The Zombie Caucus and other Members of Congress return from Thanksgiving recess.

Somebody in the Zombie Caucus had dropped the ball when the members left Washington for the Thanksgiving recess, and prisoner/fetish Barbara Hellmeister had been alone in this secret basement chamber below the Capitol for several days.  She was desperately hungry, thirsty, and sore from trying to escape her bindings.  Her astronaut diaper was spent, skin sores were developing on various parts of her body, and she was hallucinating.  Then she saw a man enter the room, looking like a young, handsome Adolf Eichmann.  (She had seen photos of him with her grandfather, when they were both about 25.)  "Help me!" she gasped through the mouth binding that was deteriorating from a week of saliva.

The man was, in fact, Eichmann's great-grandson, Ernest Ironman, who had grown up in obscurity in West Virginia before ending up working in the Capitol engineering and maintenance department.  He had brought his pet pole cat into the Capitol to root out as many rats as he could before his boss (a wussy man allergic to cats!) returned on Monday, and Poland (his pole cat) had sniffed and clawed at the outer wall until the hidden mechanism had opened this secret room.  "Well, what have we here?!" Ernest exclaimed, as his pole cat (Poland) moseyed over to sniff out Barbara Hellmeister.  Ernest looked carefully around to make sure there were no terrorists, then made his way over to untie the woman, who sank heavily into his arms.  She babbled incoherently after he took the gag out of her mouth, but he was able to make out "water", which he procured for her a few moments later.  She drank deeply, then passed out.

Ernest laid her down on a couch to let Poland give her a good licking-over, and walked around the room to try to figure out what was going on in here.  There were stacks of legislative materials, blood stains on the carpeting, make-up kits, an industrial-sized vat of acid strong enough to dissolve bones, and a large poster of Donald Trump with a baby bib drawn on with black marker.  A big grin started spreading over Ernest's face as he realized there were some sick activities going on in here, but he was a loner and wanted to do his own thing.  He stole some jewelry he found in a drawer, stuffed some pens in his pockets, then tossed the woman over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.  Ernest had his own secret chamber under the Capitol, and he figured she was going to clean up kinda nice.

A hundred feet above them, Congressman Paul Ryan was finally settling into the de-smoked office of the Speaker of the House, though he had gone overboard with fresh holiday evergreen decorations to mask the lingering tobacco odor.  Munching on leftover wild rice and cranberries, he sat down to plot out his post-recess legislative plan--exactly as he had told "60 Minutes" it would be.  He knew President Obama was over in Paris, ready to sell out King Cong [coal, oil, nuclear, gas] for good to the climate change nuts more scared of a couple degrees on the thermometer than Sunni migrants blowing up Christians.  This was Ryan's time to steal the spotlight of domestic politics!  He started tapping his foot nervously on the carpeting.  He hadn't felt this much pressure since the week before the Romney-Ryan ticket had been blown out of the water.  He jumped out of his chair to find his dumb weights and do some bicep curls.  If he didn't make some major decisions soon, Ryan's chief of staff would start making them for him!  "I'll just do four reps," he said out loud to himself, and at the other end of the listening technology, spy Charles Wu wondered which four Representatives and what exactly Ryan was going to do to them.

Back in the Zombie Caucus secret chamber, Paul Ryan's Chief of Staff was rushing in to check on the fetish/prisoner.  As one of the newest betas (turned into a zombie just a day after Ryan became Speaker of the House), David Hoppe had been overwhelmed with new responsibilities and demands from all kinds of surprising people.  It was not until Hoppe was driving back to the Capitol that he suddenly doubted whether management of Barbara Hellmeister had been properly sorted out for the Thanksgiving break.  Now he could see that she was gone.  "Damn it!  I didn't take this job to put up with this kind of stress!"  He looked around wildly for a note or any type of clue explaining what had happened to her, then he knew he was in big trouble.  He might be chief of staff to the Speaker of the House, but down here he was just another newbie foot soldier.  "Damn it!" he exclaimed again.  "And why does it smell like cat urine in here?!"  He emptied out his grocery bags, put the gallons of lemonade, orange juice, and sweet tea into the refrigerator, then headed up to meet with Ryan.  "I'll tell them I let her go on purpose!" he muttered to himself, getting on the elevator.  "There's no way they're putting me back on bone-dissolving duty!"

Back upstairs, Congressman Herrmark was also back in town (after his casino-boat Thanksgiving fundraising cruise).  Tired of the harpies in the Holier Than Thou Caucus, frustrated with the slow progress in rooting out the Zombie Caucus, hounded by his parents (forced to spend Thanksgiving on the cruise ship), he was taking a break to go back to his own legislative agenda:  namely, putting an end to the hydrofracking which had blown up his parents' vacation home, permanently shattering their perfect life of wealth, privilege, and comfort.  John Boehner had told him to take a hike plenty of times, but Paul Ryan would be a fresh start.  If only I had something I could offer him in exchange for going after fracking and finding taxpayer money to clean up their vacation home! thought Congressman Herrmark.  And then one of the Shackled started whispering in his ear, and Herrmark came up with a ghost of an idea.  

A mile away, Congressman Jacques Javert was psychiatrist Ermann Esse's first post-Thanksgiving-recess appointment.  "I think I'm losing my mind, Doctor Esse!  The oyster stuffing was disgusting, the bourbon tasted wrong, the jazz sounded horrific, the trees looked menacing, and the nasty smell was everywhere!  I can't believe I used to live in Louisiana all the time!"

"Well, sometimes people just like different things as they get older," the shrink said to his new patient.

"No, something funny happened this summer, and nothing seems right anymore."

"What happened?" asked the shrink.

"I don't know!  My own staffers seem to have a conspiracy about keeping me from remembering."

"You have a gap in your memory?"

"Many gaps!"

"Well, we better hypnotize you then," said Dr. Esse.  A few minutes later, Congressman Javert was confessing to murders and other unsavory activity, then lunging for Dr. Esse's (cursed) Rolex, which he claimed had been stolen from him.  Dr. Esse snapped him out of the hypnosis, pulling his jacket sleeve down over the (cursed) Rolex to keep it hidden from Javert.  "You have some serious issues," said Dr. Esse.  "I think you should resign from Congress and join an overseas military campaign to take out some of that murderous aggression."

"What?!"

"I've sent some of my patients to Syria, where weapons are readily available."

"What?!"

"Well, if you don't want to get involved in that, I know a couple who have gone to Nigeria to hunt Boko Haram and rescue girls, and one is in North Korea trying to assassinate their dictator.  This is your true nature, clearly revealed by the hypnosis," concluded the psychiatrist, poisoned as he was by the cursed Rolex.

"Those Scientologists are right!" exclaimed Javert.  "Psychiatrists are evil!"

"Oh, those people are full of shit!" retorted Dr. Esse.  "Anyway, I haven't even given you any drugs."

"Do you have some?" asked Javert.

"There's nothing I can do about such murderous impulses.  It is my duty to the public to advise you to go someplace where killers can be useful members of society."

"I'm not a murderer!" cried Javert.  "You're a quack!"

"Well, it might be multiple personalities," said Javert, "but that has gone way out style.  You would be the first in years."

Out in the river, a recently weakened Ardua of the Potomac welcomed the return of Congress as a major source of her evil strength, then sent out a team of millipedes and river rats to get close to the possibly useful neo-Nazis recently united in the bowels of the Capitol.

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COMING UP:  The new climate.