats scurried off to report back to Ardua of the Potomac about her favorite law firm.

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