Get out the vote!

The Freaks who lived in the Anacostia River Tunnel Project had legally registered to vote in August, but were getting a hard time at their Southeast early voting polling station.

"Your name is Captain Von Trapp?" asked the poll worker, dubiously.

"The Fifth!" replied the smelly man with a foot-long beard.  "Captain Von Trapp the Fifth!"

"You can't challenge him just because his name is weird," whispered the poll worker beside her.

"It sounds fraudulent!" she whispered back.

"It's on the roll!" the other poll worker retorted.  "You have to let him vote!"  She turned to the next in line.  "Name?"

"Fearless Leader, Junior."  The other poll worker kicked her under the table.

Meanwhile, Dulles Samuelson was taking a break from FBI training at Quantico to go to early voting with Angela de la Paz in Washington.

"The FBI is messed up," said Angela.

"I've heard every piece of gossip under the sun:  Comey working with Hillary, Comey working with Rudy Giuliani, FBI leaking to Wikileaks, FBI in cyber war with CIA, FBI investigating Loretta Lynch."

"Are you sure you want to work for the FBI?"

"I'm sure it will go back to normal after the Election."

"How do you know what's normal?  They used to wiretap Martin Luther King and John Lennon!  That place is messed up."

"Every place is messed up.  I'll do what I can."

The ghost of Dulles Samuelson's father, Henry Samuelson, clutched his forever-CIA head in his spectral hands and tried to scream out loud.

Over at the secret CIA facility under the "Washington Times" headquarters, psychiatrist Ermann Esse was debriefing his handlers on Operation Barbie Doll.  "I was able to design a couple of campaign outfits for KellyAnne, but that was as high as I got as a fashion designer with the Trump women."

"Do the outfits make her look really bad?"

"She doesn't need clothes to make her look really bad!"

Dr. Esse sipped water nervously as his handlers descended into a major argument.

"I told you this was a stupid idea!"

"We tried every other idea!"

"Maybe we should let the voters decide!?  This CIA-FBI war is not good for the country!"

"You're not good for the country!  And we're not conceding the Election to Comey and Giuliani, of all people!"

"It could be worse.  Trump could be easy to control once we get rid of the Russian agents in his--"

"Oh, that's your plan now?!"

Dr. Esse was exhausted from forced labor for the CIA.  He quietly walked out of the room and headed to the cafeteria.

A few miles away, some Heurich Society members were also feeling uncharacteristically ineffective.  It had only been a week since Condoleezza Rice was elected Chair of the Heurich Society (to replace deposed Dick Cheney), but members were already aggravated.  For one thing, they thought since she could only hold meetings over the speaker phone, they could run circles around her; however, she had set up teleconference capacity in the upper-floor meeting room of the Brewmaster's Castle, and could now stare ominously at them from a giant video screen.  For another thing, she had dismantled the political operations sub-committee for allowing Russian agent Donald Trump to get nominated.

But what really ticked them off was she had allowed the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series!  (The Heurich Society had been scheming against the Chicago Cubs since the dawn of the Cold War!  A woman running national security was one thing, but women meddling in baseball curses?)  And so, instead of consolidating their financial assets and shoring up their military-industrial complex to retain ultimate Washington power no matter what, several of them were meeting secretly at The Palm to discuss how to oust Condoleezza Rice from power.

"Are there any nude photos of her?"

"Lesbian love affairs?"

"Any love affairs!"

"Hot mic comments?"

"What if we just vote her out?"

The other men looked at the Midwestern Congressman in disbelief.  After an awkward silence, the international arms merchant spoke:  "Even Dick Cheney fears the Bloodsucker.  Only a stake through the heart or total decapitation would work."  The Congressman burst out laughing, but nobody else did.

Meanwhile, social worker Hue Nguyen and some visiting family members were escorting residents of the Arlington group home for the mentally challenged to early voting in Virginia.  The big brown helping dog, Millie, was trotting to and fro, letting the nervous residents take turns petting her.  Some feared the Russians were stealing the Election; some feared Mexican aliens were stealing the Election; some feared outer space aliens were stealing the Election; and many feared that voting was a trick to get them locked up in a secret facility.  Psychologist Leo Schwartz had argued at length with Nguyen about the appropriateness of registering them to vote, but in the end, he was hard-pressed to deny that their semi-delusional grasp of the facts was actually worse than the flood of lies and dirty tricks shaping the mindset of many of the country's voters.

"Where are the ice cream trucks?"

"I thought there would be more aliens."

"Those are aliens."

"Those are Trumpists."

"Is that a gun?"

The social worker looked in alarm at a middle-aged man leering at them and showing the gun in his holster.  "Those folks actually registered to vote in this county?"

"Yes!" said Buckner's brother, who was 6'4" and built like a linebacker.

Melinda whispered to Millie a Spanish plea to go attack the man, and Millie ran over, jumped up on the man, and started licking his face.

"Gaa!  Get him off me!"

"It's a girl!" cried Theresa.

"Get your psycho dog off me!"

Other people in line were now laughing as the social worker retrieved Millie.

"The dog is a cog in the machine against mean!" chanted Freddy Ritchings (AKA Brother Divine of the International Peace Movement).

"I know you!" cried a woman nearby.  "You're the host of the Church of Twitter!"

"A Tweet can be sweet when the heart takes the start!  Hatred in Twitter is like a World Series no-hitter!" Freddy continued.  ("Go Cubs!")  "Vote like a goat, and no ovation for the nation!  A ballot of love gives sinners a shove!"

"Hillary's the Antichrist!" someone shouted.

"Trump is a pig!"

Soon there were fistfights, and the man with the gun shot it into the air.  Several residents of the Arlington group home took off running, with Millie and various family members in close pursuit.

Floating above the polling station, some members of The Shackled shed ghostly tears, but one said, "Fear not, my friends.  This too shall pass."

Back at DC's Southeast early voting station, the identical "Reiki Triplets"--who had been holding hands and sending out positive energy to fellow voters-- approached the poll workers, who shook their heads in disbelief.  Maggie went up first, and could see the negative energy weighing on the woman's head.  "It's all gonna be alright, child," Maggie said, holding her hands up.  "There are higher powers in play."

"That woman cloned herself to register to vote three times!" cried Glenn Michael Beckmann, who was dressed in citizen riot gear.

Cal and Sassy surrounded him, raised their hands, and did their mojo, causing Beckmann's over-medicated brain to short-circuit and pass out.

"I think we're gonna have a lot of extra clients this week!" said Maggie, taking her ballot from the poll worker, who was feeling much better.  "You have a blessed week, now!"

Over at the White House, Bridge had never heard so much commotion from the ghosts.  "It'll be alright," the gardener kept saying, for his own benefit as much as theirs.  "It'll be alright."

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Washington Water Woman is fleeing the country after the election, but hopes the civil war will be brief and she can return to blogging in two weeks!  Ardua of the Potomac will certainly be on the move....